Online Journalism Blog

Free does not mean that content has no value, but when the very sustenance of the entity producing that content is in danger, the concept of “free” begins to edge closer to devaluing content.

But even if content online has been free for so long, if it is captured back and tightly shut under a pay wall, does it become more valuable as a result? Or would news organizations have to earn that money if and when they finally achieve that pay wall?

As has been pointed out several times before, and on this blog as well, pay walls have been tried, tested and have, in effect, mostly failed. But many of the experiments that have involved paid content have erected pay walls around generic content or opinion that would perhaps be available elsewhere for free.

Moving toward specialized content

It is a pretty reasonable assessment that the more reasons a news Web site gives its readers to spend time on a site, perhaps by offering in-depth, contextual and narrative journalism, the higher the chances are that they will linger on the page longer, and even buy products through targeted advertising. And for better or for worse, this idea that the most engaged readers of a Web site will not only be willing to pay for content but also click through and purchase products advertised on the side of it is catching on.

As Steve Myers writes in Poynter:

“…pay structures create narrower, more specialized audiences and offer more opportunities for higher-yield, behaviorally-targeted advertising, which changes depending on users’ online habits.”

He explains that as paid sites start to attract more focused readers who recognize and identify a brand and content, it would also make it easier for news organizations to use targeted advertisements.

Free and paid content can co-exist

What worries me, however, is that news organizations are looking at options as either-or propositions. Getting your users to pay for content does not mean you can do away with Google, like Rupert Murdoch seems to believe.

There’s no denying that random visitors that are led to a site through search engines account for a large enough percentage of revenue to be ignored, as Paul pointed out in a previous post. In fact, it’s been roughly estimated that stumbling from search engines can make a news site about 50c a day per person, way less than subscriptions can, but it is still close to a hundred million a year, considering the average newspaper gets about a million visitors per month through Google searches alone. For the actual math, I direct you to the excellent Ryan Chittum at CJR.

Hence, blocking Google might not be the answer, but it is also important to note that the Wall Street Journal does have over a million readers subscribing to its content monthly, and since these users prove to be valuable to advertisers, specialist content could well be the answer for other newspapers as well.

There have been complaints all around that for an industry on the brink of collapse, news organizations are less than savvy in the area of market research, and aren’t doing much at all to help determine the monetary value of the content they offer and the kinds of products they should be providing in order to make money.

Instead, what many news organizations have resorted to over the years, is the “massification” of news in order to appeal to the broadest conceivable audience, a process that merely erodes the quality of journalism, without offering solutions for revenue generation, since such audiences do not have a brand identity that advertisers can appeal to.

As Slate editor David Plotz points out, the more media companies and editors begin to focus on the numbers, the faster they will shift from their pursuit of a “mass audience” and begin to produce more exclusive, in-depth content. Along that line of reasoning, Steven Brill’s Journalism Online plans to charge only the most frequent users who seek very specific content while allowing cursory surfers to avail of most topical news for free.

Following the lead of financial publications

Successful pay models, such as the Economist’s premium content, and the Financial Times’ paywalls are, after all, based on loyal readers returning to a site frequently on account of the exclusive content it provides. Financial publications, of course, are in a league of their own when it comes to paywalls, because of their high value, well-differentiated content and affluent consumers.

But as WSJ.com’s Alan Murray explained in an interview with the Nieman Journalism Lab, most news organizations should be able to tap into the idea that loyal readers will pay for exclusive information, as long as they steer clear of charging for the most popular content, which has the potential to yield maximum traffic and hence, revenue.

Whether it is due to declining ad revenues and falling readerships or the recession, newspapers in the US from the Minneapolis Post to the Arizona Republic, are adopting the idea of pursuing these “loyal readers” to sell their content. Others, like the Tribune company, are merely seeking them to target advertising.

Very early this year, Andrew Currah, a fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, called on news organizations to not give up their core editorial values in the quest for clickstream data, not simply because such lack of focus would be detrimental to journalism, but because it would not prove to be beneficial to revenue generation in the long run.

“The basic logic of a webcentric strategy is to maximise the size of the audience around the news, for as long as possible. But a rush to generate clicks may in fact erode the distinctiveness of the brand and its connection to a specific audience,” Currah wrote.

