The InBox: Talking journalism, blogging, and business models at Portland BarCamp
PUBLISHER'S BLOG~ Cornelius Swart
I just left a fascinating discussion at a technology conference called Portland BarCamp. The topic of the first meeting was about the future of blogging/citizen journalism/professional journalism. Some of Portland's most well known bloggers, tech people and some great veteran journalist were there. The second meeting was focused on the newspaper industry itself and where it was headed.
The first take away was that there was tremendous energy and passion in the room around saving journalism as a social imperative and about preserving the 'fourth estate' as a integral part of the democratic balance of power in the world. To that end, our idea about a training and mentoring program called Portland Media Lab seemed to be of interest to quiet a few people.
Updated 5.21pm: Daniel Bachhuber who is working on two journalism start ups of his own www.publish2.com and www.copress.org did a brief video interview on his blog about the session.
The second meeting about the newspaper industry itself and was very interesting as well. There were interesting conversations occurring about emergent technologies that will allow people to customize their content streams and conversations either based on geography or other values. There was agreement that hyperlocal was an emergent 'news value'.
"Right now what constituted hyperlocal is determined by an editor," said Steve Woodward (I believe it was him.. I was not attending the meetings as a reporter so I was not taking notes just walking away with impressions). Many indicated that technologies will probably refine in the near future to allow users of web and mobile platforms to determine for themselves what 'hyper local' means to them.
However, how newspapers or news media companies can use these idea or how these ideas could even be harnessed in a business model was not clear. I brought up the ideas about micro-payments that were first put across in Walter Issacson's Time Magazine article entitled How to Save your Newspaper (this is the link to the actual reference in the article) and that idea went down like a lead balloon.
Content wants to be free was the consensus. But who will pay the writers? At the hyper local level we're looking to Portland Media Lab not micro-payments or advertising. But I don't know if, as they say, 'that will fund the Bagdad bureau'?
Comments
From the National Affairs desk
by Sentinel News Service | Tue, 05/05/2009 - 7:57amThe business models are still evolving, certainly. Ultimately the big boys will still staff the Baghdad bureaus -- the New York Times/LA Times/et cetera will become the primary sources of national/international stories, mostly online, perhaps with a printed Sunday edition until the trees give out altogether.
The local stories will fall to entities much like the Sentinel/Portland Media Lab, with tightly defined hyperlocal turf, next to no overhead and tiny staffs. Print editions of these will disappear (as will luxuries such as "National Affairs editors"...). Competition between bloggers and "real" journalists will be brisk and colorful. Distinctions between the two will fade, as bloggers will have to match the journalists' (supposed) commitment to accuracy and balance, while journalists will continue to drift away from the hard-boiled AP-style prose so many of us were forced to adapt through "enhanced interrogation" and special rendition to suburban news bureaus....
The big losers are the mid-level dailies where so many journalists had their spirits broken in the 20th Century. That way of life is going the way of the dinosaur. I grieved for a while, but no longer. The dumb corporate bastards brought it on themselves. They saw the future coming and couldn't adapt.
Journalism per se, and journalists, clearly are adapting, as Swart's report from Portland BarCamp. Or maybe "adapting" is the wrong word. Only the tools are changing, really. I started on IBM Selectrics and monstrous mainframe computers. Now I pack a digital audio recorder, digital camera w/video capabilities, and a Dell Latitude laptop. I still take notes with pen and paper. Still ask people to spell their names for me. Trying to get the facts right and tell a good story....
This is all too much "inside baseball," of course. Journalist shop-talk is about as interesting to general readers as injection-molding shop talk would be to me. But that's the beauty of the present moment: Those often-unheard stories are available, should anyone care to read them. And if they care enough to drop a quarter in the tin can, so much the better. That's the tricky part.
Selah.
~Will Crow
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