Crowdsourcing the Civil War

In the video below, George Rable, University of Alabama history professor, discusses the sources of information that newspaper editors during the Civil War used for their reports about battles and the war in general.

One important source was letters from soldiers -- a form of what we could call today crowdsourcing. This means using the accounts of participants at an event to construct an account of that event.

Crowdsourcing the Civil War from Jim Stovall on Vimeo.

The demise of newspapers - revisited

A few months ago, I wrote a piece about the demise of newspapers being a good thing for the future of journalism.

Today, I am using those ideas -- and a new more -- as a basis for a speech I am giving to the Knoxville Torch Club.

Here is the basic text of the talk:

---

A couple of weeks ago, my son got married in Washington, D.C., at the Willard Hotel . . . [STORY] (audio to come)

What’s this got to do with newspapers? Nothing. And that’s the point.

What’s this got to do with journalism? A lot, I think.

Our world of communication – and our way of delivering the news – has shifted dramatically over the last ten years, even over the last five years. Print is no long a viable option of telling ourselves about ourselves on a timely basis, which is what journalism is. Print is slow, cumbersome, limited and expensive.

The web, on the other hand, is fast, flexible, inexpensive and seems to offer the future of journalism a cafeteria of possibilities that make the future both bright and interesting.

That’s why I believe the quicker we can get over our adherence to print in journalism, the better journalism will be.

Now, notice the wording of this talk. I said the demise of newspapers, not the death of newspapers. I do not wish death upon newspapers.

I grew up, so to speak, with newspapers. Reading them and later working for them. I have worked for six different newspapers as a reporter and editor, and since I have been in academia I have consulted with many more. I have many friends and former students who are fulltime newspaper people. I do not wish them ill.

And, in fact, I do not believe that newspapers in general are going to die. Some have, and some will, certainly. But when you look at the newspaper industry as a whole, particularly smaller newspapers, you see an industry that is in pretty good shape.

Smaller newspapers are better able to weather the rough economic climate that we are experiencing today. And, I think, they have more time to figure out the new media environment that we are in. Plus, their structure makes them more flexible and adaptable, and I think there is a great chance that they will come through all of this – though I believe their days of monopolistic practices and fat profits are over.

So, if a journalism student still wants a career in newspapers, I think it’s still a viable option.

But if a student is interest in doing journalism, I no longer think that newspapers are the best option. In fact, I’m not convinced that they are a very good option – for the reasons I mentioned earlier. They are slow, cumbersome, and expensive.

And they are limited.

Newspapers, by their very nature, can give you the news in only one way – print. The web can use a variety of forms and formats – text, pictures, audio, video and combinations of these platforms. Newspapers are geared to production deadlines. The web has significantly less production time involved in the process, and that production is significantly cheaper.

The quicker that newspapers transform themselves into news organizations – ones where print is only a small portion of what they do – the better off they will be. And the better off we, as news consumers, will be. To do that, newspapers will not only have to change what they do but also the way they think.

And here, I think, the evidence is discouraging.

Newspapers should be hiring reporters and editors rather than firing them.

Newspapers should be investing in journalism and in innovative ways to inform their readers rather than cutting back on page numbers and page sizes.

Newspapers should be looking for new ways to serve their readers. They should be trying to find new services based on the fact that they are the chief information gatherers in their communities.

Newspapers should be more attuned to what their audiences want and need. And they should be more responsive.

Several months ago, I was trying to sell a house. I visited the web site of the local newspaper to find out information about buying a classified ad. That began a rather torturous journey that wasted an hour of my time . . .[STORY](audio to come)

If newspapers are going to have paid subscribers – and I think that is a BIG IF – they should stop whining about the Internet and charge those subscribers something much closer to the cost of production than what they do now.

Finally, newspapers have to accept two irrefutable facts:

• Their economic environment has changed. They are no longer the monopolies that can command 20, 30, or even 40 percent profit margins.

• News and information is no longer what they thought it was.

In the good old days – about 10 years ago – news was a product. Newspapers produced it and sold it.

But the world is shifting so that news is now conversation. Economically, how does that work? The answer is we don’t know. But there it is.

Let me give you a non-newspaper example of this:

I coordinate all of the sections of our beginning news writing course. We offer about 11 sections, and once a week, all of those sections come together for a lecture that I give. There are between 150 and 200 students there. Most of you have probably heard of Twitter. [EXPLAIN] Well, Twitter is not all that popular with students . . .[STORY] (audio to come)

Unfortunately, I do not see a lot of evidence that newspaper are accepting their new environment or changing their thinking. There is very little innovation going on with newspapers now. It’s most retrenchment and hoping that all of this will go away.

The innovation is being done by Google and Yahoo and the small entrepreneurs who will shape the new media world. They are the ones that are creating a very bright future for today’s journalism students.

And that is why I believe that the demise of newspapers, ultimately, will be a good thing for journalism.

A superior user experience

Those of us who struggle every day trying to figure out this new media thing and worrying about economic models for journalism get distracted by many ideas and lamentations.

Thanks, then, to Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president for product management at Google, for this long, thought-provoking, and perceptive piece that helps to refocus on what we should be about: a superior user experience.

. . . As written communication has evolved from long letter to short text message, news has largely shifted from thoughtful to spontaneous. The old-fashioned static news article is now just a starting point, inciting back-and-forth debate that often results in a more balanced and detailed assessment. And the old-fashioned business model of bundled news, where the classifieds basically subsidized a lot of the high-quality reporting on the front page, has been thoroughly disrupted.