Regardless of what they’re seeking – direct payment for content or indirect revenue through clickthrough advertising -  specialized, in-depth content to retain that brand and connection has got to be good for journalism.

If you want to ascribe something importance you traditionally don’t put the word ‘sub’ before it. The immediate message sent by the Broadcasting Sub-Committee’s report on Welsh newspapers is that the subject is not very important. Furthermore, asking the Broadcasting Sub-Committee to report on Welsh newspapers is the political equivalent of asking a veterinary surgeon to replace an elderly relative’s hip.

Today, Assembly members will discuss the report, and Assembly time will be largely wasted in the process. It is a document that contributes very little to the overall debate about the future of Welsh newspapers. This is primarily because any report that attempts to deal with the decline of newspapers but discounts the opportunities of new media so casually is largely useless. It’s like trying to explain to someone how to grow an apple tree, without ever mentioning seeds. You can do it, but chances are it won’t make an ounce of sense.

The headline recommendation of this report would be nothing short of catastrophic for the future of the Welsh media if the UK government were to implement it:

Recommendation 1: The Welsh Assembly Government should make representations to the UK Government seeking assurances that cross-media rules are relaxed to allow the exploration of new partnerships.

The Welsh media is, and has always been, structurally weak. This weakness has been significantly increased by the dominance of media monopolies in Wales. This, in turn, has had a detrimental effect on plurality in the Welsh media and has been a plague on diversity of press opinion. It also means that when one organisation is failing, lots of newspaper outlets suffer.

The Broadcasting Sub-Committee’s recommendation is that rules that restrict media organisations from venturing into other marketplaces, like TV and radio, should be relaxed. This is a truly astonishing recommendation. The desperate problems the newspaper industry in Wales faces have come about, in part, because of monopolies. This report is seeking to extend the power of these monopolies. This is presumably so that they can then ruin broadcast news in Wales as well.

This recommendation is in many ways what we should expect from a report that consulted so widely with local newspaper owners, but never sought to ask them how they thought they might be culpable in the demise of their own titles. It is to be expected that they would ask for more power to branch out into other media and then set about squeezing every last penny from it, with little or no regard for the public service they should provide. What is also striking about this report is that Bob Franklin, an informed commentator and media expert, appears to have been largely ignored.

Franklin, quite rightly points out in the report that cross-media ownership rules are already dangerously close to collapsing in on themselves because media organisations so readily ignore them. He states:

‘…banks are suggesting to media companies that they ignore existing competition regulations which they see as primitive and as not suitable for the digital age because monopolies are understood within geographical boundaries…I think that big financial institutions are recommending a sort of ‘gung-ho’ challenge to existing regulation along the lines of ‘see what they do, call their bluff.’

The report cites the IWA in response: ‘There is something to be said for enabling some of the strengths of newspapers such as the Western Mail and Daily Post to be used to strengthen news coverage on commercial radio.’

Well, there you go then. The problems that the Welsh newspaper industry is facing could be solved by putting Western Mail content and/or journalists on commercial radio stations. Despite using this strange defence against Franklin’s concerns the report then does something very odd. It makes a recommendation that seems directly opposed to the previous one. Recommendation two states that:

The Welsh Assembly Government should make representations to the UK Government seeking assurances that any move to relax regulations relating to cross-media ownership should be accompanied by measures to protect plurality of local media.

This is directly contradictory. It is not possible to maintain plurality in local or regional media when you are reducing the strength of cross-media ownership rules. You either do one or the other, you can’t do both. You either defend the plurality of media or you allow large media groups to own more than one type of outlet.

When AM Huw Lewis made his announcement about the possibility of local newspapers having a stake in digital news channels, it was welcomed as an interesting idea by many. Commentators, on the whole, failed to understand that having more media outlets doesn’t necessarily increase the plurality of perspectives. The Broadcasting Sub-Committee has made the same mistake. Plurality in the media needs to be plurality of opinion, and the recommendation of this report would put that at risk by creating more media outlets that are saying the same thing.

