mediamachina » jayrosen

03 | Business Models Are The Easy Part

bruno boutot — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:00:39 +0000

I am media centric and user driven. #

Media centric? By now, we have all observed, learned or at least heard that the Internet is user centric: we have user-centric identity, user-centric design, user-centric media, user-centric Web architecture and user-centric databases management. And of course, when we’ll come to hosting communities, we’ll look closely at what “user centric” implies for architecture and content. #

But let’s be media centric for a while. The notion of “user centric” might be dizzying, so let’s go back to the media as the center of our world. Nothing wrong with it: that’s where we are. The users are out there, somewhere. #

Besides, I still believe that traditional medias can thrive on the Web. They just don’t have much time to make the right moves. #

We have just seen when observing figure 9 in Ecosystem that to fight erosion, a media on the Web can strengthen its exchanges with its sources, its advertisers and its users. Among those, our two sources of revenue are the advertisers and the users. And obviously advertisers buy ad space only because of the users. So our first priority is to strengthen our exchanges with our users, right? #

This isn’t really new, nor is it special to the Web. In 1984, more than 25 years ago, I was exploring ways of launching a weekly newspaper in Montreal. I went to see Jean Paré, then publisher and editor-in-chief of L’actualité, Canada news magazine in French, to ask for his advice. He listened patiently to my story; then he asked me: “What do you need first to launch a weekly newspaper?” That was an easy one and I answered right away: “Money”. #

“No”, he said, “The first thing you need is readers. If you have readers, you’ll find all the money you want.” #

This is certainly one of the most important lessons I have ever learned about media and the publishing business. #

So we may be media centric if we like but what do we find at the core of any media? Readers, viewers, listeners: users. On the Web, there is a grand unification of users: we all have to read, if only to choose a video or a song, so all users are readers. Readers are at the core of any Web media. #

That seems simple and clear to the point of looking banal: yes, of course, our readers are important. Of course they are our best asset. Of course we take care of them. On the Web? #

If this is so obvious, please get in the shoes of a real reader for a while and ask yourself why this kind of thing happens so often when readers want to participate in a traditional-media website: #

You are warned about everything you can’t do, topics you can’t touch, words you can’t use. Upon arrival, you are treated as a potential danger.
You have to agree that everything you write, every photo or video you post on the site will become forever the property of the media and you abandon any claim to it. Upon arrival, you are told that everything you contribute will be stolen.
You have to give a name, any name, but the media doesn’t give you a personal page with your identity and the memory of your contributions. You can comment one or 100 times, you can write important information or rubbish, you can help drive a conversation, but nobody will remember it, nobody will be able to find it again. You have no real identity, you can’t build a reputation. Nobody cares about who you are or what you can bring to the media.
You have a name and you may have a personal page with the memory of your contributions but you have no place to open a conversation, to contribute information, to propose a topic, to ask a question. The only thing you can do is to comment at the end of the golden words of real journalists. You can vent in your comments but you are not part of us and please keep your distance.
You are warned that there are moderators around and they will check your comments and maybe delete them but you are not told who these moderators are, you can’t talk to them: they don’t participate, they don’t comment, they just exercise their power. You are asked to contribute in a media where the police is anonymous and where moderators are not members of the community.
You are allowed to contribute in some places but not at others. Your input is accepted only when and where the “people who know” agree that you are allowed to leave something. Otherwise, whether you have an important question to ask or a key information to add, you are obviously not qualified to add it in some place, as if you were unclean or totally uninteresting.
The rules of contribution are the same everywhere in the media because the owners don’t even know that topics and areas can be more interesting, more lively and become a more important part of the media when they have specific rules. So you have to suffer inane conversations because authors are not creating a tone and, worse, they don’t know that they could.
Journalists think that “Community” is the place where readers are corralled.

