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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
June 13, 2002 • Last week's weblog
Imagine and further this idea (please): Dave Winer has a plan for newspapers embracing weblogs:
"First, I would offer a copy of Radio UserLand (a Weblog tool; Winer is CEO of UserLand) that runs on your desktop. to every person on the editorial staff (okay, I'm biased) and say "Start a weblog now if you want." Then I'd make the same offer to the readers. Then I'd watch to see what happens. I'd say to the staff "Read the new weblogs, and for those of you who have your own, point to the articles you find interesting or useful." Let this run for a few months. My bet is that the community starts generating good news reports..."
I like Winer's idea a lot, but think it would work better detached from newspapers.
The Federal government classifies newspapers as "light manufacturing." Newsrooms are factories, like giant bakeries: "We make it fresh every day" is the slogan locally identified with The Providence Journal.
There is no slack in this production line. There are "drop-dead" deadlines: The presses roll at a specific time. The trucks leave at a specific time. If the paper "goes late," it costs big bucks -- overtime for everybody down the line.
Some reporters still don't publish their email addresses because they barely have time, in these days of downsized news staffs, to cover their beats. Others, especially in the suburban bureaus, have story quotas -- a certain number of stories they're expected to file every week in order to fill the newspaper.
"Do you want me to write a story for tomorrow or answer email?" is not a choice for an editor with a newshole to fill. "Do you want me to write a story or answer email or write a weblog or read others' weblogs?" would drive 'em to drink.
Gathering and vetting information and writing a story someone wants to read takes time, far more time than reacting to it, commenting on it or pointing to it, the stuff of most weblogs. (Even this blog only exists because I don't need much sleep.)
Mass weblogging, as Dave envisions it, is a different animal. An animal of the future. This newspaper's production facility -- the building and all the equipment -- cost $60 million 10 years ago. Several hundred people work on processes that that are unique to publishing on paper. Lop off everything that involves outputting, printing and delivery -- hand this over to the reader -- and publishing is no longer prohibitvely expensive. You only have to make one copy.
In the future, I have no doubt that all the objective data -- funerals, event listings, restaurant menus, city council agendas, graduation lists, court calendars, cop logs, highway repair maps, movie times & & & -- will be inserted into the collective info stream by those who generate the information, not by newspaper gatekeepers.
A digital news organization might be a former newspaper, or a collective, like UPI. Freed of the presses and paper and trucks, a digital news exchange (The DEN!) could indeed be a collaboration of writers and photographers and editors and readers with the hats sometimes interchanged:
If you're writing like this -- Kesey Affair in NYC -- you're blogging. If you're writing like this -- The life and death -- and struggle with death -- of Ken Kesey -- you're practicing a sophisticated craft. (links via Jorn Barger's Robot Wisdom)
But who pays the full-time "content creators"?
(Dave suggests that those who don't write weblogs leave journalism: "...the former reporters, who now are editors, talent scouts and teachers, are also energized, doing what they wanted to do when they got into journalism." I don't think this will work, any more than suggesting that a former lawyer practice law as a hobby will work. You'll end up with born journalists being bad teachers, if they can get such a job.
And, Dave, please don't fire the editors. We will want editors for involved stories. A diplomatic editor can be your first reader, helping you see what isn't going to be clear to later readers, and a valued collaborator who agrees to stay in the left brain while you create with the right.)
I think a bigger conversation will eventually hammer out a way to pay the rent.
We will need new economic models and creative business tools -- easy, secure shopping carts tied to informal catalogs created on the fly ("This arrived today, we took a picture. We have 8 of them. who wants one?"), easy ways for people to find and purchase the goods and services they need without driving all over town, and delivery, besides pizza, without big surcharges. We'll need simple software interfaces and hardware no more complex than a basic digital camera if everybody's going to get to play.
Two-way high-speed net access from anywhere for everyone, for cheap or for free, is essential to deliver this digital future.
Essential also are literacy, tools for the bloggers, and other tools to enable musicians, artists, videographers and playwrights to participate in the commons.
How do we get gracefully
from here to there?
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