Another of the recommendations in this report is about improving government support for newspaper groups. This, as a suggestion, has two fundamental faults. Firstly, the independence of media from government is vital in any democracy, and cannot be guaranteed if media producers have to apply for government grants. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, large media corporations in Wales bear a heavy responsibility for the problems the Welsh media is now facing. Giving them a bail out is no better than bailing out bankers. And, of course, as with the bankers there is no guarantee they won’t just screw it all up again.

Despite all of this, there are some good points made in the report. The recommendation that there should be a review of the provision of publicly funded training courses for journalists is an excellent idea. The report also supports the idea of a Welsh Media Commission and/or a forum for discussing the newspaper and broadcasting industry in Wales. This is an important idea which, should it come to fruition, would at least ensure major media issues don’t get swept under the carpet.

However, overall, it says little that is useful. This report ultimately fails because it talks about rescuing organisations that are dangerously out of step and out of touch with developments in their own industry. From Murdoch down, the media world is attempting to come to terms with an enormous shift in an industry that has been largely unthreatened for the best part of 300 years. New media is growing in strength, and the Assembly needs to spend some serious time looking forward towards it, and not just backwards to print.

It would, of course, be remiss to ignore the problems with new media. There are certainly plenty of them. Many popular news websites, for instance, still rely on the prestige and content of the print publications that they are associated with. Online news still only reaches certain social strata, with a large number of those on the breadline not bothering with internet access. Standards in online journalism, with a few exceptions, are often no better than those on local newspapers, with reporters relying on material that is secondary sourced, and rarely bothering to pick up the phone. As much as web 2.0 has contributed in terms of interactivity, an awful lot of user generated content is just rubbish, produced by hobbyists both unpaid and untrained.

These are big problems, but they are not insurmountable, and they are also not the reason this particular report dismisses new media so easily. The report brushes aside any future model of new/old media interaction because it is unable to envisage how this would be cost effective. This is in the main because the majority of newspapers still derive all their profits from the print side. The low value that advertisers ascribe to online placements means that news websites cannot survive by them alone. In short, because it might eat into the enormous profits these corporations, it’s not worth investigating.

There are a number of potential business models for online newspapers. There is the one that argues for subscription-based access to websites. This is, despite what Rupert Murdoch might think, an absolute non-starter. Recent analysis by Media Week showed that in a survey of 2,000 customers, nine out of 10 of them wouldn’t pay for web news.

Another popular model is one based upon using the brand of the newspaper to sell advertising space, cars, houses, upmarket holidays and lonely hearts services. The problem with this last suggestion is that it ignores the fact that the public reputation of many local or regional newspapers is extremely poor these days. Would you use a dating service advertised in your local rag? This approach may work with large national newspaper websites but it isn’t going to work in a local setting.

These difficulties combined allow this report to discount new media solutions with a frightening degree of casualness. They state:

‘The internet seems to be a difficult issue to address for newspaper groups and we did not receive any conclusive evidence from witnesses that it would be able to provide a financially sustainable and complementary medium to newspapers.’

This is difficult to swallow.

The truth about online business models for news websites is that a combination of subscription, newspaper brand endorsement and a savvy approach to advertising will be the model of the future. Large newspaper groups will inevitably adopt these strategies for local news websites and they will, eventually, make money. The trouble is that it will never make them enough money. The reason it will never make them enough money is that they can never make enough money. They are driven entirely and remorselessly towards ever greater profit. This is the difference between putting your readers first, and putting profit first.

Maybe we should be asking ourselves if we want these monoliths to continue running the local media for profit. Perhaps it would be better to have organisations whose bottom line is not the bottom line; who are doing it because they believe in the importance and values of local news, and not in how much revenue they can squeeze out of the punters.

This is why this report is such a massive failure. Of course, WAG needs to show willing in terms of the newspaper industry, and job losses are a real concern, but it also needs to start looking forward. And, most importantly, it shouldn’t be stepping in with recommendations to save organisations that have already failed by relaxing rules that are there to protect our media from being destroyed wholesale. Local newspaper owners have a public duty and they should not neglect that. If they do, they should not be surprised if they become obsolete.

On the whole people do not become journalists for the money. In fact, you would be mad to. Most do it because of �" dare I say it? �" higher values. The abandonment of those higher values in favour of profit chasing has done irreversible harm to our old media, and it should not be allowed to happen again in this new era.

