In an open letter to craigslist, Steve Outing asks its founders and operators to help save the newspaper industry from itself. My response:

Steve,

It takes real chutzpah to ask Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of craigslist to help newspapers salvage their classifieds businesses and thus save democracy, or at least the part of it that newspapers presumably foster.

Your clever open letter to them, at the same time congratulating and blaming, misplaces responsibility. It assumes they have the authority to solve a problem that the news industry inflicted upon itself: how to replace a subsidy predicated on controlling and authoritarian business practices.

Steve, I can’t decide if your modest proposal is naive, self-serving or tragically poetic.

Craig Newmark never set out to disrupt the newspaper industry. Motivated only by helping people out, he created a simple list for his friends, initially distributed through email, and later on the Internet when one friend showed him how to create a Web page. Their trust in him, as well as a passion for serving others through technology, gave craigslist its authority.

You miss the magic of craigslist. It is Craig’s “friends” — a community that has grown to 40 million people a month in 500 U.S. cities and 50 countries (larger than all news sites combined by several factors) — who disrupted newspaper classifieds. Call them users, customers, an audience, a market, or marketplace, they discovered that through craigslist they could do for themselves what others charged excessively in order to handsomely subsidize their businesses.

Trust in Craig, still craigslist’s chief customer service representative, remains at the heart of it. So are democratic, open markets: the right of the people to conduct commerce and journalism among and between themselves.

Meantime, newspapers charged premium prices for access to an arcane classification system that published a few, annotated lines of shorthand in very small type at the back of a dense product with limited, daily distribution. The hard-to-find, hard-to-read, one-way advertisements were distributed to parts of a relatively small geographic region for sellers and buyers to discover, at least those who happened to buy the newspaper and read the classifieds section on the very day they were prepared to make a transaction.

For a lousy experience, newspapers in growth markets such as Dallas, Denver and San Jose made hundreds of millions of dollars that drove margins of 30 per cent or more with these high-yield liners.

The experience was not significantly improved by importing this business to the online version of the newspaper. What didn’t work in print didn’t work online.

Newspapers used their profits not to expand their social mission, but rather to drive the stock price of the companies that owned them, to finance acquisitions, to reward management, and to acquire additional wealth through cost-management: death by acquisition accelerated by cutting their way to profitability.

Financing news operations has never been much a part of it; ask any editor who has asked for budget increases or additional staff to cover a society growing increasingly complex and competitive. The moral imperative is a myth perpetuated by editors and journalists, not by the publishers you (Steve) are asking Craig and Jim to help.

Now, other forms and systems – a collaborative, more democratic Fifth Estate, if you will — are emerging to replace an institution that is broken. Almost anyone can deploy the simple technology that craiglist uses. Anyone can participate in its journalism and commerce.

Publishers would be better served by implementing enlightened business strategies with a passionate consumer connection at its core. Until then, they will continue to be cast in a survival drama of their own making.

Newspapers are like a broken satellite falling of orbit. The technology is failing; the mission may soon be scuttled. To stay in orbit, the engineers must repair and update the technology systems. More importantly, the flight controllers must restore trust in the mission and its results by relinquishing control. Otherwise, Satellite Newspaper – classifieds and all — will burn up in the atmosphere.

Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster may be talented astronauts, but they shouldn’t go down with the pilots of their competitors’ obsolete ships.

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What would you do to provide a better news service for your community? Or for any community? David Cohn, one of our We Media Fellows at this year’s We Media Miami conference, is trying to ferret out good ideas for one community, San Jose, California, from an obvious source: people who live there.

On April 19 he’s ripping a page from the tech world and organizing an “unconference” to help the San Jose Mercury News talk with and learn from, well, anyone. He’s calling the effort CopyCamp, an homage to BarCamp and FooCamp, events for software developers and techies without a fixed agenda. They set an agenda, then try to come up with brilliant ideas, new code or at least new friends.

What brilliant ideas, new code or new friends might CopyCampers come up with?
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Here’s a chance for members of the We Media Community to get involved in something new, practical and ambitious. Bread for the City, a food bank, health clinic and social services provider for the poor in Washington, DC, wants to use the tools of media creation and distribution to help its clients and community members tell their stories. You can help.

Adrienne Ammerman, the organization’s media and communications organizer, attended We Media Miami 08 – and she came home inspired to take action. She’d like to launch a Bread for the City blog “to create dialogue and action around the issues we address every day: hunger & poverty, food & nutrition, access to legal services, medical care, and affordable housing… to name a few.”
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From Singapore: Conference Bay, an eBay-style auction marketplace for buying seats at conferences worldwide.

