Publishers are being disintermediated in their role of content gatekeeper for their audience. As a consumer, I am not limited in my choice of articles or books to read by the decisions made by editors at my local newspaper or one of the few national publishers. Their judgment was a necessary value in a world when content was scarce and distribution was a barrier. But content is no longer scare, with exponentially more options, and I cannot possibly consume much more than I am now. So I still need help deciding what to read.
When a speaker announced at a January book conference that more books were published during that week than in all of 1950 I was not really surprised yet taken aback at the same time.* I have so many more choices as a consumer, and content is being created and published that would never have seen the light of day in the past. Some of it must be more relevant to me than what was traditionally chosen for more mass audiences.
So how do I find it? The wisdom of crowds lover in me wants to believe that quality will rise to the top. The population will find what is good and elevate it better than any small crowd of trained editors or physical retailers ever could. But in reality I can't see that effectively working, especially as my definition of quality content includes what is personally relevant.
This is why I believe the personal discovery process for content is the biggest opportunity right now. There is a lot of innovation happening across all types of content. Some companies are focusing on algorithms using simple user inputs (Google, Amazon, Netflix, Zite), and others are looking for social connections to find more relevant content (Facebook, Goodreads, Spotify.) Most are beginning to incorporate both aspects. All of those companies I just mentioned do a decent job of finding new content specifically for me.
But what about those publishers with their teams of editors who used to pick what I should read? Do they still have a role in this world? I think they just might.
While they cannot ignore the trends toward personalization or they will be completely left behind, they do have a head start over any technology upstarts at understanding specific audiences and communities. And more importantly they (at least for the moment still) have the ability to fund and sponsor content creation. Publishers appear to be losing the battle of distribution--other companies are doing it better, in more personalized ways--but they still have brands that mean something to audiences. The same great article has more weight under the flag or The New Yorker than it does under noname.com.
So how can publishers use this brand equity? A recent announcement from Forbes might be one example. They are asking contributing writers to take responsibility to build their own individual audiences online with content that goes beyond what appears in the standard publication. And they are compensating them for it. This allows Forbes the ability not just to expand their total audience, but to sponsor many more content creators than they would have before and add more support, especially financially, to those that appear wise to the crowds. It works for the contributors by giving them the Forbes banner and promotion to give them a boost to be noticed in the increasingly saturated sea of content. And it will benefit me, the consumer, but highlighting content choices as Forbes-approved if I believe their brand is appropriate for me.
I expect we will see more ideas like this from publishers, not just in news, but in books, music, and other entertainment. They will focus more on their brand and using its equity to facilitate the discovery of content for their audiences, especially for those with specific, defined, even niche audiences. This could even be done without publishing or distributing actual content. No one has figured out how to monetize their brands separate from distribution-based business models yet, but it is inevitable as they are forced to reconsider their very missions and look at where their value truly resides.
UPDATE: Here is a recent example of blogger Joshua Gans, someone I have enjoyed for several years, moving over to the Forbes brand. http://gametheorist.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-parentonomics-blog.html
* I have not fact checked this statement, but considering the explosion of self publishing and publishing upstarts and opportunities, the idea is surely correct even if the number is not completely true.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Ho Hum, Students Do Not Really Want Digital Content
According to a survey of college students, "if all things were equal (price and availability), students would choose to use e-textbooks 47% of the time" versus print text books. The knee jerk headlines are that good old fashioned printed text books are still favored by a lot of students, so slow down all of the predictions of the revolutionary market.
But what if this survey is done five years from now, with students who have lived in the world of iPad since they were pre-teens? I bet it will be much higher. And when my kids (ages 2 and 5) are approaching college, or even in high school after living with advanced mobile devices their entire remembered life? I'm sure they will be much closer to 100% than 50%.
So given the time to develop products and markets, I would bet right now on demand for a totally digital text book.
This reminds me of when I was in college in the mid-late 1990s during the earliest adoption on the Internet. Here is a study from 1997 that looked at whether college students would want to use email and computers for education. The conclusion? There's not a big demand from students. Even "when students are given large incentives to use e-mail, over a quarter of the students in one class did not."