The question of whether these bloated, faceless, mass-media corporations, are the ones who should be spearheading the future of local news is, to put it politely, a no-brainer. They shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it. Key in the online news-environment, as anyone who has ever spent a day knocking about it will tell you, is quality. The degradation of local news, by owners who have neglected and battered their own titles year in and year out with cutbacks and a desperate drive for ever greater profits, demonstrates just how unfit these companies are to take new local journalism forward.

Hopefully in today’s debate someone will talk about the importance of new media and Assembly investment in the future of new media in Wales. Though it is doubtful they will.

It is time, therefore, that a grass-roots movement of journalists with a hyper-local approach had a go at cracking this. It’s also time the Assembly recognised the opportunity and thought about ways of encouraging it.

We should stop looking to those who ruined our local media last time to fix it temporarily, only to go and ruin it again. They have had their chance and they’ve made their money.  It’s now somebody else’s turn.

****

Rob Williams is a digital sub-editor at The Independent Online.

He is the author of The Mabiblogion a blog about Welsh Media and Politics

Article first published at waleshome.org

Related stories

Reuters has been among the leading news organizations in its use of Internet technology, both in its forays into citizen participation in the developed and developing worlds, and in experimenting with audio visual tools to offer fine narrative journalism.

Following the success of its online documentary on the Iraq war last year, Bearing Witness, Reuters recently produced another interactive multimedia time line, this one elucidating on the impact of the current financial crisis.

In Bearing Witness, the agency brought together five years of reporting from 100 correspondents and photographers to give a comprehensive account of significant events that transpired during half a decade of the war, from reasons that led to the conflict, recounts of battles in various Iraqi cities from Baghdad to Fallujah, the army offensive led by the US and its allies, and political, economic, and social consequences. In addition to offering personal accounts from its reporters, the project illustrates numbers and statistics through elaborate infographics.

The Times of Crisis project offers a peak into the impact of the current financial disaster over the course of a year since it was first set off by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It is a compelling narrative not only in terms of its rich multimedia interactivity, but also in what it brings in terms of the human face of the impact, providing anecdotes and stories from real people.

I recently got a chance to interview Jassim Ahmad, Head of Visual Projects at Reuters, over e-mail. Below is the exchange:

Q. What inspired Reuters to do this? What was your main motive behind the two projects?

We were first inspired to produce Bearing Witness to mark half a decade of war in Iraq �" a story to which Reuters has dedicated a team of 100 correspondents, photographers, cameramen and editorial support staff. The conflict has been the most dangerous in history for the press. 139 journalists and 51 media support staff have been killed (latest figures from CPJ) including seven Reuters colleagues. Our ambition was to go much further than simply repackage our coverage. We sought to tell the wider story through reflection and behind the scenes perspectives of conflict reporting.

Bearing Witness received exceptionally positive feedback and picked up a string of awards in the US, UK, France and Italy. We chose the financial crisis for our next initiative �" undoubtedly one of the biggest stories of our times and one which Reuters is able to tell with exceptional depth with its financial expertise. Whereas most news coverage has understandably focused on the local and regional effects of the crisis, ours would attempt to show its global significance.

Chronology is the natural backbone of a wire news agency. We wanted to re-imagine the classical news “time line” with a much more visual approach.

Q. As someone that coordinates such visual projects, I was wondering if you could shed some light on how a story is approached differently for multimedia vs. text. Is there a different philosophy when a journalist has to let pictures and videos tell a story without getting in the way of it?

There is no one multimedia model. We try to embark upon each project with fresh eyes. Each subject determines its own mix of special reporting, research and interactive design. Unlike automated feed and search-based approaches, we would manually curate the story for quality and cohesion. Through 15 streams of information spanning news, visuals and data, we carefully pieced together this puzzle into a single fluid narrative �" putting the story in its total cross-media context in a way only multimedia can achieve.

Q. Do you feel that these sorts of multimedia projects afford people deep, contextual knowledge without them having to go through 20 odd pages of print to get the same breadth of detail? In other words, can this sort of journalism replace traditional reported pieces?