This is a problem, but since online journalism is still in its relative infancy it's one that can be solved (we're technology optimists, remember?). The experience of consuming news on the web today fails to take full advantage of the power of technology. It doesn't understand what users want in order to give them what they need. When I go to a site like the New York Times or the San Jose Mercury, it should know what I am interested in and what has changed since my last visit. If I read the story on the US stimulus package only six hours ago, then just show me the updates the reporter has filed since then (and the most interesting responses from readers, bloggers, or other sources). If Thomas Friedman has filed a column since I last checked, tell me that on the front page. Beyond that, present to me a front page rich with interesting content selected by smart editors, customized based on my reading habits (tracked with my permission). Browsing a newspaper is rewarding and serendipitous, and doing it online should be even better. This will not by itself solve the newspapers' business problems, but our heritage suggests that creating a superior user experience is the best place to start.

What do readers want? My guess is that it's three things:

• news and information
• conversation
• opportunity

Opportunity for what?

We'll try to explore that in future blogs.
_________

And thanks to Jack Shafer, writing another excellent piece in Slate on business models for journalism (Not all information wants to be free), for pointing to the Rosenberg article.

The demise of newspapers means better journalism

We who contemplate the importance of journalism look at the future with trepidation.

What happens to journalism, we ask, when newspapers continue on their inevitable decline? The question assumes that journalism itself will be diminished.

I am coming to a different conclusion:

Journalism will improve once newspapers die or decline to a minor medium.

Note that I said news-PAPER, not news organization. I have worked for newspapers in five cities (technically six because Bristol, Virginia, and Bristol, Tennessee, are two different cities). I loved the work and made my living at it for a while. I have many friends and former students who are newspaper people. They are facing difficult and uncertain times right now, and I wish them stability and good fortune.

But the medium they work so hard to produce -- the paper -- is holding back journalism from doing the best job that it can for society. The sooner the paper is gone, the better.

I have been thinking a lot about a piece that Steve Outing wrote for Editor and Publisher a couple of weeks ago. In it he envisioned the all-digital newsroom, and I teased out of that his list of qualifications that people who got jobs in that newsroom would have. Those qualifications are just the ones we need for journalism to thrive in this new technological age.

In addition, I was privileged to be in Nashville last week and hear Janet Coats describe how the Tampa Tribune (via TBO.com) is shifting its focus and operation from print to digital. (A short video of some of what she had to say is here on Jack Lail's Random Mumblings.) Her talk was fascinating -- a blend of practical and inspirational words that this beleaguered profession needs.

So, I began to think ahead to the day when won't be chained to the printing press. And my conclusion was that journalism will be better. Here's why:

• More reporting. I don't necessarily buy the argument that there will be fewer journalists in the new age of digital journalism. The numbers will drop if the current news organization managers (editors and publishers) are in charge. Fortunately, they won't be. Instead, we're likely to have managers who recognize that good reporting -- and lots of it -- is an asset to the organization, not a cost to be cut.
  
  
• More reporters. Students in my experience are wildly excited about this new age of journalism. I am honored to be the faculty adviser to the Tennessee Journalist , the student operated news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee. More than 35 people regularly show up at our weekly staff meeting (only the editors are required to come) and the numbers are growing. The number of our majors has grown from 350 to 450 in just one year.
  
  
• More, different and better ways of telling a story. Newspapers and the people who run them have stifled the development of digital journalism. Slavery to print -- as well as simple laziness and stump stupidity -- have sucked the energy out of efforts to creatively use this new medium.
  
  
• Recognition that journalism occurs outside the traditional news organization. Digital newsrooms will form in places that never thought of themselves as news organizations. All web sites that attract an audience are news web sites. Visitors demand new information. That why people return to a site. Journalism would do well to embrace this concept.
  
  
• More respect for the audience. The accusations of arrogance leveled against traditional journalism are unfortunately correct. The web -- with its interactivity and with the ability of the audience to leave in an instant -- does not tolerate the arrogance of the journalistic priesthood.
  
  
• Better writing. As Jakob Neilsen, usability guru, says, readers are "selfish, lazy and ruthless." They will not put up with the flabby, self-indulgent prose we produce.
  
  
• Better reporting. With the audience involved in the process, we will have more sources and more points of view. We won't be gatekeepers. On our best days, we'll be conversation starters and guides. But we won't be in control. And that is a good thing.

Despite the current financial woes of news organizations and the generally hard economic times, the future of journalism looks bright and exciting.

And it will improve when we are done with print. I say, speed the day.

Qualities of the digital journalist

Steve Outing, a well-known thinker and writer about online journalism, has envisioned the not-so-distant future digital newsroom in his January 28 column for Editor and Publisher. (The All-Digital Newsroom of the Not-So-Distant Future)

The whole thing is well worth reading and, journalism profs, recommending to your students.

Of particular interest is what Outing says will be the qualities of those who land jobs in this new space. They will be:

• people with understanding of and enthusiasm for new forms of media and storytelling
  
  
• multifunctional journalists who can use all the tools available, particularly audio and video recorders
  
  
• social networks users and people who know how to gather an audience
  
  
• people who can engage with audiences and are comfortable sharing personal information

Underlying all of these qualities is an affinity for practicing good journalism.

Someone asked me today what I thought the Knoxville News Sentinel (the local paper) would be in 10 years. I said I thought there would be a 24/7 web operation with a weekend print edition. That's based on what has happened in the last few weeks.

But who knows what innovations await us? We can only say with certainty that paper will no longer be surpreme.