But what if this survey is done five years from now, with students who have lived in the world of iPad since they were pre-teens? I bet it will be much higher. And when my kids (ages 2 and 5) are approaching college, or even in high school after living with advanced mobile devices their entire remembered life? I'm sure they will be much closer to 100% than 50%.
So given the time to develop products and markets, I would bet right now on demand for a totally digital text book.
This reminds me of when I was in college in the mid-late 1990s during the earliest adoption on the Internet. Here is a study from 1997 that looked at whether college students would want to use email and computers for education. The conclusion? There's not a big demand from students. Even "when students are given large incentives to use e-mail, over a quarter of the students in one class did not."
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Transitioning to the New Equilibrium
Following up on yesterday's post, it is not hard to see an upcoming rebalancing of ad spend per media, with even more significant dollars shifting from print to online and mobile. To review, where advertisers spend their budgets to place their messages is not yet proportional to where consumers are spending their time. I assume this was more or less in balance for years between print and broadcast channels, but overall advertisers have been slower to shift habits than consumers from print to online.
There are surely many reasons for this, including uncertainties and undefined opportunities of an emerging market, risk tolerance, and general inertia. Online and mobile (especially) ad markets are just not as developed as print.
But let's play out this scenario and assume more perfect market conditions.
Assumption 1: Consumption habits stay roughly the same for the next few years. (Just to keep this easy, but we know mobile will increase and print will likely continue to decrease.)
Assumption 2: Total ad spend stays the same, or at least we are playing a zero sum game.
Assumption 3: Advertising adjusts to match where consumers are spending some time.
Conclusion 1: Print media would see more than half of its advertising disappear. A lot of it would reappear in mobile media and some to online. I'll call this the normalization of ad spend.
But that still might not be the right equilibrium. I half joked when I mentioned that half of traditional advertising is wasted, per the infamous quote. Well, is that untrue? A fair amount of print media is still produced for a broad, if not mass audience. The same can be said about broadcast. But the Internet (and mobile) platforms naturally create more personal, and therefore more targeted, content and audiences. It is reasonable to believe that once the ad markets develop, the Internet and mobile media will be more effective on average than print. So...
Conclusion 2: The new equilibrium will see an even further drop in ad spend to print media to the benefit of Internet and mobile. Is it unreasonable to imagine this scenario where ad spend in print drops to a sixth of what it is today?
Of course, this implies disaster for print publishers. In this scenario only the ones that are truly niche and targeted would retain an audience useful for advertisers. But in reality almost every print publisher today is in the midst of transitioning audience to online platforms and products in hopes of serving them in targeted ways so that they would simply experience this shift internally from one platform to another. But even if they do successfully transfer their audience online, they can't just publish as a digital version of a print product, they have to compete against the millions of other websites, aggregators, and personally targeted content available to consumers.
Thankfully for transitioning publishers, these markets are far from perfect so this scenario is not going to play out overnight. There is time and hope.
(Note: my data with calculations and estimates are available here.)
UPDATE: I am not the only one who has drawn the same conclusion, The Washington Post has as well and it is getting a lot of attention. I have had the 2009 version of this chart on my wall for two years as a conversation starter, so I have to say I am surprised it took this long for some one else to notice the same thing and make noise.
But let's play out this scenario and assume more perfect market conditions.
Assumption 1: Consumption habits stay roughly the same for the next few years. (Just to keep this easy, but we know mobile will increase and print will likely continue to decrease.)
Assumption 2: Total ad spend stays the same, or at least we are playing a zero sum game.
Assumption 3: Advertising adjusts to match where consumers are spending some time.
Conclusion 1: Print media would see more than half of its advertising disappear. A lot of it would reappear in mobile media and some to online. I'll call this the normalization of ad spend.
But that still might not be the right equilibrium. I half joked when I mentioned that half of traditional advertising is wasted, per the infamous quote. Well, is that untrue? A fair amount of print media is still produced for a broad, if not mass audience. The same can be said about broadcast. But the Internet (and mobile) platforms naturally create more personal, and therefore more targeted, content and audiences. It is reasonable to believe that once the ad markets develop, the Internet and mobile media will be more effective on average than print. So...