Photography in particular is unparalleled at conveying information with power and immediacy. We would weave together stories, pictures, video, graphics and data so that each piece of information advances the story within an immersive mixed-media experience. This accessible framework would deliver both immediate impact and greater depth for those that sought it.

There are different degrees of production and in-depth multimedia is not a replacement for existing forms of journalism. However, for the appropriate subject, it can deliver unequalled emotion, clarity and understanding.

Q. In countries and regions where high-speed Internet is still not very prevalent and where broadband is not accessible, could such stories pose limits on readership, as they tend to be time consuming and extensive? Is that a problem?

Lack of broadband connectivity is a barrier for many, but multimedia need not always equate to bandwidth-intensive video. Our interactive visual timeline is a case in point. I would argue that language and complete lack of connectivity for many are greater barriers. That said, rebranded editions of Times of Crisis were simultaneously launched on client web sites from Australia to France, Germany to the Gulf. Whereas Reuters content traditionally feeds into our clients’ products, this shows how we can be end-producers for our clients on stories with global resonance.

Q. Despite the effectiveness of such multimedia projects, why do you think more mainstream organizations are not doing these types of stories? Did Reuters encounter any resistance when you embarked on these initiatives?

Rich multimedia demands editorial time and creative resources, as does all special coverage. For those willing to invest in production, the reward is compelling, distinctive site-building content. Finding new ways to engage audiences has to be a key step towards securing new streams of revenue.

Reuters has the advantage of a truly global presence and teams working in every medium. We continue to use this basis to explore new approaches to information gathering, visualisation and interactivity to evolve storytelling.

What happens when an online newspaper decides to implement web-only feature journalism? Will the role of the online feature journalist be different from that of a print feature journalist?

These questions form the topic of a recently published article in a special issue of the academic journal Journalism focusing on the changing conditions of work and labour in the global news industry (the introduction to this special issue can be downloaded here). In the article, I argue that academic research into online journalism has been biased towards exploring online journalism as breaking news journalism, thereby to some extent neglecting the magnitude of new styles and genres that emerges in online news sites (see David Domingo’s excelent Phd dissertation (pdf) for a thorough overview of the academic research into online journalism). An increasing number of online newspapers across the world
now for instance include sections like “special reports” (e.g this section on the St. Petersburg Times online edition), “multimedia features” (like The New York Times online multimedia/photo section), ‘travel’ (e.g The Guardian online’s travel section), etc., where breaking news and immediacy in reporting are not core activities.

Such sections signal a coming together of two apparently widely different practices of journalism: feature journalism and online journalism. Feature journalism is often associated with glossy magazines and newspaper weekend sections where readers are invited to spend time, relax and take pleasure in their reading. The dominant discourses of feature journalism therefore seem to contrast with the discourse of online communication as it so far has been portrayed in research on the practice of online journalism and the evolving role of the online journalist. (For a more thorough discussion of what feature journalism is, see the paper What is feature journalism? that I recently presented at the 19th Nordic Conference for Media and Communication Research in Karlstad, Sweden)

In the article in the special issue of Journalism I investigate how the implementation of feature journalism in an online newsroom influences the role of online journalists and how the role of an online feature journalist is thus shaped. The article is based on a longitudinal, ethnographic case study of the production of feature journalism in the Norwegian online newspaper dagbladet.no (which, as the first Scandinavian online newspaper, launched a section entirely devoted to feature stories in 2002). What is interesting with this online feature section is that most of the production is web exclusive – it is produced by especially assigned online feature journalists. Feature stories that emerge online elsewhere (e.g Soundslides- and Flash-productions) tend to be spin-off products of already published newspaper productions. The dagbladet.no-case therefore represents a unique opportunity to explore how (or if) an online newsroom establish a new, online-based understanding of what feature journalism is or should be when they are left to explore the genre without influence from old media editors and journalists.

The empirical material gathered from the case study (six weeks of observation in the newsroom of dagbladet.no in four different periods from 2005 to 2007), 28 interviews with newsroom staffers, and document analysis) reveals that – in this particular case – the online feature journalists became heavily influenced by the productions routines and role performance of their online colleagues. Hence immediacy became a virtue for them – they developed a production routine where frequent publishing of new stories became important. However, the online newsroom at large was influenced by what the feature journalists brought to the table: The other online journalists felt that the feature section ernhanced their status and gave them a competitive advantage over other Norwegian online newspapers.

