When your cell phone breaks or your computer crashes you no longer expect to speak to a call center in the United States. Numerous companies have outsourced parts of their business operations to contractors in other countries in an effort to improve their bottom line and increase productivity. Regardless of the public perception of outsourcing jobs, there can be financial benefits. However, a domestic form of outsourcing now is reaching the struggling news industry. It was the topic of a recent Washington Post column by Howard Kurtz.
In The age of journalistic outsourcing, Kurtz argues that while traditional print media struggle, new journalism organizations, mostly non-profits, are “giving the restless and the jobless a second lease on life.” But why has it taken so long for the legacy media to realize the untapped potential of online non-profit organizations?
Many online non-profit news organizations have been around for decades. They produce quality investigative articles about a range of topics. They have been responsible for breaking news, exposing scandal and reporting stories traditional media miss. A new non-profit journalism organization seems to be appearing daily, and with that comes innovative reporting and a new approach to journalism.
However, it isn’t just the non-profit journalism organizations that are seeing the vast potential in providing journalism to the newspaper industry. Large multinational companies have recently launched or expanded their reporting capacity to meet this growing need. Included in the bunch is AOL, which is adding hundreds of journalists over the next year. Yahoo recently opened a Washington news bureau.
One reason for the delay in accepting non-profit journalism organizations as authentic news producers is the misconception that they are competition to traditional media. However, as Kurtz pointed out in his column, collaboration between non-profits and legacy media is producing terrific content that is changing the conversation in media, politics and households around the nation.
Non-profit journalism organizations are assets more print outlets should be taking advantage of if only for the cost savings that come with using non-profit news content. In fact, some of the online non-profits operate under a free “steal our stuff” model. At The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, we sponsor two news organizations -- Watchdog.org and Statehouse News. These initiatives fulfill a substantial hole in state-based news coverage, and that is why the content produced by Watchdog.org and Statehouse not only is free to the public but it is free to the news media.
Illinois Statehouse News (ISN), a product of the Franklin Center, is committed to filling the growing vacuum in state-based coverage. Since going live in December 2009, ISN’s daily content has been used by more than 40 daily newspapers, 11 television stations and numerous radio stations. The coverage is an example of why non-profit journalism organizations are a desperately needed resource for local newspapers as well as national ones.
Non-profit journalism is playing a vital and needed role in the news business. The thirst for news by the American public is not diminishing just because a newspaper in a community collapses. Although traditional media has an important place in the news business, non-profits are a big part of the future of news and should be accepted as such.
Source: The Online Journalism Review
Showing posts with label reporting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reporting. Show all posts
Friday, July 9, 2010
Friday, May 1, 2009
Journalists: Where do you add value?
EVERY day, with everything they do, the key question for journalists and news organizations in these tight - that is, more efficient - times must be: Are you adding value? And if you’re not, why are you doing whatever you’re doing?
Sitting in a hotel room, cruising by CNN the other day, I caught a behind-the-scenes segment that wanted to show us just how cool it is to be a reporter dashing from story to story. It did the opposite for me. I was disturbed at the waste.
The correspondent - I won’t pick on him; it was just his turn to play show monkey - stood in front of the new Mets’ stadium to tell us that there’s controversy about naming it after a sponsor. It was just a stand-up. There was no evidence of reporting as he was standing alone in a parking lot. The knowledge was a commodity. Anybody could have read it. But they wanted to scene and invested a correspondent and crew to get it. Then he dashed to the UN because there was a vote happening. But he didn’t run to report. He ran to the bureau to do another stand-up with another background. Again, what happened in the vote was commodity knowledge. Anybody could have read it.
So there is a reporter not reporting. But, of course, that is hardly unique to CNN. How much of the dwindling, precious journalism resource we have - on national and local TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines - goes to original reporting, to real journalism? How much goes to repetition and production?
Journalism can’t afford repetition and production anymore.
Every minute of a journalist’s time will need to go to adding unique value to the news ecosystem: reporting, curating, organizing. This efficiency is necessitated by the reduction of resources. But it is also a product of the link and search economy: The only way to stand out is to add unique value and quality. My advice in the past has been: If you can’t imagine why someone would link to what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. And: Do what you do best and link to the rest. The link economy is ruthless in judging value.