Conclusion 2: The new equilibrium will see an even further drop in ad spend to print media to the benefit of Internet and mobile. Is it unreasonable to imagine this scenario where ad spend in print drops to a sixth of what it is today?
Of course, this implies disaster for print publishers. In this scenario only the ones that are truly niche and targeted would retain an audience useful for advertisers. But in reality almost every print publisher today is in the midst of transitioning audience to online platforms and products in hopes of serving them in targeted ways so that they would simply experience this shift internally from one platform to another. But even if they do successfully transfer their audience online, they can't just publish as a digital version of a print product, they have to compete against the millions of other websites, aggregators, and personally targeted content available to consumers.
Thankfully for transitioning publishers, these markets are far from perfect so this scenario is not going to play out overnight. There is time and hope.
(Note: my data with calculations and estimates are available here.)
UPDATE: I am not the only one who has drawn the same conclusion, The Washington Post has as well and it is getting a lot of attention. I have had the 2009 version of this chart on my wall for two years as a conversation starter, so I have to say I am surprised it took this long for some one else to notice the same thing and make noise.
The New Equilibrium of Subsidizing Media
Advertising spending is expected to significantly grow this year, according to a report by eMarketer. That is great for media--both producers of and consumers of. That is in the aggregate. Within categories we are looking at continued, permanent realignment.
The other headline within the report is that 2012 will be the first year that total online ad spend will surpass print ad spend. Of course, that is not surprising as innovation is rapidly occurring in digital media--still on the web and even faster with all of the mobile and tablet device development. And consumers are adopting, flocking to, and loving these new ways of consuming content. The only headlines about print are seemingly about shrinking circulation and attempts by publishers to switch their readerships to online before it is too late and they are lost to new digital competitors.
This also has been forecasted. In Mary Meeker's online trends presentation from 2010, there was an ominous and unavoidable slide that showed the time spent per media by consumers against the ad spend by media by advertisers. eMarketer's updated report from December 2011 shows the continuation of the trend. The obvious conclusion is that advertisers are still spending a disproportionate amount on print media compared to where their audience is. And given the old saying that half of mass advertising is wasted, and online advertising at least promises a more targeted approach, it is reasonable to expect the equilibrium of ads to consumption should actually have a higher digital spend proportionally at the expense of print. So 2012 may simply be the inflection point.
So the growth of advertising, and therefore the subsidization of media growth is a great thing. Media is not dead. Even journalism is not dead. Money is out there for life and growth, it just won't be going to the same balance of players as before. As a consumer, I'm fine with this. As a traditional media participant, this is the serious challenge and new reality.
The other headline within the report is that 2012 will be the first year that total online ad spend will surpass print ad spend. Of course, that is not surprising as innovation is rapidly occurring in digital media--still on the web and even faster with all of the mobile and tablet device development. And consumers are adopting, flocking to, and loving these new ways of consuming content. The only headlines about print are seemingly about shrinking circulation and attempts by publishers to switch their readerships to online before it is too late and they are lost to new digital competitors.
This also has been forecasted. In Mary Meeker's online trends presentation from 2010, there was an ominous and unavoidable slide that showed the time spent per media by consumers against the ad spend by media by advertisers. eMarketer's updated report from December 2011 shows the continuation of the trend. The obvious conclusion is that advertisers are still spending a disproportionate amount on print media compared to where their audience is. And given the old saying that half of mass advertising is wasted, and online advertising at least promises a more targeted approach, it is reasonable to expect the equilibrium of ads to consumption should actually have a higher digital spend proportionally at the expense of print. So 2012 may simply be the inflection point.
So the growth of advertising, and therefore the subsidization of media growth is a great thing. Media is not dead. Even journalism is not dead. Money is out there for life and growth, it just won't be going to the same balance of players as before. As a consumer, I'm fine with this. As a traditional media participant, this is the serious challenge and new reality.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Unsupported Device: Exclusively Packaging News
Although it is not unprecedented, I was momentarily taken aback when I followed a link to The Economist Group's new election site and was told that "It looks like you're trying to access Electionism from an unsupported device." The funny thing is, I was using a newish PC laptop running the latest Firefox browser.
The reason, of course, is that this is a new tablet app, and because it is a web app (designed in HTML5 and avoiding Apple's App Store) it has a URL, but is not designed for non-tablet browsers. I am sure there are other examples, and there are surely many more examples to come.
