The following is the first part of my inaugural lecture at City University London, ‘Is Ice Cream Strawberry?’. The total runs to 3,000 words so I’ve split it and adapted it for online reading.

The myth of journalism and the telegraph

Samuel Morse was a portrait painter. And he invented the telegraph. The telegraph is probably one of the most mythologised technologies in journalism. The story goes that the telegraph changed journalism during the US Civil War – because telegraph operators had to get the key facts of the story in at the top in case the telegraph line failed or were cut. This in turn led to the objective, inverted pyramid style of journalism that relied on facts rather than opinion.

This story, however, is a myth.

The tale of civil war reporting and the telegraph was investigated by David Mindich, in his book on objectivity in journalism. He found that the inverted pyramid style didn’t actually become anywhere near common in newspapers until after 1900. In fact, he credits a government war secretary with the innovation: Edwin Stanton, a sort of 19th century Alastair Campbell who wanted to manage news of President Lincoln’s assassination.

(By the way, he was also the first US lawyer to use the defence of temporary insanity)

But in addition to Edwin Stanton, there were other key factors in the rise of modern journalistic style: in particular, institutions such as the Associated Press – which explored the new business models made possible by the newswire – and cultural change, such as the rise of the scientific method.

The telegraph didn’t change anything about journalism. Instead, it was the culture of journalists who had experienced higher education, changes in the culture of education itself, and the commercial demands of wire services, who over a period of decades changed their style so that news stories could be adapted by dozens of regional clients.

So: people, culture, and institutions. Not technology.

Fast forward a century and the world is still riddled with mythology about technology’s effect on the media. We ask if Google is making us stupid, if the iPad will save newspapers, if Twitter can save democracy.

We seem to forget that it is people who invent technologies – and that they generally invent technologies to solve problems. Then people use the new technology to try to solve those problems – and others besides. And that raises new problems, so we have to invent more technology to solve the new problems, and so it goes on, and on, with new problems replacing old problems and inventors never being out of work.

And boy does the media industry have problems.

Digitisation and convergence: The Legacy of Leibniz and Lovelace

The media’s current problems begin with two more people: Gottfried Leibniz, a 17th century mathematician credited with inventing the binary system. And Ada Lovelace, who helped develop the first computer program in 1843. They were solving problems of their own, and identifying new ones, which in turn were solved again, and so on.

Now at some point people in the media industry came across the legacies of Leibniz and Lovelace. And they thought: “Hm, this looks interesting. Perhaps we can use these technologies to solve our own problem?” And their own problem was the same as that of every company: how can we make more money? How can we produce our product more cheaply? How can we sell the same thing twice?

The solution, they decided, was to digitise as many of the processes in news production as possible. They wanted convergence.

And at first, it worked. Production costs went down, productivity went up.

(I’m reminded here of a small fact about Gutenberg – that the earliest known examples of printing using Gutenberg’s technology are indulgences, suggesting that the church – or at least individuals within it – saw printing as a way to solve their own problem of raising funds. Of course by flooding the market with these indulgences, the Roman church found itself with a new problem: Protestantism)

But over time new problems came up – and the news industry is still trying to solve them.

Part 2, Cars, Roads and Picnics, can be read here.

Listening to news executives talk about micropayments, Kindles, public subsidies, micropayments, collusion, blocking Google and anything else that might save their businesses, it occurs to me that they may have missed some developments in, ah, well, the past ten years. For those and anyone else who is interested, I offer the following primer on how things have changed.

Any attempt to create a viable news operation needs to recognise and take advantage of these changes. I will probably have missed some – I’m hoping you can add them.

UPDATE: Jay Rosen suggests reading this post alongside this one by David Sull: “newspapers are essentially a logistics business that happens to employ journalists”. He’s right – it makes some great points.

1. Atomisation of news consumption

In the physical world news came as a generic package. You had your politics with your sport; finance news next to film reviews. You might buy a paper for one match report. No longer.

It’s probably no coincidence that majority news consumption recently shifted from regular consumption to sporadic ‘grazing‘.

2. Measurability of users

If you placed an ad on page 3 in a newspaper with a circulation of 100,000 or a broadcast watched by 5million, you didn’t think about the readers who only bought that paper for the sport; or the viewers who popped out to put the kettle on – and that’s before we talk about circulation figures inflated by the assumption that every paper was read by 3 or 4 people.

Online you know exactly how many have looked at a specific page. Not only that, you know exactly how many have clicked on an ad. And you know exactly how many made a purchase (etc.) as a result.

