Journalism Is the New Bottled Water

It's no secret that the entire industry is going through a sort of self-flagellating introspection over its future these days. Newspaper readership is on the decline, magazines are folding right and left, the evening news has lost most of its prominence, and so on. Throughout the industry, companies have desperately been trying to figure out how to turn back the tide.

The company that cuts my checks, Tribune Company, even has a C-level executive whose sole purpose is figuring out how to reinvent news media. Tribune's Chief Innovation Officer, Lee Abrams, sends out wild-eyed, company-wide memos about once a week, each detailing the latest newspaper redesign or brainstormed idea.

Like most journalists, I've given the future a lot of thought. And I think the problem is more systemic than we've previously realized. It's the Internet. Sure, that's been said before, but I don't think people realize just how large a problem we're talking about here. Granted, Craigslist and similar sites have all but destroyed the need for classified advertising. And Google can get you any news story you want with the tap of a few keys. But look at the total, bigger picture. What is it that journalists do? Essentially, the journalism industry sells information.

And, sure, people have said that before as well, but they've usually used it as a justification for why journalism will be so important in the coming years -- there's so much information out there now, goes the argument, that we need an entire industry to filter it and find the stuff that news consumers need to know.

To that, I say, horseshit. It's a simple problem of supply and demand. Information has become so commonplace, so readily available, that its value as a commodity has bottomed out. That is the essential problem of the journalism industry today. We are trying to sell something to which everyone already has ready access. It's the equivalent of trying to sell people air... or water.

Despite almost everyone in the United States having easy access to water from their taps, a huge portion of people buy their water instead. In many cases, they buy water even to stock it in their homes, right next to faucets that would pour the stuff for free. Why?

I can think of two reasons. First, bottled water can be taken with you when tap water must be left at home. Second, the marketers of bottled water have convinced many people that their product is far superior to the stuff that comes out of your faucet. Therein lies the future of journalism.

If news professionals wish to thrive in the coming years, they need to make sure that the industry produces a product that can be taken places in which people have no access to cheap, easily obtainable information (i.e. the Internet). With portable Internet access becoming more and more common, this gets more and more difficult, but it's still possible, and has been done in some cases. (Note the relative success of commuter papers to traditional dailies. If we acknowledge that portability is one of the key issues to the future, then broadsheet newspapers should immediately be retired in favor of tabloid, three- or four-page jumps should be ended, and so on. Most editors and designers that read this probably already know the fixes.)

The second issue is the more important one in light of the fact that, eventually, the Internet will be accessible just about everywhere. If newspapers, magazines and even certain segments of broadcast journalism are to have a viable future, people need to be convinced that the information they get in those products is superior to the information they get on the Internet. And that means that newsroom cutbacks, especially in investigative journalism and other areas of exclusive content, have been precisely the wrong thing to do. The focus of marketers should be to convince readership of the ridiculousness of information that comes up at a quick Google search and intelligent people's preference for the alternative. (At the very least, that alternative should be the newspaper's Web site.) Editorial needs to back that up by offering readers content that is both exclusive and superior to other products. In many cases, that doesn't mean that a paper needs to be the first one to report something -- after all, the basic facts of a big story will be available a thousand times over on sites across the Net within minutes of one news organization breaking the story. Indeed, we may need just the opposite -- slow, deliberative work that explains a story better than anyone else can.

But, taking all this into account, there lies a further basic problem: Is bottled water really that much better than the stuff that comes out of the tap? Both are just a couple hydrogen atoms mixed with an oxygen atom, multiplied a mind-bogglingly huge amount of times. Both are drinkable. Both are water. Recently, several cities across the country, including Miami in my own back yard, have started a campaign against bottled water as part of the green movement, encouraging people to use tap water. Bottled water really isn't much better than tap water, and in some ways, it's worse. In that sense, the future of journalism may be nothing but a cheap con game.

Now pardon me while I go self-flagellate awhile.

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

Bottled water is something too many people carry around with them even though they don't need it and the container will end up in a landfill for thousands of years while polluting the environment.

That's a pretty good encapsulation of what the media has become.

