Online News: What have we accomplished?

One of the after effects of the Poynter essay by Clark (Your Duty to Read the Paper) was that it spurred some life into the Online-News mailing list (which has been around for many, many years.) Anyway, this contribution by Beau Dure was really good, and I wanted to highlight it here for any of you that might not be on the Online-News list (and to maybe spark some discussion here.) Thanks to Mr. Dure for allowing me to reprint.

What have we accomplished?

I see this as a question of expectations.

Were you expecting online operations to make money? Good. Many of them are.

Were you expecting online operations to make as much money as print? Not there yet. I know Terry Heaton has some thoughts on the subject. We haven't managed to get readers to search a local newspaper site for ads the way they search a local newspaper's Sunday inserts, despite many well-intentioned Yellow Pages/City Guide efforts.

Were you expecting to see a hybrid of hypertext, photos, video and animation - a whole new way of telling stories? We've barely scratched the surface. Still, so much of it seems to me straight out of Dave Barry's "I'm Only Writing This to Win a Pulitzer" column. It's done to impress other journalists. (Obviously, there are exceptions, many of which will be shared here in response!)

Meanwhile, we've seen that the traditional news story still has some life in it. What was heresy in the late '90s is essential blog fodder in the '00s.

Some notable "blogs" are really just opinion columns. What's the difference between this Guardian "blog" (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/) and a more traditional op-ed section?

Maybe we'll force ourselves to write shorter pieces as we look toward the mobile market.

Were you expecting newspapers to open the floodgates for readers to share thoughts in real time? Good.

Were you expecting that conversation to be intelligent? We'll get back to you on that one. The good news is that we've seen some early "crowdsourcing" efforts. We'll try to live up to Gillmor and Rosen's theories just as soon as we can figure out how to pay for a group of people to discern experts from loud shouters.

I'm as much a fan of the blogging experiments in Greensboro as the next Online-Newser - probably moreso, since I spent four terrific years at the N&R. But judging from the agenda-driven comments on John Robinson's blog, my old editor in Wilmington probably got better feedback in the steam room at the Y than John is getting online.

Were you expecting journalists to embrace new media? Those of you who aren't in newsrooms these days may not believe it, but journalists "get it."

Priceless exchange I saw recently: Someone gave a remedial explanation of a new tool we were rolling out, going slowly over the details as if no one had ever seen anything like it.

Any questions? Yes, you at the back.

"Have we considered adding feature X? It works really well at site Y."

"Why don't we have feature Z?"

"Does this use technology A or technology B?"

The presenter was clearly shocked to get a question other than "What does the 'Reply' button do?"

Those of us on this list tend to harp a little too much on the news executives who wouldn't recognize Craig from Craig's List. (I've never been sure what that proves - I wouldn't recognize my own CEO. Or Tom Tancredo. Or Rihanna, who is apparently immune to the forces of change that make the record industry far more precarious than the newspaper industry.) We still have a few clueless managers, I'm sure. But their numbers are thinning. And the rank and file "gets it."

The bottom line: Newspapers could have done everything "right" - all the suggestions from this list, minus the things never caught on - and still found themselves in the situation they're in today. The marketplace is fragmenting. Prime-time network TV is losing viewers. Tower Records is gone. Forty years ago, everyone could name a Beatles song; today, most people don't know any of the songs in the Top 10. We simply have too many options.

We shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking that newspapers could've built Facebook-style communities (political trolls would've done them in) and transformed the way we see/read/hear news, all while becoming economic juggernauts. It simply could not have happened.

As the market fragments, traditional newspapers will decline. The good ones will eventually hit a plateau, whether they're still called "newspapers" at that point or something else. (It's still "Web radio," so I guess NYTimes.com will still be a "newspaper site.")

But there will be opportunities for good journalism. From what I've seen on this list, most of us are actually in comfortable niches. (I don't know where the ESPN employees and other national mass-media folks hang out.)

So we've established niche media while transforming traditional media - perhaps more slowly than intended - into something new. We've learned a lot along the way from both successes and failures, both small and spectacular.

What have we accomplished? Seems like a lot to me. I'm not even an optimist - I'd be lying if I said I was sure I'd be in this business five years from now - but it's been an interesting ride.

Beau Dure

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