There’s more: you know what page the user was coming from and went to; you know what search terms they were using; you know what country they are in, how high spec their computer; and depending on how much data they’re provided, a whole lot more besides.

There are two huge implications of this measurability (which many advertisers are only just waking up to). 

Firstly, advertisers expect more. Online, advertising has moved from a print/broadcast model of paying per thousand viewers (CPM) to paying per thousand clicks (CPC) to paying per action – i.e. purchases, etc. (CPA).

Secondly, it means that editors and managers now know in much more detail not only what readers actually read – but what they want to read (what they are searching for). My name’s Britney Spears, by the way.

3. Mutually conflicting business models

In print you could have your cover price and your ads; online, any paywall means vastly reduced readership because you are cutting out distribution channels – not just Google, but the readers themselves who would otherwise pass it on, link to it and blog about it. You either square that circle, or look for other revenue streams.

4. Reduced cost of newsgathering and production

The technologies were dropping in price long before the internet – satellite technologies , desktop publishing. But the web – and now mobile – technology has reduced the cost of newsgathering, production and distribution to almost nil. And new tools are being made all the time that reduce the cost in time even further. When publishing is as easy as making a phonecall, that causes problems for any business that has to maintain or pay debts on costly legacy production systems.

UPDATE: Robert Brand takes me to task on this one in the comments but also on his blog, where I have responded in more detail.

5. End of scarcity of time and space

Sometimes people need reminding of the basic laws of supply and demand. From a limited availability of journalism to more than you can ever read, any attempt to ‘sell content’ must come up against this basic problem.

6. Devaluation of certain types of journalism

If a reader wants a book review most will go to Amazon. Music? Your social networks, Last.fm, iTunes or MySpace. Sport – any forum. Anyone producing journalism in those or similar areas faces a real issue. 

7. The end of monopolies

Just as the scarcity of space has been broken; the scarcity of distribution networks has been blown apart. To distribute information in a pre-web era required significant investment. To distribute information in the web era requires an email account or a mobile phone. Social networks are more powerful and efficient than delivery vans, and you don’t need to sell a certain amount of information to make them viable. 

Oh yes, and that makes news even more perishable than it was before.

Meanwhile, the monopoly on advertising has gone. Where before an advertiser might have had a choice between you and a local freesheet, now they can choose from dozens of local media outlets, national directories, international outlets, search engines, social networks, or spending money on becoming media producers themselves. This competition has driven the cost down and innovation up. What have you done to stay competitive?

8. Cutting out middlemen

Because anyone can publish and anyone can distribute, retailers can talk to customers directly. If Threshers can release a money off voucher directly to customers and it become wildly (too) successful, why should they advertise in a newspaper or magazine? If councils can publish news on their own website, or indeed publish and distribute their own publications, why should they publish announcements in a newspaper? If Coca-Cola can create a ‘brand experience’ on its website, and gather consumer data at the same time, why should they limit themselves to 30 seconds in the middle of Britain’s Got Talent?

9. Creating new monopolies

Google rules this space, not you. Amazon rules this space. iTunes rules this space. eBay rules this space. Facebook rules this space. Craigslist rules this space. If you want to thrive in the new environments you have to understand the contexts within which users operate. Search Engine Optimisation is one aspect of that. Social Media Marketing should be another. Understand how one website’s domination of a particular space of the web impacts on your strategies, and acknowledge you no longer control your own destiny. Yep, Google stole the delivery trucks and Amazon stole the newsstand. Oh, and you gave away a whole lot more too.

10. Digitisation and convergence

When everything is digital, new things become possible. Audio, video, text, photography, animation – all becomes 1 and 0. You need to understand the efficiencies that makes possible, from broadcasting live from your mobile phone to releasing images on a Creative Commons licence or publishing raw data to allow users to add value through mashups. The value of your organisation lies not just within its walls but beyond them too.

11. The rise of the PR industry

The PR industry is often overlooked as an economic influence on the news industry.  Its first influence lies in the way it has provided cheap copy for news organisations, meaning an increased reliance by news organisations on fake events, reports and releases. This will become increasingly problematic as the PR industry starts to cut out the middleman and appeal directly to audiences.

Secondly, the PR industry has an enormous effect on recruitment and retaining of talent in the news industry. In short, news organisations have become a training ground for the PR industry. Journalists who cannot live on newspaper wages have been leaving for PR for some time now, meaning increased costs of training and recruitment (partly because there are few older journalists able to train informally). Furthermore, good graduates of journalism schools are often recruited by PR even before they enter the news industry, meaning the news industry has a problem attracting the very brains that could save them.