I don’t especially want to name names, take your pick, but you can pass through that filter the otherwise great nytimes.com or guardian.co.uk . #

I know that most people who are reading media machina are waiting for me to answer the question: where is the business model? #

Business models are the easy part. #

Getting that readers are real people and not cattle is the tough part. #

I believe that’s part of what Jay Rosen means when he says in Rebooting The News System In The Age Of Social Media: “You gotta grok it before you can rock it”. #

I learned to grok it like everybody else: on the Web and in communities, mainly Worth1000 and MetaFilter but also slashdot, Something Awful and dozens of others. All these communities have grown organically around their founder. All these founders are passionate from the start about their members. Founders, admins and mods are not above the community, they are the best part of it. You don’t “manage” a community. You serve it. Yes, it’s messy: there are laughs and tears and yawns and tantrums and trolling and spamming and yes, banning. #

That’s life. Readers are real people. #

Readers are life. They are even the only lifeline that news media have. #

Readers are the business model. #

See notes. #

Why I Am Not Worried About Journalism

bruno boutot — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:33:45 +0000

I am not worried about journalism. #

If this simple statement hadn’t been met recently with so many questions from friends and colleagues, I wouldn’t have felt the necessity to explain it here. #

So why am I not worried about journalism? #

First, because I am a huge news consumer. The consumer of news in me lives nowadays in paradise: I have never had access before to so many sources, from so many points of view, so quickly and through so many media. And this wonderful cornucopia is expanding every day. #

Some people even complain that we have too much information! That makes me laugh. I am an editor and that’s what we have always done: editing. When our ancestors like Ardi came out of the forest and into the savanna, I guess they were thinking “More food!” rather than “Too much information”. If journalism is about gathering, editing and distributing news, we are witnessing a spectacular blooming of journalism. #

But, people tell me, journalism is going through a crisis that is threatening its very existence. #

No, it isn’t. News organizations are going through a revenue crisis. The news business is shaken to its core, but journalism isn’t. We have never had so many competent journalists. We never have had so many media. We have never had so many tools for gathering sources and content. We have never had so many tools to search, compare and validate so many kinds of data. We have never had access to so many people who are themselves more literate than ever and who have access to a growing number of media and people. #

Even more, never before have we had so many brilliant people who not only care about the future of journalism but who are connected in real time and who openly share every day the advancement of their knowledge. If you are really worried about journalism, you should immediately follow these people on Twitter, read their blogs and their books: the future of journalism has never been in better hands. (See below). #

But newspapers are closing and people are worried about investigative journalism, which is very expensive to do. They are right to be, but the key word in this sentence is not “journalism”, it is “expensive”. We don’t have a journalism crisis: we have a crisis of revenues in news organizations employing journalists, which is completely different. #

The news business has been disrupted by the Web. This is why it is a priority to work on business models for news on the Web; if we can contribute to solve the “revenue” problem, we contribute to solve the journalism problem. #

I am passionate about journalism: it is my job because it is my passion. So, I am very curious about all the developments and transformations of journalism made possible by the Web; this wonderfully rich and exciting medium. But this is not my priority in media machina. Of course you can’t talk about the news business without talking about journalism and I will. But the fundamental question I am tackling here is about the business models for news on the Web. Marketing. Sales. Money. #

And I am not worried at all about journalism. #

If you want to be inspired and energized about the future of journalism, you can begin by following a few people. It’s not yet possible to make “groups” within Twitter, but I do it through Seesmic. I have no more than 17 people in a group (this is the size of my Seesmic window, not a feature). Constraints are interesting: it makes for an incomplete list (I am following many more) and the names in it change from time to time. But here are 17 people who make me very optimistic about the future of journalism and the news business (in alphabetical order of their first name): #

Bruce Sterling, Chris Anderson, Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow, Dave Winer, David Weinberger, Fred Wilson, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, John Battelle, Mathew Ingram, Paul Bradshaw, Scott Rosenberg, Steve Buttry, Steve Yelvington, Tim O’Reilly, Warren Ellis. #

I should add a few organizations like the Nieman Lab, but if I have to chose, I’ll take people first. You’ll have to work a little to find their blogs, books or photos. I am in awe of being connected to each of them. I feel incredibly privileged to live today and to be able to follow the writings of these people, their photos on flickr and their conferences on video in quasi-realtime. I’ll be happy to explain why anyone is on this list and I will publish more lists later. #

See notes. #