Harness the power that is already out there.
New technologies are a bitch.
They’re a bitch because you can’t argue with them – or even have a rational discussion.
When automobiles were invented at the turn of the century, people who had spent their lives making buggy whips were finished.
Finished.
And no matter how much they pleaded with the automobiles rolling out of the River Rouge plant in Detroit that their buggy whips were really, really good and surely there must be a place for them in the world of automobiles – maybe there should be ‘government funding’ for buggy whips – it was over for the buggy whip makers.
Over.
Now conventional journalists are in the same position as the buggy whip makers.
The end.
The reason they are finished is because no one really wants to pay for what they do.
100 years ago, even 50 years ago, it was pretty cool for one sole person to travel to Africa with a film crew and photograph starving people in Ethiopia or civil wars in Sri Lanka or write about it.
Today, no one cares, because everyone and their brother is already there with a flipcam or an iPhone or a million websites devoted to every story and every issue you can think of.
So who, really, wants to pay for it. Who even wants to listen to it.
Listen up: there are 234 million websites in the world today. There are 247 billion emails sent globally every day. Everyone is on line talking all the time. Why in the world do you think that a ‘message’ from a ‘journalist’ is of any real value anymore. It isn’t.
And good thing.
In the olden days of TV news (for example), Dan Rather (an old CBS correspondent) would go to Brussels or Berlin or Burundi or Bangla Desh to ‘report’ the news.
Now, in all honesty, what the hell does Dan Rather know about any of these places (I mean knowledge that any idiot could not pick up with a quick read of Wikipedia)? Answer: nothing. He doesn’t speak Flemish or German or French or Hindi or Bengali, he doesn’t have any special knowledge of the region. He doesn’t bring anything to the party. And neither do the vast majority of ‘journalist’ who flit from topic to topic, story to story, knowing next to nothing about what they are writing about.
No wonder there is no value in journalism. No wonder no one will pay for it any more.
Why should they?
But does that mean that it’s over?
Not at all.
But it’s going to be different.
Andy Grove, the former chairman of Intel, and no dope, said:
Listen to the technology. The technology will tell you what to do
But journalists are notoriously bad at listening to the technology. They prefer to see the technology as the savior of their old, tired and valueless ways of working: The iPad will save newspapers.
Bull!
Listen up!
There are 126 million blogs on the web.
30 billion photos are added to Facebook every year
1 billion videos are served on Youtube every day!
People are talking to each other online all the time.
That is where the journalism is taking place.
What journalistic institutions have to do, if they want to survive, is to focus that incredible river of information.
Because right now, it’s unfocused, unharnessed. The power is out there, it just needs to be directed.
If you can do that, you can light up Las Vegas, or the world.
And how do you do that? How do you harness the power that is free flowing?
You channel it.
You drive it through a turbine.
You find these people, train them, certify them, and make them yours.
And make no mistake, training is critical.
They are out there, beavering away, just without focus.
CBS News could have 100,000 correspondents around the world, feeding news and stories and video and information into them 24 hours a day if they wanted to.
USA Today could have 500,000 reporters and contributors worldwide if they wanted.
You think it’s a ridiculous number?
Try 90 Trillion.
That’s the number of emails sent last year.
Everyone is online all the time.
They see things, they ‘report’ to their friends. They just need to be harnessed and focused.
Then.. then you could have some journalism.
Collectively, ‘they’ have something to say.
And collectively, it’s probably of a lot more value than one reporter wandering around India on his own.
10 Comments
Tom Weber April 17, 2010
I’m with you all the way about how the technology of news gathering has been liberated, how it’s very easy to learn how to shoot and edit a news story. A camcorder is not that hard to operate, neither is Final Cut Pro. You can learn them in a couple of days.
For that matter, a computer, a typewriter, or a notepad is not difficult to learn.
What IS difficult to learn is news sense, the sense of what makes a good story, the sense of when corporations or politicians are screwing the public, the sense of when a spokesperson is lying or covering up. News sense takes years of experience. It’s not as easy to learn as Final Cut Pro.
I feel fortunate to have learned the craft of news reporting from old-school newspaper men and women. They didn’t have college degrees, and most of them smoked and drank too much, and they didn’t use the word journalism because they thought it pretentious. But they taught me how to sniff out a story and follow it doggedly to its conclusion, regardless of whose toes got stepped on in the process.
From the police beat, I learned accuracy and got a sense of the extremes of human behavior. From the city hall beat, I learned that most politicians can’t be trusted. From the courthouse beat, I learned that the courts are instruments of the powerful.
I am all in favor of citizen-journalists. I’m just skeptical that a citizen with good intentions and a camcorder knows what constitutes a story, how to get a story, how to get access to sources and evaluate what they tell you. It’s easy to produce a video news report about a mall opening. But do citizen-journalists have the instincts and training to uncover a Watergate? to nail down a story about municipal corruption in their town? How do they learn news values, once you take away the newsroom?
That’s what concerns me, Michael. What’s going to happen to “hard news” in the era of video journalism?