12. A new currency

Oh yes, and that money thing? It has competition. The rise of social capital is a key development that must be considered. Anyone who thinks nonprofessional media is not important because it doesn’t have a ‘brand’ or because people will lose interest, doesn’t understand the dynamics of social capital. Many people read blogs and other UGC because they trust the person, not the ‘brand’; many people self-publish because of the benefits in terms of reputation, knowledge and connections. And many people link to news articles or contribute user generated content because a journalist invested social capital in their communities, or an organisation built a platform that helped users create it.

That’s it. Unless you can come up with some more…?

Last week I interviewed Mike Hill, Deputy Editor of the Lancashire Evening Post, for an article on changing tools and approaches in local newsrooms (due to appear on Journalism.co.uk). Mike has some interesting plans on using surveys beyond the simple reader poll (since reported here), and experiences of the weaknesses of geotagging, among other things. The interview can be heard here - it’s around 10 minutes.

UPDATE: I’ve slightly changed the original diagram (below) to emphasise the fact that the Alert and Draft stages should be as much about inviting information from users as about publishing it first; likewise Analysis should include user contributions gleaned from those stages; Interactivity has a slightly different dotted line as this may or may not be the case depending on the medium chosen.

A month ago, I used the Online Journalism Facebook Group to ask readers to suggest what areas they wanted covering, in an experiment with bottom-up editing (the forum for suggestions is still open by the way). Megan T suggested “Rethinking the production of newspapers”.

After researching, conceptualising and scribbling, I’ve come up with a number of models around the news process, newsgathering, interactivity and business models.

The following, then, is the first in a series of proposals for a ‘model for the 21st century newsroom’ (part two is now here). You can also read this in Russian and Spanish. This is a converged newsroom which may produce material for print or broadcast or both, but definitely includes an online element. Here’s the diagram. The model is explained further below it

Building on the strengths of the medium

The strengths of the online medium are essentially twofold, and contradictory: speed, and depth.

New media technologies are able to publish news faster than the previous kings of speed: TV and radio. Think mobile and email updates. Think moblogs. Think Twitter.

At the same time, the unlimited space and time of the web, and its hypertextual and ‘pull’ properties, make it potentially deeper and broader than the previous kings of context and analysis: newspapers and magazines. Think Wikipedia’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Think the Daily Kos. Think hyperlocal websites. Think Chicagocrime.org.

The process model above proposes how a large news story might pass through a converged newsroom, from speed to depth, in the following steps:

1. Alert: as soon as the journalist or editor is aware that a story is breaking, an alert is sent out. This might be from their mobile phone, Blackberry, or wifi laptop. Subscribers to text or email updates, a Twitter or Facebook feed, would be notified instantly. This shows you ‘own’ the story; it reinforces your reputation for being first with the big stories; and for the smaller stories, it can provide an opportunity to add personality to your coverage (the ‘what I’m doing now’ approach of Twitter). And it drives readers to your website, newspaper or broadcast.
2. Draft: too rough for print or broadcast, but perfect for blogs. Backing up the alert, the draft report – like a wire report – gives initial names, places and details – and sources. It is updated as fresh details come in. The draft performs the important role of keeping the ‘Alert’ readers on your site, but it also serves to spread word through the blogosphere, bringing in more readers and helping your search engine ranking. Ideally it will also attract commenters and pingbacks which can add or correct details, or even provide new leads. Frequent updates – for instance linking to other coverage – help to prevent it getting knocked off the top of Google News (which looks for the most recently updated, not the first posted).
3. Article/Package: in between the two extremes of speed and depth where online excels, traditional print and broadcast media have these strengths: their documentary nature, and the very limitations of their time and space. Their ability to document a ‘snapshot’ – an interim definitive account: the 300-word article or 3-minute package – is key to traditional news media’s appeal. The editorial decision that this story was worth a spot is important when compared to the internet’s infinity. At this stage, the draft turns into a package with higher production values, and which could be online, in print, broadcast, or all of those. The timing may be dictated by print or broadcast processes.
4. Context: back online, that infinite space has an important role to play in providing instant and extensive context: how many times has this happened? Where can I access previous reports? What does that concept mean? How does this scientific principle work? Where can I find more information about this person or organisation? Where can I go to for support or help? Hypertext is central here – the ability to link to a range of documents, organisations, and explanations – both from your own archive and from external providers – in a portal that provides an essential resource. The print or broadcast report may also draw on some of this context, but it should refer to the online resource for more.
5. Analysis/Reflection: after the report, comes the analysis. For online this may mean gathering the almost instant reaction taking place in the blogosphere in general, on your own blogs and forums, and proactively from the informed and the affected. The person covering the story may reflect on the whole experience on their blog, while podcasts are great for staging discussion and debate. At some point print and broadcast will take one or more snapshots for their production cycles.
6. Interactivity: interactivity requires investment and preparation, but can engage and inform the user in a way other media cannot, as well as providing a ‘long tail’ resource that generates repeat visits over a long timescale: a Flash interactive may take days to produce but can provide a compelling combination of hypertext, video, audio, animation and databases (they can also be dynamically updated); a forum can provide a place for people to gather and post experiences and information; a wiki can do the same but more effectively. Live chats can allow users direct access to newsmakers, journalists and experts.
7. Customisation: the final stage should be automatic: the ability for users to customise information to their own needs. At its most basic this might be to subscribe to email, text or RSS updates of that particular story. More advanced services might include social recommendation (‘Other people who read this story also read…‘) or database-driven journalism that allows users to drill down into the information: ‘What happened to that street?’; ‘How many cases were there in my postcode?’; ‘What does this tax mean for someone on my wage?’. This means production processes that integrate things like metatagging, and interfaces that can run off a database, and last but not least, a culture that thinks in terms of these possibilities.

