Journalism isn’t dying. But it’s changing WAY faster than most people understand.
Journalism isn’t dying. But it’s changing WAY faster than
most people understand.
By Chris Cillizza April 18 at 4:09 PM
The New York Times made a smart move when it named Jim
Rutenberg its new lead media writer. Rutenberg's latest -- on the ongoing
BuzzFeed-ification of news and how journalism must/should change -- is a very
good read. And, while I don't agree with every word in it, I think there's
something very important about how journalism needs to change contained in
these lines, in which Rutenberg quotes Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei:
It starts with Mr. VandeHei’s admittedly provocative
proposition that “journalists are killing journalism.” They’re doing this, he
says, by “stubbornly clinging to the old ways.” That’s defined as producing 50
competing but nearly identical stories about a presidential candidate’s latest
speech, or 700-word updates on the transportation budget negotiations....
“We didn’t know if, in a newspaper, people were reading
our 600-word piece on the transportation markup on A10 — now we do,” Mr.
VandeHei said. “I’m not saying you let the audience dictate everything, but a
smart, aggressive, forward-leaning media company is going to write what it
thinks is important and its audience thinks is important.”
This is a critically important point. But one that, to
really understand, requires a step back before a step forward.
Think of journalism as falling into three basic baskets:
The "what" basket, the "so what" basket and the "now
what" basket.
The "what" basket is filled with reporting in a
straightforward manner on things that happened. "There was a fire at 8th
and Elm Street today. No one was injured," and all that. The "so
what" basket is the why it happened and/or why it mattered arm of
journalism. It's telling the audience that the fire on Elm and 8th was the third
one this month, and that police are investigating all three as arsons. The
"now what" basket is where the story is headed, what's the next thing
that someone interested in it should pay attention to. The fire department is
reaching out to other communities to see if there are any fires similar to the
three near Elm and 8th -- and so on and so forth.
(By the way, the "what, so what, now what"
formulation of news is not mine. It is the brainchild of Erik Rydholm, who is
the executive producer of "Pardon the Interruption" and a total
genius.)
From time immemorial until 10 (or so) years ago, news
organizations spent 95 percent of their time and resources on the
"what" of every story. It was what made you a news organization --
the ability to report out that "what" better than anyone else with
more people than anyone else etc. It worked. Pre-Internet -- and then
pre-massive media fracturing -- people had a limited number of places to get
the "what," so if you were one of them (as The Washington Post, the
New York Times, CBS, ABC, AP, NBC and the rest were), you were golden. That's
when owning a media company looked sort of like this:
Then, suddenly, the Internet changed everything. You
could get the "what" from almost anywhere and anyone within seconds
by just typing it into your web browser. The rise of Google News as a traffic
driver meant that getting people to read your "what" reporting was in
the hands of an algorithm. Ditto Facebook and much of the rest of the sharing
web.
Simply put: The "what" began to lose its
currency to the average reader. (There are obvious exceptions to this trend --
like when the "what" is revelatory and unique to your news
organization, as in the police shooting database for which The Post won a
Pulitzer prize today.)
And, as the "what" faded in terms of reader
interest, the "so what" and the "now what" began to rise.
Suddenly, people didn't want to just read about a presidential debate, they
wanted analysis of the debate, too. And they wanted that analysis delivered at
the same time as the news. They didn't want to wait for the next day to read
about who did well and who didn't. They wanted it in real time. And that went
double for anyone younger than 30.
That rising interest in analysis, context and commentary
about the "what" explains the massive success of things like
"The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." Comedy Central
grasped that people wanted some voice with their news, that the era of Dan
Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings was over.
But, as VandeHei rightly diagnoses, newsrooms, for the
most part, struggled -- and struggle -- to acknowledge that change in readers'
consumption habits. Massive amounts of time and money are still dedicated to
the "what" -- a "what" that only gets heavily read if your
number comes up in the Google or Facebook algorithm or a massive aggregator
like Matt Drudge plucks it out of the 1,000 other "what" pieces
floating in the ether.
That's not say that the "what" doesn't matter
anymore. It does. A lot. It's the spine of the news body -- without it,
everything else collapses.
What I would suggest is not zeroing out the attention
paid to and resources devoted to pursuing the "what." Instead, I --
and I think VandeHei -- would recommend a reallocation of the resources. I
don't have a specific number, but 50 percent "what," 25 percent
"so what" and 25 percent "now what" seems like a rough
approximation of how a mainstream media outlet should split its resources. For
newer arrivals on the media scene, the "so what/now what" percentage
would -- and should -- be higher.
That point tends to get lost in conversations about the
future of media. There's a tendency to assume it's an all-or-nothing
proposition. Either you report the "what" or you spend your time
putting rubber bands on watermelons and turning optical illusions into web
traffic bonanzas. False choice -- and one that serves as a conversation stopper
in a conversation that we in journalism badly need to have.
Truth: We need to do both the "what" and the
"so what/now what" of journalism. But as the audience for the
"what" continues to be harder and harder to capture (and, less fun to
talk about but no less true, monetize), we need to also understand that the
best way to get people addicted to our content may be to spend more time and
energy on the "so what" and "now what" sides of the
journalistic equation.
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