Nothing new here, right? We all know about online auctions. The only innovation is applying a well-tested online transaction model to a different niche -  in this case a potentially high-value niche that may provide real utility – and new buying power – for a global audience. It’s worth comparing this service to another crowd-sourced approach to aggregating event information: Yahoo’s Upcoming, which is full of Yahoo’s social media goodness – and lots of free events, too. You can add comments, people, maps, etc.. But at the end of the day (and more than two years after Yahoo! purchased Upcoming), it’s a big list to promote events – but not to directly sell or determine pricing for seats.

Insight: Innovation happens everywhere.

I should also note: the We Media/connected/story-telling culture helped me find Conference Bay. Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman’s blog mentioned Solana Larson and the Global Voices crew that came to We Media Miami, and this popped up in our Technorati tracker for the wemedia tag. Someone named Anne from the Phillipines who knew or knew of Ethan commented in his blog – and I followed the link to Anne’s blog, then read down not only to see some familiar names and interests, but, reading down to the next post, a link to Conference Bay.

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For the second year in a row we’ve documented a devastating lack of satisfaction with journalism in American – and an opportunity to do something about it. Here’s the formal press release of the new research, which we discussed in the opening session of this year’s We Media Miami Forum and Festival. The good news: Americans believe journalism is important. The bad news: They don’t like or trust the journalism in their communities. One thing is clear: Our forecast from four years ago of “the digital everything” has arrived – the Internet is the primary source of news for more people than any other. There’s no going back. The widespread dissatisfaction with traditional journalism could be viewed ominously, by those who produce and sell it, as a cause for alarm, a reflection of ongoing decline and a likely foreshadowing of further decline. But for the We Media culture a tremendous opportunity emerges – not only to produce better and more trusted journalism but to build better communities around it. In the We Media culture that’s an opportunity for everyone, including but by no means limited to those who think of themselves as media companies or professionals. Civic groups, healthcare companies, nonprofits, local governments and activists are starting to flex their muscles as story-tellers too. The future, like the past, will be full of stories. – Andrew Nachison

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two thirds of Americans – 67% – believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Meanwhile, the online survey documented the shift away from traditional sources of news, such as newspapers and TV, to the Internet – most dramatically among so-called digital natives – people under 30 years old.

Nearly half of respondents (48%) said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, an increase from 40% who said the same a year ago. Younger adults were most likely to name the Internet as their top source – 55% of those age 18 to 29 say they get most of their news and information online, compared to 35% of those age 65 and older.

These oldest adults are the only age group to favor a primary news source other than the Internet, with 38% of these seniors who said they get most of their news from television. Overall, 29% said television is their main source of news, while fewer said they turn to radio (11%) and newspapers (10%) for most of their news and information. Just 7% of those age 18 to 29 said they get most of their news from newspapers, while more than twice as many (17%) of those age 65 and older list newspapers as their top source of news and information.

Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets – 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important. Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news, although fewer than say the same about blogs (38%).

The Zogby Interactive survey of 1,979 adults nationwide was conducted Feb. 20-21, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points. The survey results were announced at this week’s fourth-annual We Media Forum and Festival in Miami, hosted by the University of Miami School of Communication and organized and produced by iFOCOS, a Reston, Va.-based media think tank (www.ifocos.org). This is the second year of the survey.

“For the second year in a row we have documented a crisis in American journalism that is far more serious than the industry’s business challenges – or maybe a consequence of them,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “Americans recognize the value of journalism for their communities, and they are unsatisfied with what they see. While the U.S. news industry sheds expenses and frets about its future, Americans are dismayed by its present.

“Meanwhile, we see clearly the generational shift of digital natives from traditional to online news – so the challenge for traditional news companies is complex. They need to invest in new products and services – and they have. But they’ve also got to invest in quality, influence and impact. They need to invest in journalism that makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s a moral and leadership challenge – and a business opportunity for whoever can meet it.”

The survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources – nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).

Other findings from the survey include:

• Although the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism (64%), overall satisfaction with journalism has increased to 35% in this survey from 27% who said the same in 2007.
• Both traditional and new media are viewed as important for the future of journalism – 87% believe professional journalism has a vital role to play in journalism’s future, although citizen journalism (77%) and blogging (59%) are also seen as significant by most Americans.
• Very few Americans (1%) consider blogs their most trusted source of news, or their primary source of news (1%).
• Three in four (75%) believe the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.
• 69% believe media companies are becoming too large and powerful to allow for competition, while 17% believe they are the right size to adequately compete.

Republicans (79%) and political independents (75%) are most likely to feel disenchanted with conventional journalism, but the online survey found 50% of Democrats also expressed similar concerns. Those who identify themselves as “very conservative” were among the most dissatisfied, with 89% who view traditional journalism as out of touch.