That news process in action

Let’s take a typical mid-range news story: ‘public figure makes controversial statement’ to illustrate the process specifically:

1. Alert: ‘Lord Smith: “stop ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees”‘ – link to…
2. Draft: gives more detail, and is open to comments and discussion, linking to other blogs. One commenter points out that Lord Smith studied English Literature. Journalist seeks ‘official’ comment to put in the…
3. Article: two blog post comments incorporated into a version that goes in the printed newspaper.
4. Context: best links taken from blog post comments, as well as full transcript of speech, audio and some mobile phone video taken by one attendee. Tags (‘LordSmith’) used to link to ongoing coverage and provide an instant ‘portal’.
5. Analysis: one particularly well informed blogger who linked to the Draft post is paid to write a longer piece for the paper. A commenter – an academic – is invited to a podcast discussion with Lord Smith.
6. Interactivity: website visitors are invited to ‘attempt an essay question’ from a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree, giving a real first-hand understanding of what is involved in the subject.
7. Customisation: an RSS feed or email alert is available for any stories tagged ‘LordSmith’

The news diamond

This model can also be represented as an alternative to the inverted pyramid: a ‘news diamond’, if you like.

Just as the inverted pyramid was partly a result of the increasing role of the telegraph in the news industry, and dominant cultural ideas of empiricism and science, this news diamond attempts to illustrate the change from a 19th century product (the article) to a 21st century process: the iterative journalism of new media; the story that is forever ‘unfinished’. More than anything, it’s designed to challenge the dominance of the inverted pyramid, to illustrate its origins in the industrial era, and its shortcomings. And in the spirit of the ‘unfinished’, none of these models are final: please post a comment with your own contributions.

UPDATE: Part two of the model for the 21st century newsroom is now live.

Here’s a second audio recording (again split into smaller sections) from the AJE conference on convergence. This one is on Convergence in the Classroom, presented by Andy Price of Teesside University . The highlight of the conference for me was Andy’s ‘four dimensions of online journalism’ model – I’m hoping Andy can supply a graphic at some point, but for the moment imagine a cross section of Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver, and you have some idea. Here’s the audio:

1. http://www.paulbradshaw.co.uk/audio/AJE_AndyPrice_pt1.mp3
2. http://www.paulbradshaw.co.uk/audio/AJE_AndyPrice_pt2.mp3
3. http://www.paulbradshaw.co.uk/audio/AJE_AndyPrice_pt3.mp3
4. http://www.paulbradshaw.co.uk/audio/AJE_AndyPrice_pt4.mp3

I’ve been at it again. Last night I presented a speech to editors and ad directors at Trinity Mirror Midlands (Birmingham Mail and Post, Coventry Telegraph, Sunday Mercury and various weeklies throughout the region). Given that they’d been exploring digital ideas all day I tried to keep it light to begin with – so the linked Powerpoint below begins with a mock awards, with the more hard hitting stuff coming after.