The findings can further be summed up in these points:

• In order to provide their role with status, the online feature journalists in dagbladet.no felt a need to distance them selves from how feature journalism is understood and practiced in conventional media in general and in the Dagbladet (print) feature journalism supplement “Magasinet” in particular. This lead to, amongst other things, a dismissal of the reportage as genre. The online feature journalists felt the readers provided the same kind of ‘human touch’ to their stories as the method of field reporting and face-to-face interviewing did for their print counterparts, as the readers were allowed to comment on and attach personal stories to the feature pieces. An interesting examples of this strategy can be found in this story on the troubles of gay people in rural areas in Norway, where the comments at the end of the article are dominated by personal experiences on the topic from gay readers (the story is in Norwegian).
• Even though they became heavily influenced by the work routine of their online colleagues, the feature journalists of dagbladet.no felt a need to distance them selves from the standards of online journalism in general which they perceived to be too inaccurate and shallow. They therefore became intensely occupied with for instance backing up there stories with a sufficient amount of sources and hyperlinks. They perceived their role as being pioneers in the process of increasing the standards of online journalism. This was appreciated by the other online journalists in dagbladet.no as they felt the feature journalists enhanced the overall status of online journalism.
• The online feature journalists of dagbladet.no developed a strategy implying that close relations with readers became more important than close relations with sources – the latter being a more common virtue in conventional feature journalism, where close encounters with people and milieus are common elements in the discourse. Even though they based their stories on many sources, the majority of the sources where second or third hand and largely assembled from other websites (reflecting a copy/paste practice common in online journalism at large). In stead of searching for first hand sources, the feature journalists devoted their attention to the audience. Readers were perceived as content providers both in the sense that the discussions the stories generated were regarded as valuable content and because the journalists ‘outsourced’ the human touch reporting to the audience. Thus, the readers to some extent became the sources.

The article concludes that the web exclusive feature journalism of dagbladet.no is a “multi-skilled practice of feature journalism entailing a devaluation of reportage as genre and emphasizing audience participation. This marks a shift from source-driven to audience-driven feature journalism, where debate and sharing of information and knowledge replace intimacy and adventure as dominant discourses.” (p. 715).

The case study is framed by an understanding of labour in general and media work in particular as undergoing substantial change and entailing a more individualized and random style of work. This development can be traced both in a historical axis of factors that have shaped the role of journalists throughout history, and a contemporary axis of the particulars of labour in modern society at large. Thus, the case study of how the role of an online feature journalist was negotiated within the online newsroom of dagbladet.no, serve as an example of these more general trends in media work.

One rap against citizen journalism is that there is always a possibility that it isn’t accurate or credible. Unmonitored, unmoderated blogs can get it wrong. Well, so can traditional journalists, but with blogs, it’s harder to hold someone accountable, and erroneous information is that much trickier to retract.

Would it help then, to look for ideas in a field where inaccuracy is barely tolerated, if at all? The media should be able to tap into crowd wisdom for credible content if, as Dan Schultz notes, “members of the scientific community, a professional group that arguably maintains higher standards for verification than journalism, are trying to harness the crowd in the same way that we are.”

Citizen science has been effectively used in one main way �" collection of data, which is then used by scientists for contextualization, analysis and consolidation with experiments and previous scientific literature.

Be it recording the dates of Spring’s first lilac blossoms, or counting the number of eggs in bird nests, citizens are contributing in meaningful ways, so scientists can then then use this for more specialized tasks, like assessing the information thus obtained to study the impact of global warming or the influence of human activity on wildlife.

Perhaps, the closest counterpart to this use in journalism is something akin to WNYC’s crowdsourced project to track price gouging in New York City or the Shropshire Star’s map of fuel prices. In both these exercises, citizens were not expected to do much more than report their daily observations.

Since scientific research usually requires a high level of education and training, the tasks get divided neatly between professionals and dabblers. As Schultz points out, in the case of science, “professionals have bigger and better things to do; it doesn’t make sense for a PhD to use a million-dollar telescope to look at something that a hobbyist could view using a thousand-dollar one, especially when there is so much of the universe left to unlock.”

