[Tim Lee]
Some of the commenters are not convinced by my assertion that web-based news sources will pick up the slack from mainstream newspapers. Peter Bautista, for example, writes:
Take all these blogs, for instance (including those here at The Atlantic). Almost none of them do their own reporting - they're commentary on original reporting done by others. Without those reporters, what are the blogs going to talk about? The Atlantic blogs have the institutional support of the Atlantic magazine, which can pay reporters, but a magazine's reporters can't don't cover the immediate breaking news that a newspaper reporter does. If there are no newspapers, who's doing the original daily reporting?
The first point is that as I understand it, at least one of the Atlantic's bloggers Marc Ambinder actually does do original reporting. But setting that aside, here's the macro-level trend in the news business: The 20th century's major information distribution technologies—newspapers, magazines, and television and radio broadcasts—were characterized by economies of scale. One large newspaper could operate more cheaply than 10 smaller newspapers that together had the same circulation. As a result, the industry got highly concentrated, with large, monolithic institutions like the New York Times and the Washington Post hiring large staffs of reporters that covered every conceivable subject.
The 21st century's dominant information distribution technology, the Internet, isn't characterized by the kind of economies of scale. As a consequence, the optimum size for a news organization is likely much smaller than it was in the 21st century. What we're seeing is the disaggregation of the news business. Instead of dozens of media organizations with staffs in the hundreds or thousands, we're likely to see thousands of news organizations with a few dozen—or even fewer&mdash employees.
The 20th century model of the newspaper—a monolithic corporation with a thousand reporters that cover everything from sports to foreign policy—is comforting because there's a certain amount of predictability that comes with central planning. We can be sure that the New York Times will cover every topic because it has a hierarchy of editors whose job it is to make sure that all the important topics get covered. If there's a gap in the Times's coverage, they'll hire a new reporter to plug the gap. People who are used to the monolithic Times model find the unplanned cacophony of voices on the Internet bewildering. And they wonder how we can be sure that everything will get covered when there isn't a monolithic organization like the New York Times to guarantee that it will happen.
But while central planning often produces a comforting uniformity, it isn't actually a particularly efficient way to organize the enterprise of news gathering. Bureaucratic organizations tend to have high overhead and to allocate resources poorly. In hierarchical news organizations, reporters tend to be confined to narrowly defined beats and are given limited flexibility to branch out into other subjects that might interest them more. Large organizations tend to waste resources—flying a reporter to a remote location and putting her up in a hotel when a locally-based freelancer could have covered the story just as well, for example.
News gathering on the web is a decentralized process. Most of the news organizations that have sprouted on the web have narrower, more idiosyncratic focuses. There are fewer organizations that aspire to cover "all the news that's fit to print." But while that might worry people who are used to the predictability of 20th-century organizational methods, the new system is likely to be better. Specialization allows publications to develop deeper bench of talent in the topics they cover. A swarm of smaller organizations gives the system more flexibility. And the lower barriers to entry allow a proliferation of new voices that provide unique perspectives on the news.
In March I argued that the world of technology news is a good blueprint for the future of the broader news industry. We've long since passed the point where the majority of tech news is broken first online, much of it by news organizations that didn't exist 15 years ago. I write for Ars Technica, a site that has 8 full-time employees, most of whom do original reporting, that was recently acquired by Conde Nast. Wired is technically a print publication, but they are increasingly a web-focused company with a stable of bloggers, many of whom do original reporting. CNet's News.com is the 800-pound gorilla of tech reporting, with several full-time reporters covering technology issues. I recently had a friend hired away from a technology blog to work full-time as a reporter for Paid Content.
When I pointed this out to a panel of pessimists at a recent conference on the future of news, sites like Ars, Wired, and News.com were dismissed as mere trade publications, narrowly focused on covering the lucrative IT business. But although the IT industry is certainly a major focus of these sites, it's a mistake to dismiss the tech news industry as a bunch of niche trade journals. Wired's Threat Level blog, for example, covers national security and privacy issues in greater depth than you'll find in almost any mainstream publication. Ars Technica covers civil liberties issues extensively, and also has in-depth science coverage. The same point could be made of other prominent technology publications. Certainly the IT industry is a major focus, but the tech blogosphere collectively covers a lot more than that.
Of course, technology is one narrow subject, and demonstrating that it's being well-covered doesn't prove that every other topic is being covered too. But here's where the point about central planning comes in. The disaggregation of the news industry means that I can't point to one publication that's covering every conceivable topic as the New York Times did 20 years ago. But that doesn't mean that any given topic isn't being covered. I used technology as an example because it's the beat I know best, but similar things are happening on other beats. Political reporting has seen significant new web-based efforts like the Huffington Post, TPM, and the Politico.
When industries decentralize, there's a natural human bias that makes things look worse than they really are. During the "downsizing" of the 1990s, there would be prominent headlines every time a large company laid of 5,000 people. Yet there would not be headlines if, during the same week, 5,000 small companies hired a single person each. Something similar is happening in the news business. There is no shortage of jobs for reporters, especially those with the skills necessary to thrive on the web. However, these jobs are at hundreds of small, growing, web-based publications that are far less prominent than the Washington Post and the New York Times. And so a lot of people—including the employees of newspapers—are focused on the grim headlines about laid-off reporters, without noticing the simultaneous trend of significant new opportunities for reporters at smaller publications.
Photo courtesy Ecnerwal
Even with newspapers, who's doing it now? Not the newspapers. Peter must be living in a world where TPM didn't win a Polk award for its original reporting of the US Attorney scandal.