The interesting aspect here is how to look at the product. Is it content? Or just packaging of content? Without spending much time with it, I assume it is the latter. Based on my quick sample, most if not all of the content comprising the site is available elsewhere (sources include The Economist, CQ Roll Call, and twitter feeds) and this is simply a new way to package it together and design the UI for slick tablet navigation. But if in fact there is unique content, or if the combination created in this environment is compelling enough to tell a unique story, what does it mean that the publisher is excluding the majority of its potential audience?
It might not mean much. It is a reward for tablet adopters, who are probably among their most loyal customer segments, and this platform gives them an opportunity to experiment and innovate, which we all know publishers need to do more. And with limited resources there are trade offs of where to spend development energy and dollars, so cross-platform products are not always feasible. There is also no special advertising or paywalls as of today, so the product does not have a price for consumers or a revenue stream for the business. It might just be a case of a new platform allowing for a new package of content given different consumption habits of tablet users.
Coincidentally, today also saw the news that The Daily will soon be available on some Android devices. While it will no longer be limited only to the iPad, it will still only be available to consumers with tablets, which is a very small slice of the total news market, especially for The Daily, which is a more general interest publication, but is creating a lot of original content exclusively for the product. Again it is a strategic bet on the market by Rupert Murdoch, that while I think it has a slim chance of succeeding, it just might work if they innovate on story telling and packaging and have good enough content to win readers over as they adopt the new devices and see that their current news providers are a step behind. Of course, other publications already producing similar content could quickly catch up by learning how to package and adapt storytelling for new platforms and audiences with changing consumption habits. We'll see who wins. If we look back 10-15 years we can see the rise of CNN.com and Yahoo news as news destinations over newspapers online that were slow to learn how to produce and package content differently for new platforms.
The reason, of course, is that this is a new tablet app, and because it is a web app (designed in HTML5 and avoiding Apple's App Store) it has a URL, but is not designed for non-tablet browsers. I am sure there are other examples, and there are surely many more examples to come.
The interesting aspect here is how to look at the product. Is it content? Or just packaging of content? Without spending much time with it, I assume it is the latter. Based on my quick sample, most if not all of the content comprising the site is available elsewhere (sources include The Economist, CQ Roll Call, and twitter feeds) and this is simply a new way to package it together and design the UI for slick tablet navigation. But if in fact there is unique content, or if the combination created in this environment is compelling enough to tell a unique story, what does it mean that the publisher is excluding the majority of its potential audience?
It might not mean much. It is a reward for tablet adopters, who are probably among their most loyal customer segments, and this platform gives them an opportunity to experiment and innovate, which we all know publishers need to do more. And with limited resources there are trade offs of where to spend development energy and dollars, so cross-platform products are not always feasible. There is also no special advertising or paywalls as of today, so the product does not have a price for consumers or a revenue stream for the business. It might just be a case of a new platform allowing for a new package of content given different consumption habits of tablet users.
Coincidentally, today also saw the news that The Daily will soon be available on some Android devices. While it will no longer be limited only to the iPad, it will still only be available to consumers with tablets, which is a very small slice of the total news market, especially for The Daily, which is a more general interest publication, but is creating a lot of original content exclusively for the product. Again it is a strategic bet on the market by Rupert Murdoch, that while I think it has a slim chance of succeeding, it just might work if they innovate on story telling and packaging and have good enough content to win readers over as they adopt the new devices and see that their current news providers are a step behind. Of course, other publications already producing similar content could quickly catch up by learning how to package and adapt storytelling for new platforms and audiences with changing consumption habits. We'll see who wins. If we look back 10-15 years we can see the rise of CNN.com and Yahoo news as news destinations over newspapers online that were slow to learn how to produce and package content differently for new platforms.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Citizen Journalism in Iran and the Suburbs
I attended a Medill lunch lecture today that featured speaker Nazila Fathi, a female Iranian journalist who fled her home country in 2009 due to threats on her life by the government. She had spent years reporting from the streets of Tehran, often working with foreign press, such as AFP. There were many inspirational stories of being a journalist and amazing views into a life and work within Iran, which is, frankly, a very unknown and foreign culture and situation to those of us U.S.
