Newspapers and the Internet: Opportunities Lost

I ran out of time this morning before I had a chance to praise Jack Shaffer’s piece about newspapers’ failure to invent the web and reinvent themselves. Talk about burying the lead: His best lines came in his kicker:

From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions. Despite being early arrivals, despite having spent millions on manpower and hardware, despite all the animations, links, videos, databases, and other software tricks found on their sites, every newspaper Web site is instantly identifiable as a newspaper Web site. By succeeding, they failed to invent the Web.

As Adrian Monck points out, this is really just another chapter in the ongoing soap opera about the culpability of journalists for the state of journalism today.

Shafer is inspired by Pablo Boczkowski’s 2004 book Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers, and I have in my hand his thick and thoughtful 2001 dissertation on the topic. He chronicles attempts by papers to figure out and adapt to new media as it (they) emerged, including the creation of NJ.com’s Community Connection, which I lead and which died soon after Pablo wrote his treatise. It was one attempt among many to figure out the internet. And it’s one of the indictments against my tenure in online newspapers, for it was an attempt to be too controlling over the creation of communities. In my book, I quote Clay Shirky and Mark Zuckerberg as I learned that newspapers don’t create communities but might be lucky enough to serve them.

So there were many attempts by papers to adapt. There were many mistakes. Mine were among them. And so - to address Shafer and Monck - the question remains whether newspapers tried hard enough. Shafer says they may have tried but they barked up wrong trees.

I am accused by some of dancing on the graves of journalists’ jobs, of being happy that papers are dying. That’s not true. It’s a willful misinterpretation. If I have an emotion associated with newspapers’ fall - and I’m not sure I do - it’s anger and disappointment at what Shafer describes as papers’ failure to think past a world seen in their own image, to bring news into the future and give it adequate stewardship.

For every honest attempt to change that Shafer and Boczkowski talk about, I saw many more efforts to avoid and even torpedo change: newspaper editors and executives who told me that it was not their job to help this internet thing, to share content with the internet, to link to anyone else on the internet, to interact with readers on the internet, to rethink their procedures because of the internet, to teach new skills because of the internet, to promote the internet, and on and on. I saw too many direct attempts to subvert the future. That’s where the fault lies.

So Shafer’s quite right that newspapers failed because they couldn’t think past seeing the web as an extension of their past - they insisted in seeing the internet in their own image. But there’s more to the story.

Comments

[NP Refugee:]

Agreed. But there are many examples where there was deviation from the normal NP model; and many times, the new models were met with resistance from guess who? The editors. To them, "new and innovative" is a new special section with the same old crap. Any attempt to do something different was always met with cries from the editorial tight-shorts who took any true innovation as irreverence to the craft.

Web opportunities still exist, but most editors are too mired in self pity to get off their journalistic rear ends to do something new and exciting. It's still not too late for newspapers, but it is high time to get the boring journalsaurs out of the picture and produce interesting content. Let's face it: even the "edgy" products that were supposed to be innovative are quite boring as compared with the truly edgy stuff that is more engaging.

But the problems aren't just with the content. That's a start. Bring me more options with delivery. History will tell us that the beginning of the end for newspapers was the death of the afternoon paper. NBC figured out that people don't stay up until 11:30 PM anymore to watch Leno. Can't NPs figure out the same thing? Logistical hurdles aside, if survival depends on it, they'll have to find a way. Imagine the immediate boost an afternoon paper would have on readership if it were fresh news from a fresh perspective, written for today's audience! They might find that 50% of potential readers don't have time for the morning paper but would appreciate an evening digest.

Jan 07 10:39 AM

[common sense 2:]

I know that everyone think that papers are dead because of the web. What they fail to take into account is that the news on the web could come from the back room at some 14 year old house, who thinks that he is god's gift as a tell all editor. In a lot of websites there are no checks and balances about the turth. Just because it's on print on the web does not mean it's true. Look how many "Urban Myth's" are sent out in emails and online at the whole truth. Since these webpages can be started for less than $100 everyone is a publisher if they wish to be.
I am sure thaere are a lot of hate groups spewing there from of truth and half truths to an audiance that will believe anything.