This is not to say that such a clear definition would not work for journalism. In fact, citizen journalism pioneer Jay Rosen has often said that division of labor is essential for crowdsourced journalism projects. In WNYC’s case, citizens were responsible for collecting information that was put together in a story. In more complex investigative projects, the public is given the task of perusing documents, as is happening with The Guardian’s investigation of the MP’s expenses scandal.

Another idea would be to outsource so-called “fluff” journalism to the public (self plug warning). Many sites are already implementing this, by allowing citizens to post blogs and articles on lifestyle and recreational topics. Schulz suggests hyperlocal content as one such department where citizens can often do a good, if not better, job than reporters.

One of the main problems is that unlike scientists, journalists–irrationally or not–are in constant fear of being replaced by amateurs. Hence, they seem more hesitant to solicit citizen help. The fact that journalists are losing jobs, however, has more to do with the lack of revenue-generating mechanisms on the Internet than it has to do with bloggers posting content online. In fact, by recruiting audiences to act as eyes and ears for news organizations, the latter would actually save costs and be able to divert resources toward more specialized reporting.

Secondly, in the case of scientific crowdsourcing or citizen science, there is a distinct classification of contributors and their scope of contribution–as identified by what professionals, amateurs and citizens can do. This leads to a clear division of labor, which is not quite possible in journalism, at least in the way it is being practiced right now. While there is no doubt that journalism needs a special set of skills and training, it’s not rocket science, quite literally.

Amateurs contribute toward citizen science in significant ways by performing unspecialized tasks. In the case of bloggers, on the other hand, short of traveling to a war zone (with some exceptions) they are pretty much doing�"or attempting to do–what professional journalists routinely do.

The solution is not to curb bloggers and independent journalists, however. It is to produce the sort of in-depth, high-quality journalism that makes newsroom journalism “special.” In order to have clear-cut division of labor, professionals merely have to offer a product that makes use of the creativity and resources that are available to them. And in the process, they can implement projects that involve the lay public so the latter can do what they do best.

Last week Paul Bradshaw and I launched an exercise (background) last week to identify and map as many “ultralocal” (*) blogs and websites as possible.

We have had almost 140 blogs and websites added, albeit with a certain amount of “creative marketing” in the mix, which will reduce the total – depending on the criteria used by each person using the data.

There are so many blogs which can be called “local”, with a wide range of purposes, that I think we are likely to end up with a series of directories rather than a single monolithic website. Otherwise the directory might become so large as to be unmaintainable.

Life in a Nutshell

I have an interest in independent commentary and a movement to rebuild politics from the grassroots upwards. I think a key to this is to react to the recent political scandals by seeking a broader, more rounded view of politics, rather than either rejecting or ignoring political life.

So I’m kicking off with a directory – called Nutshell – based on the following criteria:

* Sites focused on a defined and identified area or community.
* Sites edited and controlled from within that area or community.
* Sites which are editorially independent.

I’m also listing local websites (such as forums) which are not on a blog platform, local aggregators, local directories and networks of sites which are centrally managed.

Nutshell is built using Wordpress, but I’d hope in the future to move to a platform which will enable website-managers to create their own accounts and edit their own details.

Wrapping Up

I’m expecting other directories to be coming along, I hope including one from Talk about Local listing the 150 sites that the project aims to help set up as they are created.

And someone needs to create a Google map of the sites submitted.

Watch this space.

What could possibly be common between a detailed account of America’s historic role in Middle East peace and a story about urban acrobats leaping across buildings in London and Beirut? Perhaps, the way in which you choose to tell them.

Designed to look and read like a magazine, complete with the swishing sound that accompanies each turn of a fascinating page, the innovative young site Flyp media, which is being hailed as a “future media lab,” is attempting to straddle the boundaries between the old and the new, between print and celluloid, and between Web creation and journalism.

Videos, podcasts and interactive images are embedded on pages that could well be bound and dropped into your mailbox. It is as much the art of story telling as the story itself. “Flyp the magazine is really a proof-of-concept experiment in terms of multimedia story telling. It is not a product that we’re aimed at as much as the message and the form,” says Editor in Chief Jim Gaines. [Read more]