But a few small comments she made caught my attention in relation to the on going debate here on the potential role of citizen journalists.
There is a lot of debate here over the potential of citizen journalists given the new accessibility of information and communication platforms. I will not get into the debate here now, but roughly the two extreme camps are either (A) we are in a new golden age of journalism, where digital tools allow anyone to contribute to news and conversations, not just the privileged few journalists or (B) we are entering a dark ages of journalism as the traditional mainstream media shrinks and there are fewer professional journalists with the knowledge and skills to report responsibly and thoroughly.
I have always agreed more with the former, or at least with its potential. Traditional media has always been behind the curve at understanding the potential of new communication technology, only adopting it when it makes sense to extend, or at least not disrupt, their existing business models. And really, isn't giving citizens a voice and a platform to report and broadcast the truest form of freedom of the press and free speech?
Admittedly many "Citizen Journalist" initiatives that get attention are not sources of promise for a future world of news. Are bloggers on the Huffington Post or contributors to CNN's iReport really exciting you? Twitter and Facebook are nice platforms and I get a lot more content that is relevant to me, but I also have a lot of traditional media streaming in as original source material for the discussions.
I have always been most intrigued with the potential for enhancing community-level news. Maybe it was growing up with a small town newspaper that covered every little aspect of life in the community and was read by everyone one and then moving to larger communities with very weak or non-existent neighborhood or suburban newspapers. But now I have a feeling initiatives like Patch and newspapers inviting citizens to contribute are not really going to get much. The editors at those sites are doing yeoman's work. But what incentives to average joes have to contribute something to the site? A sense of contribution to their community? Maybe. An opportunity to publicize an event at their church or club? Most probably.
So how did comments about repressing journalists in Iran get my thinking to publicizing bake sales in suburban Illinois?
For the most part the level of "news" in most American communities is quite tame compared to concerns in Iran. A bake sale or new Subway opening up is in fact news. And there is no need for a highly trained, and paid, journalist to investigate and cover. School boards, local governments, and congressional delegation definitely do need watchdog reporting. Who will do that? At the moment there are still news outlets with reporters, although their numbers are quickly dwindling for these beats. Can citizens volunteer to fill that role? Maybe, but probably not as a long term solution. The fact is that this is a lot of work and requires commitment, even if you ignore the skills and resources questions.
In 2009 when Ms. Fathi fled Iran along with many other professional journalists, she relied on the increase of citizen journalists as sources. She mentioned nurses and government workers who stepped up to gather and report on facts that could be further broadcast by external media platforms. But after awhile their contribution declined and ceased. And it wasn't because of government pressure. She said they simply had other jobs to focus on. Being a nurse or government worker. They were not being paid to spend the time reporting, even if it was contributing to the greater good of their country.
So if citizens of Iran were not able to add a long term volunteer army of reporters where the criticality of the news stories is very high and the vacuum of professional journalists is large, what does this say for the long term capacity of citizen journalists in this country to offset a decline in professional journalists?
It definitely raises a concern. I am not suddenly in the doom and gloom camp. I still believe we are just entering a new, great age of communication, story telling, and information consumption. But it won't be a smooth transition. Some things are still important to be investigated and reported by someone where there is more benefit for the community as a whole than their own personal interest. So now we do need to find ways to subsidize this work. But I've said that before.
But a few small comments she made caught my attention in relation to the on going debate here on the potential role of citizen journalists.
There is a lot of debate here over the potential of citizen journalists given the new accessibility of information and communication platforms. I will not get into the debate here now, but roughly the two extreme camps are either (A) we are in a new golden age of journalism, where digital tools allow anyone to contribute to news and conversations, not just the privileged few journalists or (B) we are entering a dark ages of journalism as the traditional mainstream media shrinks and there are fewer professional journalists with the knowledge and skills to report responsibly and thoroughly.
I have always agreed more with the former, or at least with its potential. Traditional media has always been behind the curve at understanding the potential of new communication technology, only adopting it when it makes sense to extend, or at least not disrupt, their existing business models. And really, isn't giving citizens a voice and a platform to report and broadcast the truest form of freedom of the press and free speech?