At his point, I would settle just for three things: a sense of proportion, the truth and not peppering your product mix with political hacks (Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Pat Buchanan, Peggy Noonan, etc). I am not optimistic that I will ever live to see that again in my remaining days on earth, unfortunately.

[Social Construct]

Make newspapers more blog-like. Interactive newspapers with several printed reactions to some featured articles might appeal to the demographic that searches for news on the internet. Of course late breaking stories would have to be commented on in the next issue, but an expanded editorial section could make room for that. I am aware that newspapers already do this online but, with some bright minds tweaking this idea, it might work. Also, my community as an example, there seems to be a big lack of investigative journalism, and I live in a state capitol!

[newzworthy]

I totally agree with you Dan, but part of the problem too is that most people around the world, but especially in Western/Developed nations, don't seem to care about what is going on around the world. People are more interested in celebrity gossip rather than real news. I think marketers are to blame as well. They don't position newspapers, magazines, news shows etc. very well to the public. Each news outlet needs to have a strong identity, the way, for example, a car does. A Mercedes Benz has a strong identity, it projects wealth and status. News outlets, should do the same. In this time sensitive world, you need to project yourself to the consumer. Not a lot of people are willing to take the time to look for an outlet that tells the story in a format they like, which is why people rely on headlines speeding across the crawl space. The people that do, will always take the time to look into it because they are already interested and don't need to be targeted by marketers. So if you want to increase readership, marketers need to target those who don't take the time to sift through news outlets to find one that they are engaged by and communicate to the consumer as to why they should.

[RobinSeattle]

Well, it's all about the dollars since the media is a business and the sad fact is that Eyewitness News and Fox News have been industry leaders. And when one format is successful it gets imitated ad nauseum.

In fact, the Eyewitness News, which was basically a carney's approach to news, format was the point at which the credibility of the media in the eyes of the thinking person began to slide and it has only gotten worse since, the nadir being the goulish Terry Schiavo episode.

In fact, I would argue that Eyewitness News has done more damage to this country in terms of how it perceives the reality around them than even Fox, but that is a topic for another day.

[TomTheAlmostUgly]

My thoughts--

1) Today, December 23rd, here's what I want to know: 1) What is President Bush actually doing about the economy? 2) What is President-Elect Obama planning on doing about the economy?

Here's what the Mainstream Media is giving me on Dec. 23rd: 1) Rick Warren 2) "There is no APPARENT connection between Gov. Blagojevich and Barack Obama, but all facts are still not known." 3) Whatever Bush says, or Cheney says, or Condi Rice says, is treated as God's revealed truth. Reporters assure us, "Why would the president lie to us? What would he gain by that?"

And they want me to give them money for such cr*p?

2) During the months prior to the election, I discovered that the only fact-checking of candidates' statements was done by individual websites, and by Rachel Maddow. The MSM printed/broadcast every lying word without comment or correction.

3) The MSM reminds me of WWE referees, who always can be suckered into looking the wrong direction.

4) If Ozarka sold me bottled water that had mud and dead fish at the bottom of the bottle, eventually I'd quit buying Ozarka, right?

5) Somewhere in the USA, a depressed and ashamed Walter Cronkite is getting drunk.

[sl26]

Newspapers are superior to the pundasses on TV. It's just a shame that lazy Americans would rather get it from the crawl space on the bottom of their screens.

[LaFilleEnRose]

I go online to read what the newspapers are publishing and of course to get some additional fresh perspective from bloggers I've come to trust. But newspaper journalism and magazine (Newsweek, etc.) make up the bulk of the good stuff posted on this site. It'll be a sorry day if we lose this quality work.

[larry278]

Prepare for a sorry day. Don't be surprised if HP & DAILY BEAST find a similar source(s) to replace traditional newspapers & magazines. The new non-traditional sources of copy for HP & DB will turn into better edited, constantly up dated replacements for the dead traditional media which they will replace. You can make money with the replacements. HP is in the news business. Traditional & citizen journalists will supply HP, et al with constantly updated blogs. HP, et al will pay for these blogs based on how often & how many people use a blog.