Thanks for the long post.
My skepticism is focused here:
The 20th century's major information distribution technologies—newspapers, magazines, and television and radio broadcasts—were characterized by economies of scale. One large newspaper could operate more cheaply than 10 smaller newspapers that together had the same circulation/
Has the web era really made this less true? Specifically, is reporting cheaper now? The web cuts all kinds of costs, from printing to communications, but at the end of the day, we do need reporters physically on-scene at least some of the time.
I'm not in the newspaper business, so I don't know what percentage of the budget is given over to shoe-leather reporting. Perhaps the cost savings on everything else are so great thanks to the web that smaller, web-based news sources can now afford to pay for professional, on-site reporters (on staff, or via free-lance). I just don't know enough about the economics of journalism, but that's my concern.
The disaggregation effect can't really kick in for local reporting until there's additional, web-based transparency. All meetings webcast, for example, and all government databases (minus privacy-protected information)available on-line. At that point bloggers and hobbyists can scrape the info and come up with interesting reports.
I was a reporter and editor at mid-to-large newspapers for 20 years. At my last reporting job (the Minneapolis Star Tribune), a top 15 daily newspaper, I made about $70,000 a year.
I don't think there are many websites that are paying that sort of money to their reporters. And my newsroom had more than 200 reporters, plus editors, photographers, designers, all of whom made good, solid salaries.
Maybe the money for web reporters will come in time. But what I see in the news business are free-lancers piecing together an increasingly tenuous living by scrambling to write as much as they can on the web for $100 or $200 an item.
The day when a newspaper reporter could earn a solid middle-class (or better) salary may be over.
I was a reporter and editor at mid-to-large newspapers for 20 years. At my last reporting job (the Minneapolis Star Tribune), a top 15 daily newspaper, I made about $70,000 a year.
I don't think there are many websites that are paying that sort of money to their reporters. And my newsroom had more than 200 reporters, plus editors, photographers, designers, all of whom made good, solid salaries.
Maybe the money for web reporters will come in time. But what I see in the news business are free-lancers piecing together an increasingly tenuous living by scrambling to write as much as they can on the web for $100 or $200 an item.
The day when a newspaper reporter could earn a solid middle-class (or better) salary may be over.
I was a reporter and editor at mid-to-large newspapers for 20 years. At my last reporting job (the Minneapolis Star Tribune), a top 15 daily newspaper, I made about $70,000 a year.
I don't think there are many websites that are paying that sort of money to their reporters. And my newsroom had more than 200 reporters, plus editors, photographers, designers, all of whom made good, solid salaries.
Maybe the money for web reporters will come in time. But what I see in the news business are free-lancers piecing together an increasingly tenuous living by scrambling to write as much as they can on the web for $100 or $200 an item.
The day when a newspaper reporter could earn a solid middle-class (or better) salary may be over.
Sorry for the multiple posts. Thinking my slow server wasn't connecting, I hit the button a few times.
I remain skeptical. Until web reporting sites are able to develop a business model and the economies of scale required to pay a living wage and health benefits, they will remain the preserve of hobbyists, ego-bloggers (Huffpost, et.al.), karaoke journalists and a few ambitious youngsters willing to take the risk to break in.
Mark Pinsky, Orlando Sentinel
ok john - Having just done the math I think your salary of $210,000 a year is obscene.
Reporters who wait around for online journalism to become more stable are going to miss the boat. You've got a chance here to start journalistic ventures with no middleman and reach a global audience. If you're first or best in your niche, whether it's a locality or a subject, you have a real opportunity to make a living. Or better.
(You also have a chance to dig yourself deeper into a hole, of course, but it's hard to make less than you'd be offered by most newspapers these days.)
The phrase "karaoke journalists" nicely demonstrates the typical pro's contempt for bloggers. My compliments, Mark.
Online journalism is great for varied and interesting commentary. But I am concerned about what seems to be a trend of less and less diversity in first-hand reporting. Blogs take their stories from newspapers, and newspapers more and more take their stories from AP. Bylines from foreign correspondents are overwhelmingly in capital cities.
I'm especially worried about war reporting -- we have very few articles from Iraq where the reporter writes from outside Baghdad. If you compare to war coverage in WWII, there was far more direct information from all over the world. I'm afraid that with newspapers cutting costs and blogs proliferating, the structure of news will shift from predominantly reporting to predominantly commentary. More hot air over less news spells a less informed public.
I bemoan the wasting away of our local paper, but I see no hope for it. Paper newspapers are relics. And so far, even the best papers can't make money online. It's obvious that any new model will be entirely supported by advertising, so that question is whether journalists can attract enough money to make that work. A handful of individual bloggers and group blogs are doing this now.
Perhaps group blogs, which have very low operating costs, will emerge to cover local areas, making enough money to stay alive. So far these mostly have weak to nonexistent editing/quality control functions, which I certainly miss, but then "real" papers seem to have lost their touch at that, also.
naturally there are jobs in small markets, but how do you raise a family on $30K a year? or how as a single person do buy a house? and how do you move "up" in your reporting when the only moves are horizontal? it's demoralizing to see friends take these normal steps and have to sit them out. i can ask myself to make hard choices; i imagine it would be so much harder to make them for a spouse or child.
Larry,
Do we know for certain that the public is unwilling to pay for quality journalism? I'm not so sure about that.
I would be willing to pay a monthly subscription ($5?) for quality, online-only reporting, provided it was really smart stuff and was presented with video, audio and photography that I could download. No ads would be another incentive.
I'd like to think that others might consider paying for that, too.
Doug