Admittedly many "Citizen Journalist" initiatives that get attention are not sources of promise for a future world of news. Are bloggers on the Huffington Post or contributors to CNN's iReport really exciting you? Twitter and Facebook are nice platforms and I get a lot more content that is relevant to me, but I also have a lot of traditional media streaming in as original source material for the discussions.
I have always been most intrigued with the potential for enhancing community-level news. Maybe it was growing up with a small town newspaper that covered every little aspect of life in the community and was read by everyone one and then moving to larger communities with very weak or non-existent neighborhood or suburban newspapers. But now I have a feeling initiatives like Patch and newspapers inviting citizens to contribute are not really going to get much. The editors at those sites are doing yeoman's work. But what incentives to average joes have to contribute something to the site? A sense of contribution to their community? Maybe. An opportunity to publicize an event at their church or club? Most probably.
So how did comments about repressing journalists in Iran get my thinking to publicizing bake sales in suburban Illinois?
For the most part the level of "news" in most American communities is quite tame compared to concerns in Iran. A bake sale or new Subway opening up is in fact news. And there is no need for a highly trained, and paid, journalist to investigate and cover. School boards, local governments, and congressional delegation definitely do need watchdog reporting. Who will do that? At the moment there are still news outlets with reporters, although their numbers are quickly dwindling for these beats. Can citizens volunteer to fill that role? Maybe, but probably not as a long term solution. The fact is that this is a lot of work and requires commitment, even if you ignore the skills and resources questions.
In 2009 when Ms. Fathi fled Iran along with many other professional journalists, she relied on the increase of citizen journalists as sources. She mentioned nurses and government workers who stepped up to gather and report on facts that could be further broadcast by external media platforms. But after awhile their contribution declined and ceased. And it wasn't because of government pressure. She said they simply had other jobs to focus on. Being a nurse or government worker. They were not being paid to spend the time reporting, even if it was contributing to the greater good of their country.
So if citizens of Iran were not able to add a long term volunteer army of reporters where the criticality of the news stories is very high and the vacuum of professional journalists is large, what does this say for the long term capacity of citizen journalists in this country to offset a decline in professional journalists?
It definitely raises a concern. I am not suddenly in the doom and gloom camp. I still believe we are just entering a new, great age of communication, story telling, and information consumption. But it won't be a smooth transition. Some things are still important to be investigated and reported by someone where there is more benefit for the community as a whole than their own personal interest. So now we do need to find ways to subsidize this work. But I've said that before.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Journalist Profiles as Meta Data?
Another pair of interesting stories in the news may be pointing to a new trend.
First, a new startup is attempting to create a platform to maintain profiles of journalists.
A few days later, news broke that Google is integrating Google Plus profiles of journalists along with articles in Google News.
While knee jerk reactions that Google is simply trying to find a way to incentivize people to use G+ are probably not wrong, the idea of journalist profiles as meta data is very interesting. Historically bylines consisted of names and organizations, if at all. Over the past dozen years or so email addresses have become very common additions to stories, but that is about all that can be done in print. On news websites emails became live links and publication sites could create static profile pages for writers. Eventually they began adding a search of other stories from the writer or links to writers' various social media profiles. But everything is left up to individual publishers. And if a writer contributes to multiple publications, or changes employers over time, profiles would not link.
So this leads me to two questions:
For the first question, I believe it is a strong yes. The News Transparency website claims a goal to improve "transparency of journalism by making it easier to find out about the individual human beings who produce the news". I think it also is a question of credibility. Again historically journalists were seen to be the most credible source of news and information. Content published in respected newspapers, magazines, and television stations was known to have been created by journalists who had education, training, and experience to fully investigate stories, print facts that were true, not be libelous, and avoid a biased agenda. (How true this actually was may be another question.) Since the internet has lowered the barrier of entry of publishing to nothing so that anyone and their grandmothers can instantly become bloggers (like me!), there is a value in identify the credibility of individual writers so that readers can judge the source of the material.