Further Details: Zogby Methodological statement

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washingtonpost.com’s “On Being” project is simply stunning: real stories from real people based on the simple notion that “we should get to know one another a little better.” An elegant design and interface, enhanced by professional video production standards, bring to life the musings and passions of ordinary extraordinary people. This is how journalism from MSM should look on the web: visual, interactive, compelling, real. The big problem: You can’t find “On Being” on The Post’s dense home page. Which raises the existential question of whether it really exists.
Look here: http://specials.washingtonpost.com/onbeing/

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You have to admire the chutzpah of any group that seeks to save journalism from itself by blowing with the wind. But inspired by native forces, the goo-goos at Journalism That Matters gathered in “open space” at a George Washington University cafeteria to agonize over the ill-winds of change. All the right people – which, in the language of the event, were those who were there – blew away inhibitions in feel-good exercises designed to find salvation for journalism at the crossroads. All in about 30 hours. Which is very fast when you consider that journalism has been at someone’s idea of a crossroads for a coupla hundred years.

The outcomes were as predictable as they were quick. Flip-chart wisdom validated pre-planned outcomes including (1) research and education agendas sustaining journalism; (2) “breakthroughs across silos of thought and practice;” and (3) a framework for launching the Next Newsroom, a business with margins that appeal to the low financial expectations of civic-supportive, community investors.

While its agenda is earnest, JTM suffers from dated, naïve assumptions about the ongoing transitions in journalism, community and civic life. And then there are JTM’s breezy rules of engagement: “whoever comes is the right people/whatever happens is the right thing ….” That’s just silly. Serious plans require rigor, talent and scrutiny.

We’re all for journalism that matters. Who isn’t? As far as we can tell there’s nothing stopping journalism-that-matters from happening. Better reporting from the very people who seek better reporting is a good place to start. So would the inclusion of the fairly brilliant innovators outside of journalism’s tortured and clubby network. With so many inspiring innovations, enabling technologies, fresh investment and creative ideas emerging from a media-savvy society it’s hard to embrace a woe-is-journalism agenda. The wind blows forward.

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If the Next Newsroom sounds familiar, it is. It borrows language from Newspaper Next (request the report; don’t republish), the “transformation project” financed by newspaper publishers. Both projects owe to Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen’s broadly applicable, 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma. The difference: the American Press Institute paid Christensen’s consulting company $2.5 million to repurpose his case studies; JTM organizer Chris Peck bought the book. ($12.21 for the paperback at Amazon). Never mind that Christensen famously forecast the demise of the newspaper industry. His company, Innosight, happily competes for consulting engagements to help fix the industry.

The situation reminds me of the fertilizer problem at my golf course. We hire an enterprising service called Birds-B-Gone to chase away the flock of geese that summers by the lake on the 16th Hole. Trained dogs cause the geese to fly off to a nearby course. That course then hires the same service to chase them back to ours. Birds-B-Gone gets good both ways.

Though they share terminology, the two Next projects come from different parts of the goose: JTM from the heart, Newspaper Next from the, ah, wallet. The competing initiatives, both aimed in some way at saving newspapers, exacerbate the rift among journalists and publishers about solving a common problem. Only the goose-chasers make out.

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Here’s an interesting collaboration that nicely illustrates how seemingly different agendas can intersect: The Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog organization that focuses on expanding online access to information about the U.S. Congress, is collaborating with NewsTrust, a kind of non-profit Digg designed as a platform to evaluate the trustworthiness of online journalism.
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Carlos Garcia and Omar Ramos presented and did a live demo of Scrapblog:

“Scrapblog is a free web service that allows everyone to create multimedia scrapblogs.”

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I’m not sure there’s a better-defined “community” than the members of a college or university. Student, faculty, staff, alumni and friends generally have strong feelings and ties to the institution where they teach, work, study, play and spend (or spent) a good part of their adult life.

With ready access to computers, cell phones, personal data devices and the like, this community has the potential to be one of the most “connected” of communities and benefit from the shared ideas and goals from those both physically located on campus, to those who share a virtual connection.

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Yahoo was downgraded today by S&P to “sell” from “hold.” Why?

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A novel approach to collaborative filtering launched a couple of weeks ago and is worth a look. NewsTrust is tying to develop a more reliable means of finding the most trustworthy news and information for specific stories – not simply by relying on your hunches and experience with your media, but by relying on the hunches, experience and detailed reviews of a community of news junkies who contribute to the service’s ratings. (Disclosure: I’m an advisor to NewsTrust).

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