The hard-hitting stuff consists of lots of pithy phrases – the headlines were:

• It’s no longer about content, it’s about services
• It’s no longer about publishing, it’s about communication

I talked about how the news industry is having to shift from a 19th century production-based system to a 21st century service-based industry, and how online advertising alone is not going to plug the gap left by dropping print revenues (a number of new business models are covered that may provide other sources of revenue).

And I tackled this common phrase that the newspaper is now ‘one of many channels’. I think that’s still a ‘broadcaster’ mindset, and that instead we should think of print as ‘one way of helping people communicate’.

And I revisited some of the elements from my Vienna speech about the strengths that journalism needs to play to: investigative journalism, database-driven journalism, interactive journalism, and multimedia journalism; and reader-driven forms such as wikis and crowdsourcing.

Here’s the PowerPoint. Comments welcome.

Speech to Trinity Mirror Midlands

Editors Weblog reports on Telegraph editor Will Lewis’ strategy for ‘integrating’ the newspaper:

“Perhaps the hardest thing to do in the run up to the Daily Telegraph’s radical integration was to convince the paper’s staff. Lewis explained how in meetings his suggestions would constantly be voiced but most would be politely blown off. So he put all of his efforts into convincing his colleagues. He embarked on a worldwide tour, visiting the United States, Latin America, Japan, and Europe to learn about the best practices and initiatives in each place. He returned to London with some fantastic ideas.”Then he set out to convince the staff. He found the newsroom’s “angriest” employees, people that had realized the need for change in the past or had had other complaints ignored. When he got these people on his side, the rest of the staff paid closer attention and management eventually decided to heed Lewis’ advice.”

And in the same article Gannett’s Michael Maness talks about the processes of “media shifting” and “size shifting” “that are scaring traditional publishers.”:

“Media shifting is key with lean forward [engaged consumers] types; it means that they’re using various technologies to consume media the way they want, when they want. He used the example of Tivo, a digital video recorder which can be easily programmed to record any number of television shows that can then be watched at the convenience of the viewer. The major problem with Tivo is that it allows viewers to skip through the show’s advertisements.

““Size shifting” means that people are actually changing media to fit a smaller time frame. For instance, people will record a television program, take out the parts that most interest them, edit them together and then post them on YouTube. An hour long program can thus be summed up in 10 minutes if need be.”

Delegates at the NUJ ADM on Sunday voted for the following members to make up a commission to look at convergence in the industry. The panel will consist of:

• Jemima Kiss, Guardian
• Helene Mulholland, Guardian
• Paula Dear, BBC Online
• Gary Herman, NUJ Training/freelance

More details when I have them, but a good indication of some of the panel’s ideas can be gained from my earlier post on the Digital Convergence fringe meeting, which involved three of the four.

Probably the most interesting part of the weekend’s NUJ annual conference was a fringe meeting on digital convergence. Speakers included Cardiff University’s Dr Andy Williams on his research into Trinity Mirror’s online strategy, The Guardian’s Len Mulholland, BBC News Online journalist Paula Dear, NUJ NEC member Adam Christie, and NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear.

Below are video clips from the event, but here are the bullet points:

• Trinity Mirror makes more money, spends less, employs fewer, circulation drops
• The Guardian invests in its website and training, but the web staff are often marginalised when decisions are made – for instance, when the political print team went ‘web-first’ for a conference the web journalists (who had already been web-first) were not consulted as to how they might adapt as a result.
• There is also concern about short-term contracts for those on more ‘experimental’ projects such as vodcasts.
• The main issue for journalists on the BBC’s website is 24/7 working patterns and the rota that goes with that.
• News management admit they don’t have a clue what they’re doing. The NUJ is seeking to set up a commission on convergence to help establish best practice and lead the process of convergence (more on this in later posts).

Introduction (chair: Jemima Kiss)

Dr Andy Williams

Len Mulholland, Guardian

Paula Dear, BBC

Finally, go to this page to download audio of Jeremy Dear.

From NUJ Active:

One-day conference – Integration: The Big Conversation starts here…
An NUJ conference looking at the impact of convergence and integration on journalists and journalism will be held on Saturday 5th May in London. The NUJ wants to hear your views on the integration of new technologies in the media: the key challenges and also the lessons to be drawn from the good and bad practice already taking place. Find out more about the conference by clicking here.

Places are strictly limited so book early to ensure you don’t miss out! Email campaigns@nuj.org.uk

The NEC has produced interim guidance notes on the key issues facing members in the convergence of print and digital newsrooms. To access these click here

Members at Johnston Press have negotiated an enabling agreement for the introduction of New Media at Yorkshire Post Newspapers. A copy of this agreement is available here