Future of Journalism

BOSTON — Dan Kennedy, writ­ing in the Guardian, argues that the future of jour­nal­ism is local:

…large national and inter­na­tional news organ­i­sa­tions exist in a dif­fer­ent uni­verse from the grass­roots, where jour­nal­ism is being rein­vented. Just as tech­nol­ogy has made com­peti­tors out of CNN and USA Today, so, too has it enabled oth­ers to make a liv­ing at the local level with­out hav­ing to invest in a print­ing press or sell out to a corporate-owned chain…

At the same time, though, there is a bur­geon­ing local­ism move­ment in jour­nal­ism that par­al­lels such dis­parate phe­nom­ena as – I would argue – micro­brew­eries, inde­pen­dent musi­cians, the move­ment for locally grown food and activists who fight against big-box national retailers…

As the Har­vard scholar Robert Put­nam observed in his 2000 book Bowl­ing Alone, peo­ple who are involved in the life of their com­mu­nity are those who are also most likely to read the local news­pa­per. Sites like the Inde­pen­dent will thrive if they are able to flip the Put­nam rule on its head – that is, if they are able to fos­ter civic engage­ment and thus spark a rise in news consumption…

You can’t sur­vey a national audi­ence and find out if they’re read­ing the New Haven Inde­pen­dent or the Bata­vian – or Baris­tanet, in north­ern New Jer­sey, or Voice of San Diego or Min­nPost or any one of the many hyper­local news sites in exis­tence, some thriv­ing, some strug­gling to get by, some des­tined to fail.

The point is that national audi­ence stud­ies tell us lit­tle except what’s hap­pen­ing at the very top of the news pyra­mid. What’s hap­pen­ing at the bot­tom isn’t just dif­fer­ent, but it’s also more inter­est­ing – and more rel­e­vant to the future of journalism.

Kennedy, whom I met a few times when he was the media colum­nist for the Boston Phoenix before becom­ing a jour­nal­ism pro­fes­sor at North­east­ern Uni­ver­sity, is exactly cor­rect — and the basics of busi­ness strat­egy prove his point as well. The Inter­net has allowed an infi­nite num­ber of web­sites to exist — espe­cially jour­nal­is­tic ones and blogs — because that is the nature of the media itself. The medium is indeed the mes­sage. And for an indi­vid­ual web­site to suc­ceed, it has to carve a spe­cific niche for itself.

This is true not only for business-oriented web­sites that tar­get spe­cific key­words to obtain high rank­ings in search results but also for jour­nal­is­tic ones. Each media out­let has to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself. For exam­ple, back in 2006, when I was a reporter in Bean­town, I wrote the fol­low­ing post on how the Boston Globe can save itself:

The Inter­net eas­ily allows peo­ple to read the best con­tent in what­ever spe­cific area they wish. If I want the most thought-provoking news analy­ses and op-ed colum­nists, I’m going to read The New York Times. I’m not going to read the Globe. If I want the most com­pre­hen­sive arti­cles on U.S. pol­i­tics, I’m going to read The Wash­ing­ton Post. I’m not going to read the Globe. If I want the most detailed infor­ma­tion from Israel, I’m going to read The Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz. I’m not going to read the Globe. If I want the best local arts/entertainment cov­er­age, I’m going to read The Boston Phoenix and The Weekly Dig. I’m not going to read the Globe. If I went the best finan­cial news, I’m going to read The Wall Street Jour­nal, The Mot­ley Fool and The Econ­o­mist. I’m not going to read the Globe…

The Globe, then, needs to deter­mine and focus on its core com­pe­tency and unique prod­uct qual­ity — in other words, it needs to fig­ure out what it does best and what it pro­vides that no other media out­let can give. Here is the answer: The Boston Globe is the only pub­li­ca­tion that can pro­vide the most hard-hitting, com­pre­hen­sive and detailed report­ing on and analy­sis of local news.

As Kennedy observes, hyper­local news web­sites are pur­su­ing this very goal (albeit with vary­ing degrees of suc­cess). If local and regional news out­lets want to suc­ceed — or per­haps even sur­vive — they will need to take this prin­ci­ple to heart.

If I were the edi­tor of the Boston Globe, I would expand on my 2006 post by doing the following:

• Elim­i­nate all (orig­i­nal) national and for­eign cov­er­age. Replace it with a one-page sum­mary akin to that of the Wall Street Jour­nal that uses the news wires.
• Redi­rect more resources to local and regional cov­er­age. Assign one reporter to each Boston neigh­bor­hood as well as to each Boston sur­burb. Have at least one news or fea­ture story from each local­ity each day. (This would also take the com­pet­i­tive advan­tage away from the weekly news­pa­pers that cover these areas.)
• Get reporters out of the news­room. They should be spend­ing the vast major­ity of their time in the spe­cific areas they are cov­er­ing; after all, no one needs to be in the news­room to type sto­ries, sub­mit them, and send pho­tos any­more. Get to know the small busi­ness lead­ers, com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions, and local politi­cians. Schmooze with the peo­ple. Develop rela­tion­ships. Per­haps each reporter could live in his assigned neigh­bor­hood or sub­urb and would rarely need to go to the Globe’s main office. The Globe could also save on over­head by reduc­ing its pres­ence on Mor­ris­sey Boule­vard in Dorchester.

This is just a few ways that the Globe could take advan­tage of the hyper­local par­a­digm that is a part of the new Internet-media land­scape. The Inter­net has changed the way in both glob­al­ized and local­ized ways, and media out­lets need to take advan­tage of that fact.

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