This actually gets into the question of what is a journalist? I have a degree from a supposedly top journalism school, but I do not believe that this gives me a special privilege or guaranteed quality level. Certain skills and knowledge are more important in different situations. I want someone with experience in deep investigations and thorough analysis reporting on political corruption. But for analysis of the national economy, level of knowledge of economics and good writing skills are arguably more important than any degree. My point is that we don't need to separate into two camps: journalists and others, such as bloggers. Both can be great or lousy sources. But readers would benefit from transparency to understand who they are reading. Some bloggers are doing a good job with disclosure. Whereas most journalists are still forced to rely on a masthead for credibility. (Try finding in-depth bios of NY Times reporters on their website...)
So now to the hard part. How could this be done?
None of these options seem satisfactory. I think in the near term we will see all of these options pursued in parallel but none become dominant.
The final factor in this is revenue. Google's other goal to begin tagging articles with profiles may be to better identify original sources for news. If this helps drive revenue streams (traffic, ads, etc) to publishers or writers and away from aggregators, it may be the one incentive to get publishers to hand over control of profile data to a third party.
(Note that I recognize the irony that I have very little profile information available at the moment. I am in the process of determining what to add and where.)
First, a new startup is attempting to create a platform to maintain profiles of journalists.
A few days later, news broke that Google is integrating Google Plus profiles of journalists along with articles in Google News.
While knee jerk reactions that Google is simply trying to find a way to incentivize people to use G+ are probably not wrong, the idea of journalist profiles as meta data is very interesting. Historically bylines consisted of names and organizations, if at all. Over the past dozen years or so email addresses have become very common additions to stories, but that is about all that can be done in print. On news websites emails became live links and publication sites could create static profile pages for writers. Eventually they began adding a search of other stories from the writer or links to writers' various social media profiles. But everything is left up to individual publishers. And if a writer contributes to multiple publications, or changes employers over time, profiles would not link.
So this leads me to two questions:
- Is there value is good journalist profile information?
- Where should this information reside?
For the first question, I believe it is a strong yes. The News Transparency website claims a goal to improve "transparency of journalism by making it easier to find out about the individual human beings who produce the news". I think it also is a question of credibility. Again historically journalists were seen to be the most credible source of news and information. Content published in respected newspapers, magazines, and television stations was known to have been created by journalists who had education, training, and experience to fully investigate stories, print facts that were true, not be libelous, and avoid a biased agenda. (How true this actually was may be another question.) Since the internet has lowered the barrier of entry of publishing to nothing so that anyone and their grandmothers can instantly become bloggers (like me!), there is a value in identify the credibility of individual writers so that readers can judge the source of the material.
This actually gets into the question of what is a journalist? I have a degree from a supposedly top journalism school, but I do not believe that this gives me a special privilege or guaranteed quality level. Certain skills and knowledge are more important in different situations. I want someone with experience in deep investigations and thorough analysis reporting on political corruption. But for analysis of the national economy, level of knowledge of economics and good writing skills are arguably more important than any degree. My point is that we don't need to separate into two camps: journalists and others, such as bloggers. Both can be great or lousy sources. But readers would benefit from transparency to understand who they are reading. Some bloggers are doing a good job with disclosure. Whereas most journalists are still forced to rely on a masthead for credibility. (Try finding in-depth bios of NY Times reporters on their website...)
So now to the hard part. How could this be done?
- Should profiles remain the responsibility of individual publications? This has severe limitations as content moves across platforms and writers move between publications. And publications have incentive to promote their brands, not individual contributors.
- Should a single company create a data base of information to be updated by individual writers (a la Google Plus) or via the public (a la News Transparency)? That gives a lot of power and responsibility to one company.
- Should we just wait for a single online profile to become the default and expect everyone to link to it? Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter? These are not focused on necessarily providing information on a person to judge his ability to report or write about a specific topic. Will there become a dominant owner of the professional content social graph?
None of these options seem satisfactory. I think in the near term we will see all of these options pursued in parallel but none become dominant.
The final factor in this is revenue. Google's other goal to begin tagging articles with profiles may be to better identify original sources for news. If this helps drive revenue streams (traffic, ads, etc) to publishers or writers and away from aggregators, it may be the one incentive to get publishers to hand over control of profile data to a third party.
(Note that I recognize the irony that I have very little profile information available at the moment. I am in the process of determining what to add and where.)
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