Regards,
Tom
Michael Rosenblum April 18, 2010
Hi Tom
I understand your concern, and I am very much in favor of training Citizen Journalists in the basics of real journalism, just as Citizen Writers had to be trained in the basics of real writing post Gutenberg. What I want to do is to take the power of ‘journalism’ out of the hands of the highly paid professional establishment and unleash the power of the citizens – trained citizens.
And make no mistake, there is real journalism to be done there.
The website wikileaks.com is a perfect example. On a budget of $600,000 a year, or 3% of what Katie Couric alone gets paid at CBS News, they have broken some of the major stories of the past few years. What has 60 Minutes broken of late that anyone can think of?
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Michael Rosenblum April 16, 2010
That was very interesting. That is also why we are very careful to instruct the TCA grads never to say that they work for the Travel Channel. CNN did the right thing. He is an iReporter, but he does not work for CNN.
pencilgod April 15, 2010
And yet: CNN Sues One Of Their iReporters For Saying He Works For CNN
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-sues-one-of-their-cnn-ireporters-for-saying-he-worked-for-cnn-2010-4#ixzz0lEhxdPuO
Chris Kohatsu April 15, 2010
Yesterday, the Library of Congress announced that it would amass a collection of every tweet ever sent. How did they announce this? Not by a press release — which would have taken days of approval and bureaucratic sign-offs.
It was announced via blog and a tweet by Matt Raymond, the LOC’s Director of Communications. As he said yesterday on Facebook (and I paraphrase) “what would take days for approval and endless amounts of frustration, I announced in no time.” And, based on all the interviews he has given since the announcement, it did not fall on deaf ears.
Score another one for new media. Traditional media is no more.
christina April 15, 2010
journalism as we know it (historically) is failing because technology has changed but also because we as consumers of it have changed — we are less educated (despite many claims) and less invested in building our own future (assuming government will step in or credit cards are free money). there is no investment into being a citizen; no thought for the collective Good.
good journalism like a free press is essential for true government. our country will fail without it. but it’s already failing… makes one wonder how free our “journalists” have been to tell the truth. or perhaps if they’re educated enough to know the truth, if that’s not the case. but we know that media outlets are businesses — with the bottom line of making money. as a people we consume brainless chatter and thrive on drama and hearsay. scandals and superstars are the focus. real issues are buried. we are not given the news we need, we are given the news they want to sell us; the news that promotes their agenda.
and yves is right, we -generally speaking- don’t fact check, don’t wait for the truth, jump on any bandwagon, spread gossip and are the furthest thing from impartial. so does our media. therefore does it really shock any of us when our government follows suit. it is after all, set up to be government for the people by the people. we perpetrate and perpetuate our own sins…
i stand by my claim that the right kind of education would save the world — yes, not just the country but the world… but we live in a world of quick fixes. and raising a new generation takes time. and education is somehow controversial (oh.. that’s right, because it IS power)… so the education that’s needed isn’t being offered.
the whip makers just needed a new craft, they need new training. but instead today’s “whip makers” stand in the way of not only present progress but of preparing others for a future where they can thrive.
Michael Rosenblum April 15, 2010
I think that CBS or The NY Times become the publisher instead of the producer of content. The organizer. The curator. A lot of it can organize itself – that’s the miracle of the web. no one feels like they need an Executive Producer for eBay, right? But there’s still an organization that administers the thing. This, I think, is the role for CBS News. And they should be so fortunate as to have the valuation of eBay.
Daniel Scharch April 15, 2010
Awesome post! I’ve come around to the idea of the iPad. Or maybe just e-Readers in general, but I think it’s not a far-fetch to think everyone might own something like this in the future, considering how we all expect to have phones with Internet attached to our hips every day and every night.
What I wanted to comment on is the turbine and raw power of journalism you mentioned? Even if CBS was the turbine for compiling trillion of emails of information, wouldn’t there still need to be employees to review and post everything? Also, how do these people get paid?
Or would journalism become a team of fact-checking gatekeepers for the news, like CBS?
Maybe I missed something, but there is no denying it is exciting.
Yves Simard April 15, 2010
I love your post, thank you and you are so on the pulse its not funny.. in my opinion.
My comment has to do with the public not knowing how to report.. yest they tell stories but full of emotion and without the ability to separate the truth from bias. This is why we have reporters. Now dont get me wrong, this is not perfect and in the last 10 years or so has completely been lost or fallen over.. for the reasons you say in your article.
For me this is hard, I love journalism, I love a good impartial reportage full of facts allowing me to make up my own mind.
MJ’s ambulance driving stating he was dead is not enough to go to air.. but they did and that was via a gossip news organization over twitter (see I may have gotten my facts wrong here) but that is the point. Its unverified, raw and speculative.
What angers me is that the public does not care or know the difference so i say bring it on.. its bigger than all of us.
Without a system to prop up the Dan Rathers of the world, the will not exist and who will be the voice of impartiality for the masses?
Anyhow, my humble opinion
Cheers, thanks for the article,