The question every journalist must ask is: Am I adding value?
Look at a service such as PaidContent. They have a small (though growing) staff and they choose carefully what they do, whether it’s worth it to send someone to a conference, whether they can add reporting to a story that’s already known, how they can curate links to the best of coverage that already exists. They fire their bullets carefully, economically, to contribute maximum unique value. PaidContent doesn’t - and can’t afford to - record stand-ups or rewrite others’ reporting for the sake of rewriting it or waste money on production and design niceties.
That’s the way that journalism will have to be executed in the future: efficiently.
I’ve been wanting to get funding to perform an audit of the journalistic output and value of the entire legacy structure of news in a market. It’s not that the current state of news should be the model for the future but it is where the discussion begins: ‘How do we make sure we’ll maintain this level of reporting?’
Once journalism becomes efficient, I think it can do much better than maintain what we have now. When we cut out all the incredible waste - those standups and rewrites and frills and blather - and when we have an ecosystem that rewards unique value, as the internet does, then I think we could end up with more journalism, more reporting.
Bloggers have had to learn that, too. Just linking to and commenting on others’ reporting won’t get you much attention. Every blogger who does original reporting and tells the world something it doesn’t know but wants to know learns that this is how to get links and audience. Arianna Huffington told Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in London months ago that she was hiring reporters because their stories get more traffic; it’s enlightened economic self-interest. This is a lesson we teach our journalism students at CUNY, when we have them add reporting to the conversations that are going on online.
Whether you’re a blogger or a new form of news organization, you’re going to have to ask with every move whether it will add value to the news ecosystem. If it doesn’t, you shouldn’t do it.
In the link economy, the value given to original reporting will rise. The ability to waste money on old practices of egotistical journalism will plummet. And what is left standing, I think, is more efficient and valuable reporting.
Source: buzzmachine.com
Sitting in a hotel room, cruising by CNN the other day, I caught a behind-the-scenes segment that wanted to show us just how cool it is to be a reporter dashing from story to story. It did the opposite for me. I was disturbed at the waste.
The correspondent - I won’t pick on him; it was just his turn to play show monkey - stood in front of the new Mets’ stadium to tell us that there’s controversy about naming it after a sponsor. It was just a stand-up. There was no evidence of reporting as he was standing alone in a parking lot. The knowledge was a commodity. Anybody could have read it. But they wanted to scene and invested a correspondent and crew to get it. Then he dashed to the UN because there was a vote happening. But he didn’t run to report. He ran to the bureau to do another stand-up with another background. Again, what happened in the vote was commodity knowledge. Anybody could have read it.
So there is a reporter not reporting. But, of course, that is hardly unique to CNN. How much of the dwindling, precious journalism resource we have - on national and local TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines - goes to original reporting, to real journalism? How much goes to repetition and production?
Journalism can’t afford repetition and production anymore.
Every minute of a journalist’s time will need to go to adding unique value to the news ecosystem: reporting, curating, organizing. This efficiency is necessitated by the reduction of resources. But it is also a product of the link and search economy: The only way to stand out is to add unique value and quality. My advice in the past has been: If you can’t imagine why someone would link to what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. And: Do what you do best and link to the rest. The link economy is ruthless in judging value.
The question every journalist must ask is: Am I adding value?
Look at a service such as PaidContent. They have a small (though growing) staff and they choose carefully what they do, whether it’s worth it to send someone to a conference, whether they can add reporting to a story that’s already known, how they can curate links to the best of coverage that already exists. They fire their bullets carefully, economically, to contribute maximum unique value. PaidContent doesn’t - and can’t afford to - record stand-ups or rewrite others’ reporting for the sake of rewriting it or waste money on production and design niceties.
That’s the way that journalism will have to be executed in the future: efficiently.
I’ve been wanting to get funding to perform an audit of the journalistic output and value of the entire legacy structure of news in a market. It’s not that the current state of news should be the model for the future but it is where the discussion begins: ‘How do we make sure we’ll maintain this level of reporting?’