You can find all the rumours you wish on the web, but can you really trust the information????? I am sure that there is a lot of dis-imformation being presented also.

In the rush to be first to publish information, the internet publishes more trash, read by more readers than any newspaper ever has.

Just what are we letting the youth see on the internet... how to make a bomb, hate groups to brain wash them? Remember that for the most part it's a wide open frontier, and because of that quite lawless on what is given as fact.

I wonder if during the 1800's that they considered the cities as bygone era because of the wide open land available, instead of the trash and waste running down the city streets.

Not everyone trust the internet for good reasons, but through 100 years of publishing most people feel they can trust papers, even if they don't always agree with them. They know who to complain to and hold accountable for there stories.

That internet site could be just a group of college students from around the globe, each haing there own section to worry about. If you complained would they even read it? or would it just go in the wastecan of email or an automatic trash disposal.

I would perfer my information to come from a reliable site, not just a teen editor.

And one other point. If you have all the answers, why not start your own internet /or paper product rather than complaining about the ones that try. I don't mean just wrinting a column, slanted toward what will sell at this time. I am sure if you wrote the praise of newspapers no internet site would pay you for it.

my 2 cents worth.

Jan 07 12:10 PM

[NP Refugee:]

Sorry, but the edge NPs had is gone. Who, other that cave-dwellers and mushrooms truly considers any NP an unimpeachable source for news anymore? Every study I see shows that most people find them lacking in credibility and don't trust them. Ship's already sailed. What used to set them apart just makes them a "me too" these days.

The 2008 presidential election is a case in point.


On Jan 07 12:10 PM common sense 2 wrote:

> I know that everyone think that papers are dead because of the web.
> What they fail to take into account is that the news on the web could
> come from the back room at some 14 year old house, who thinks that
> he is god's gift as a tell all editor. In a lot of websites there
> are no checks and balances about the turth. Just because it's on
> print on the web does not mean it's true. Look how many "Urban Myth's"
> are sent out in emails and online at the whole truth. Since these
> webpages can be started for less than $100 everyone is a publisher
> if they wish to be.
> I am sure thaere are a lot of hate groups spewing there from of truth
> and half truths to an audiance that will believe anything.
>
> You can find all the rumours you wish on the web, but can you really
> trust the information????? I am sure that there is a lot of dis-imformation
> being presented also.
>
> In the rush to be first to publish information, the internet publishes
> more trash, read by more readers than any newspaper ever has.

>
>
> Just what are we letting the youth see on the internet... how to
> make a bomb, hate groups to brain wash them? Remember that for the
> most part it's a wide open frontier, and because of that quite lawless
> on what is given as fact.
>
> I wonder if during the 1800's that they considered the cities as
> bygone era because of the wide open land available, instead of the
> trash and waste running down the city streets.
>
> Not everyone trust the internet for good reasons, but through 100
> years of publishing most people feel they can trust papers, even
> if they don't always agree with them. They know who to complain to
> and hold accountable for there stories.
>
> That internet site could be just a group of college students from
> around the globe, each haing there own section to worry about. If
> you complained would they even read it? or would it just go in the
> wastecan of email or an automatic trash disposal.
>
> I would perfer my information to come from a reliable site, not just
> a teen editor.
>
> And one other point. If you have all the answers, why not start your
> own internet /or paper product rather than complaining about the
> ones that try. I don't mean just wrinting a column, slanted toward
> what will sell at this time. I am sure if you wrote the praise of
> newspapers no internet site would pay you for it.
>
> my 2 cents worth.

Jan 07 12:24 PM

[RK:]

What is surprising to me is that the newspaper industry by and large did not try to re-invent themselves by buying their competitors in the advertising space. I know there were small acquisitions on the content side, but very little on the ad delivery side (to my knowledge). Even to this day, why aren't the newspapers buying ad networks? If NYT for instance owns a big ad network, wouldn't that help them to transition to digital faster?

Jan 07 06:38 PM

[notsosmart:]

nyt dead newspaper printing.the coming generation doesnt care about the nyt.this is the paper that backed castro in the eisenhower years.havent bothered with it since.survived ok.trust?not the paper nor the web.all have an agenda.up to the minute news-t.v.

Jan 08 04:24 PM