Who's Investing for the Future? Plenty of Us

UPDATED

The Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual media report is online and loaded with fascinating data and conclusions. I want to point to one item -- a section called "News Investment" -- and this paragraph:

It is part of a larger trend in American journalism: much of the investment and effort is in repackaging and presenting information, not in gathering it. For all that the number of outlets has grown, the number of people engaged in collecting original information has not. Americans are frankly more likely to see the same pictures across multiple TV channels or read the same wire story in different venues than they were a generation ago.

I share the concern that news organizations are cutting their investments. An informed citizenry is crucial to the functioning of the republic and of society as a whole.

I don't see much hope that commercial journalism organizations will invest more. They are conservative to a fault when it comes to adapting to change. (I hope I am wrong on this, and suspect I'm not.)

But there is a great movement beginning to form. We're calling it things like "citizen journalism" or "grassroots media" and other names. It is the mass movement of telling each other our stories, via blogs and other media, and exposing our neighbors to news they can't get other ways.

People are already investing enormous amounts of time in the bottom-up arena. The majority of them are voting via clicks, seeking out better information -- or at least different perspectives -- to get a better report than the one dropped on their doorstep or on the evening TV show. A subset, a minority but still a lot of people, are folks who want to have their say and want to be part of a conversation, not talked down to in lecture mode by an industry that sees news as just another widget on an assembly line.

It will be absolutely essential that we try to do this new kind of journalism in a good way -- not throwing out the best practices and principles of the past but using them to inform and improve that fervor and knowledge from the edge. We can do it together.

Update: Alan Mutter noticed something I missed -- profits are rising much faster than sales. There are several ways to make this happen, but one of the obvious ones is to squeeze the journalism expenses, which is precisely what is happening.

And Merrill Brown, in this essay about online journalism's progress, sums up this way:

So, while business might appear prosperous, beneath the success lies a perplexing reality. Many of the news organizations that make most Web site journalism possible, either through their dollars or the work of the journalists reporting for their traditional products, are in some combination of strategic, journalistic and financial peril. It is those organizations that make large-scale Internet news sites viable. In a world of dwindling resources, a world of falling daily newspaper readership and fragmented television news audiences, who will produce the journalism of scale and importance that informs citizens about national political campaigns and international conflict? Bloggers? Citizen journalists? The software developers who produce RSS readers?

The answers that emerge over this decade to those questions are certain to impact the future not just of Internet news but of journalism itself.

Comments

[Mike]

Amen!

The report reinforces my belief that the real innovation is going to come from journalism professionals working outside the corporate system. That seems the most likely way to get true innovation AND a grip on the good standards and practices that our industry has developed.

In many cases, I think this is about bringing back some standards, particularly in local news, that have been lost-- most importantly a coverage of neighborhoods with the same quality and attention that the "big stories" get.

I've got a new schpeal when I talk to people on this topic. I call it "The Electronic Fedora." The gist is using technology to enable a return to the old-school world where monopoly newspapers weren't even a consideration and neighborhood beats were commonplace in most cities. Will write a post on it whenever I get the time...

[Anna]

It will be absolutely essential that we try to do this new kind of journalism in a good way -- not throwing out the best practices and principles of the past but using them to inform and improve that fervor and knowledge from the edge. We can do it together.

How? Where is this discussion happening? We can't do it together if we don't address how to do it - to the extent that we have influence but not standards, we get infiltrated by shills.

From the Wash. Post * -
The administration's interpretation -- it's okay to hide the source as long as the spot is "purely informational" -- is untenable: Highlighting some "facts" and leaving out others can be even more persuasive than outright advocacy...

I bet many bloggers are a good deal cheaper than VNRs, and it could explain much of the commentary.

[Howard Owens]

There are other ways to increase profits on lower sales other than cutting expenses.

[Jozef Imrich]

Amen and Awomen!

By the way, Dan please consider check out a vision of the project - Experiment in Democracy

Now is the time for all good men & women to come to the aid of their Blogosphere Experiment in Democracy

Clouds over Democracy Start to lift
We the Bloggers, in order to form a more perfect Blogosphere, hold these truths to be self-evident: Free Thought and Free Speech are the cornerstones of Free Societies and Free People
Why a Blogosphere Democracy? Throughout our history, high-minded tools and actions have often been slandered and oppressed by those who wouldn't benefit from them--to mention a few: Science, Religion, Arts, Philosophy and specifically the study of Rhetoric which has never recovered, the Printing Press, Democracy, etc., etc., etc. To that end, the following proposition is a mere outline to establish an inclusive organized system to benefit the overall Blogosphere; all constitutional decisions should be clarified and ratified by the Foundation Board, Elected Congress Members, and engaged Bloggers (see below). Issues of concern to the Blogosphere can be addressed in this system as determined by the Members of the Board and Congress; likewise, individual Bloggers can appeal to their representative for action. The Blogosphere Democracy, in the hands of the Foundation Board and Congress of Bloggers, can achieve a democratic voice (Congress), support (Foundation), unity (Union), and advances (Guild) for the Blogosphere while finding methods of defending (Bureau) it.
Out of Many