Old Media, New School Social Networking: It Could Work

There has been a lot of coverage on the dwindling fortunes of old media, especially the newspaper industry. Some of mine are Media Shuffles and Newspapers, Wake Up!.

But I am one of those people who believe that quality content will still need business models supporting it, and that new media’s heavy reliance on FREE user-generated content has its limitations, and may not be sustainable. Thus, I have an interest in the survival of content producer companies and would like to see them reinvent themselves, not die.

Jon Fine wrote a very nice piece recently in Business Week about Gannett (GCI), the largest newspaper company in the US. The nugget of the piece is that Gannett is doing a good job with a new media strategy that they call Pro-Am. Meaning, Professional writers produce the Anchor Content, and Amateur writers weigh in with User Content.

I believe, this will become the established formula for most newspapers and magazines in a few years, as the eco-system rearranges itself.

To give you an example, take Seeking Alpha. Their value proposition is to aggregate equity research and articles, to make it the single most comprehensive destination for stock research for individual and institutional investors. They have a deal with Yahoo! Finance whereby if you plug in a ticker in Yahoo, you get a link to see what the financial blogs are saying about this company. The service is powered by Seeking Alpha.

Now.

Why would Wall Street Journal and Business Week not avail of such a service? Lots of readers already come to WSJ.com to read about various companies. Especially about companies that they have stake in. It is almost a shame that WSJ and Business Week loses this audience today.

Instead, I would like to see WSJ and BW reorient their offerings, such that they provide Anchor Content, and leverage something like Seeking Alpha for User Content.

Similarly, other categories like Travel (Lufthansa just bought a huge ad inventory across 100 Travel Blogs via Washington Post’s BlogRoll program), Book Reviews, Film Reviews, etc. could be rolled up into a Pro-Am / Anchor Content-User Content mode, and the Newspapers immediately would have a strategy to counter new media. The New York Times (NYT) and Washington Post (WPO) could roll up political writings from the blogosphere. The Economist could roll up economic analysis.

The other opportunity that a Seeking Alpha provides is for, say, Washington Post, to easily get into Financial coverage by licensing the Seeking Alpha content. In areas where a newspaper has gaps, like Business in the case of the Post, they could also selectively syndicate bloggers who specialize in that area.

There is so much Am-Content out there right now, it is a real shame that the big brands are not leveraging them.

From Techmeme. Fascinating read:

Are blogs a ‘parasitic’ medium? Commentary: Could the blogosphere survive without the reporting provided by newspapers and TV networks? Online pros tackle the question. By Robert Niles Posted: 2007-03-02 Over the past months, I’ve heard several journalists make the same comment at various industry forums: That blogs are a “parasitic” medium that wouldn’t be able to exist without the reporting done at newspapers.

I hear the frustration behind the comment. You bust your rear to get stories in the paper, then watch bloggers grab traffic talking about your work. All the while your bosses are laying off other reporters, citing circulation declines, as analysts talk about newspapers losing audience to the Web. It’s not hard to understand why many newspaper journalists would come to view blogs as parasites, sucking the life from their newsrooms.

Still, the charge riles me every time I hear it. To me, it’s a poorly informed insult of many hard-working Web publishers who are doing fresh, informative and original work. And by dismissing blogs as “parasitic,” newspaper journalists make themselves blind to the opportunities that blogging, as well as independent Web publishing in general, offer to both the newspaper industry and newspaper journalists.

Yesterday, USA Today, one of Gannett’s (GCI) top holdings, announced a massive overhaul that, to me, is a step in the right direction.

From Steve Rubel’s piece:

“The notable additions include: reader comments on every story, the ability to create a profile page that can be shared with others, citizen journalist photos, story tagging and digg-like recommendation buttons.”

Don Dodge’s review is here. Mathew Ingram poses the question "Can a newspaper be a social network?"

While the step is certainly in the right direction, what I want to be able to do is to link my blog to topics that are relevant. Going back to the Pro-Am and Anchor Content-User Content discussion we just had, I would like to automatically attach my blog post to relevant Anchor Content on USA Today, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, etc. in the same way that Photobucket allows a member to post their photos and videos to ANY social network, i.e. MySpace, Facebook, or Xanga.

Similarly, the newspapers need to allow strong Am-Content Generators to easily attach themselves to the Pro-Content on their sites.

I don’t think we are quite there yet.