New Media Rorschach Test for Journalists

Test Instructions

Take a few moments to stare at these inkblots:

The New York Times eliminates sections, reorganizes newsroom

The Washington Post eliminates sections, reorganizes newsroom

Diagnosis:

If these images produce feelings of doom, despair and anger, you are sentimental, nostalgic, resistant to change and are poorly engaged with reality. Rx: Retirement or an editing job for a government agency.

If these images produce feelings of excitement, curiosity and hope, you are clear-headed, forward-looking, adaptable and culturally aware. Rx: Double down on the blog, learn to use that Flip cam, and prepare for a thrill ride.

If you see a ducky being disemboweled by witch, seek medical help immediately.

Print ‘n’ Read: Clay Shirky’s Last Word

Clay Shirky, NYU adjunct professor and author of the book Here Comes Everybody, has written the most spectacularly devastating analysis of the newspaper mess I’ve ever read.

I offer his long blog post, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” as my latest Print ‘n’ Read feature. PnRs, as both regular readers of this blog know, are online articles so important they are actually worth printing out on paper to read later. [Note unsettling irony that a seminal piece on digital journalism is best appreciated on paper.]

His central points: The disruptions that imperil the newspaper industry are driven by an irreversible cultural revolution; that fighting to sustain current structures with a new “business model” is futile; that nobody knows how journalism might be funded but that thousands of experiments might eventually produce answers.

Delightfully, Shirky manages to dismiss the dimwit fantasies of the  newspaper business conservatives with a deft combination of historical context and powerful insight that makes those who disagree seem not only hopelessly wrong, but foolish.

Passages crackle with aphoristic brilliance:

“It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.” . . .

“When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution.” . . .

“The [high] expense of printing created an environment where [major newspaper advertisers like] Wal-Mart [were] willing to subsidize the Baghdad bureau. This wasn’t because of any deep link between advertising and reporting, nor was it about any real desire on the part of Wal-Mart to have their marketing budget go to international correspondents. It was just an accident.” . . .

“The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; ‘You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!’ has never been much of a business model.”

“When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse.” . . .

Maybe Shirky’s post should be turned into one of those “interactive training modules” newsrooms use to make sure all employees understand other important stuff, like sexual harrassment, diversity and libel. Employees who don’t score 80 percent on the quiz would have to repeat it.

Either that or they can be made to read the post with their eyes forced open as in another influential work of revolutionary futurism, A Clockwork Orange.

Newspapers and the Parable of the Humping Elephants

With morbidity nearly universal and mortality increasing daily, America’s newspaper publishers are shouting “Code Blue!”

As the number of failing news organs grows, some are calling for newspapers to charge for access to their content online.

Others hope charitable endowments will sustain newspapers, much as they do other things the free market can’t support, like soup kitchens and opera.

Yesterday David Carr of the New York Times proposed that newspaper owners be allowed to collude, in ways that may violate anti-trust law, in order to preserve the public service they provide. [If all newspaper publishers agree to put their news behind pay walls [say], more people might decide to pay for it online.]

There will be other occasions to flick a Bic at these strawmen.

But as I’ve absorbed this in the past two weeks I’ve been reminded again of a favorite metaphor.

When I was a kid, a nature TV program showed a pair of elephants, the female on the ground near death. The male tried revive her–nudging her, trying to feed her, snuggling her.

Finally, in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable, the male elephant mounted her and tried  to copulate.

This was horrible to watch: a creature in panicky love and denial, trying to hump his dying soul-mate back to life. She died soon thereafter.

I suspect you know where this is going.

The elephant is dying. We all love her. We have nudged her, tried to feed her, snuggled her.

But for god sake, let her go. There is life on the savannah.

You will never join it until you realize it’s time to get the hell off.

5 Reasons Hearst Should Go Online-Only in Seattle

The suits at Hearst Corp. are cogitatin’ furiously about what to do with the teetering Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The deal is entangled in a web of union contracts and a joint operating agreement with the equally teetersome Seattle Times that makes the decision even messier.

One option for Hearst: To keep the P-I alive as an online-only newspaper.

Why this would be the best option if not for Hearst, then for. . .everyone. [The following points assume the Times would survive as a print newspaper--not guaranteed but perhaps more likely if Paper No. 2 disappears from the market.]

1. This would be the first case I’m aware of where a major metropolitan daily went web-only, providing at least a partial proof-of-concept case study. Get rid of the trucks, the newsprint and paper-only support staff [sorry; not all jobs can survive] and determine whether online revenues can support a vital, or at least competent, newsroom.

2. It would help answer a key question: Do competing newsrooms produce journalism that better serves the public interest than a monopoly newsroom alone? Or does the competition create a race to the bottom? A scrappy online-only competitor to the Times would test that case in the new environment.

3. It would force the paper-bound Times to compete, hard and daily, for online audience, ensuring staff develop the fast-and-sharp, multimedia-focused, link-rich journalism chops necessary to thrive in the developing news world.

4. It would therefore force the old dogs to learn new tricks or get the hell out of the way more effeciently than buyouts, firings or any of those bootless “writing for the web” or “video 101″ seminars.

5. It would preserve real jobs. In this economy, any corporate leaders who choose to responsibly preserve paychecks over habits acquire a gigantic karmic IOU. Redeemable in the next life, if not later in this.