Once journalism becomes efficient, I think it can do much better than maintain what we have now. When we cut out all the incredible waste - those standups and rewrites and frills and blather - and when we have an ecosystem that rewards unique value, as the internet does, then I think we could end up with more journalism, more reporting.
Bloggers have had to learn that, too. Just linking to and commenting on others’ reporting won’t get you much attention. Every blogger who does original reporting and tells the world something it doesn’t know but wants to know learns that this is how to get links and audience. Arianna Huffington told Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in London months ago that she was hiring reporters because their stories get more traffic; it’s enlightened economic self-interest. This is a lesson we teach our journalism students at CUNY, when we have them add reporting to the conversations that are going on online.
Whether you’re a blogger or a new form of news organization, you’re going to have to ask with every move whether it will add value to the news ecosystem. If it doesn’t, you shouldn’t do it.
In the link economy, the value given to original reporting will rise. The ability to waste money on old practices of egotistical journalism will plummet. And what is left standing, I think, is more efficient and valuable reporting.
Source: buzzmachine.com
ProPublica GM: 'Investigative Reporting is Something of a Luxury'
SINCE ProPublica started giving major news outlets free stories last June, general manager Richard Tofel said it has proven itself but can't and won't "save investigative reporting in this country."
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday, Tofel, former assistant managing editor and assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal, reiterated the foundation-funded non-profit organization's mission: to produce stories with "moral force" that will "change the world in little ways."
With just 30 staffers, Tofel said ProPublica couldn't fill the in-depth reporting gap created by newsroom cutbacks across the country. He said his organization doesn't aim to compete with traditional investigative reporting, and doesn't fear that cash-starved news organizations will "dump" such projects on it. He said, "Investigative reporting is something of a luxury" in these tough economic times, but "at most we'd give five to 10 stories a year" to any one outlet.
Has ProPublica achieved its lofty goal? "It's hard to prove in a mathematical way," Tofel said, but "we've proven we can do" major, important work. As an example, he noted that its story earlier this month on medical care for U.S. contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, published by the Los Angeles Times and broadcast by ABC News, has triggered a call for a congressional investigation.
For its Web site, ProPublica has hired bloggers from Slate and Talking Points Memo to do three to six short stories a day. Tofel said its ChangeTracker, which details alterations to White House Web sites and its new "bailout blog," which details how billions are distributed, produce some interesting story ideas for other outlets to pursue.
Tofel said the organization's next big task is to come up with a sustainable revenue model. He says some kinds of journalism "are revealing themselves to be public goods and need to be funded as such -- investigative reporting is one of them." He suggested that financial support for cultural institutions,like symphony orchestras or art museums, might prove a model.
But he fears government funding, because "the nature of investigative reporting is to have an adversarial relationship with government."
Source: poynter.org
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday, Tofel, former assistant managing editor and assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal, reiterated the foundation-funded non-profit organization's mission: to produce stories with "moral force" that will "change the world in little ways."
With just 30 staffers, Tofel said ProPublica couldn't fill the in-depth reporting gap created by newsroom cutbacks across the country. He said his organization doesn't aim to compete with traditional investigative reporting, and doesn't fear that cash-starved news organizations will "dump" such projects on it. He said, "Investigative reporting is something of a luxury" in these tough economic times, but "at most we'd give five to 10 stories a year" to any one outlet.
Has ProPublica achieved its lofty goal? "It's hard to prove in a mathematical way," Tofel said, but "we've proven we can do" major, important work. As an example, he noted that its story earlier this month on medical care for U.S. contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, published by the Los Angeles Times and broadcast by ABC News, has triggered a call for a congressional investigation.
For its Web site, ProPublica has hired bloggers from Slate and Talking Points Memo to do three to six short stories a day. Tofel said its ChangeTracker, which details alterations to White House Web sites and its new "bailout blog," which details how billions are distributed, produce some interesting story ideas for other outlets to pursue.
Tofel said the organization's next big task is to come up with a sustainable revenue model. He says some kinds of journalism "are revealing themselves to be public goods and need to be funded as such -- investigative reporting is one of them." He suggested that financial support for cultural institutions,like symphony orchestras or art museums, might prove a model.
But he fears government funding, because "the nature of investigative reporting is to have an adversarial relationship with government."
Source: poynter.org
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