Can a good journalist be a good capitalist? Yes.
Carnival of Journalism is a monthly event when a group of us share our posts on a common topic to bring discussion to the goings on in our trade. It’s also a great place to exchange ideas with smart people! Comments welcome.
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I’m excited to contribute to this month’s carnival, because I’ve blogged about this topic before. As personal background, I worked in marketing before I went for my master’s in journalism and can relate to vocation driven by the bottom line, perhaps more than the average journalist.
Now, I work with a technology startup (innovating in the news space) which is key to my argument here. As noted, “ there is an instinctive aversion to the idea of making money amongst most journalists.” Even when I worked at a luxury lifestyle magazine (in Orange County, no less) it seemed assumed that I should be content with perks and an opportunity to write, and never expect to make much in terms of salary.
These varied experiences have given me a bit of insight into why news startups aren’t raking in cash. They don’t want to. They want to break even. They want a working business model. They want to run a lifestyle business.
The difference between a lifestyle business and a venture capital funded company is that a company funded by VCs expects to bring a 10x return to its investors within a couple years. Startup founders are taking a risk in hopes of getting rich, but for the most part, they’re not greedy — they’re creative. They want to build something totally new, that makes people’s lives better — in many cases, gives back to society. But, despite this, their work and innovation is driven by the bottom line. They don’t just have to make enough money to cover expenses, they need to turn every dollar spent into $10.
Journalists don’t have this drive. They’re creative in problem solving, in words, in many areas. Some journalists do make it big, becoming authors of bestselling books, or moving into media consulting. My hope is that entrepreneurial journalism draws a crowd of new-generation journalists who desire to create, to give back, but also ready to make bank (and not be apologetic about it).
Diamonds are created by pressure (a popular analogy). I think great innovation needs the kind of pressure that comes only from something powerful like cash flow. It’s one of those things, like religion and politics, that we’re not supposed to talk about at cocktail parties. It hits us deep in our psyche.
Saying that journalists need to nurse a greater desire for financial gain seems a weird argument. But at the end of the day, I think the despair in our industry is not because our business model broke, but because we weren’t innovating our product. But more on that later.
What happens when my credit card number changes
Recently, I got a new credit card from Citicard with a new number. Consequently, any regular payments set up on my credit card were denied, because the old number no longer works. How has this affected me?
Well, it was easy to put the new number into Amazon.com, so I can still buy books with one click and find them on my doorstep two days later. My Rdio account was suspended for a few days, but it comes out of Amazon payments, so I fixed that.
The worst? I donate to three places: a local ministry, an international ministry and a church. All through different non-profit Christian organizations. All three were about as seamless as a seam ripper (not a real analogy, but …).
The first organization emailed the individual at the receiving end of my donation because, for some reason, the organization that has my credit card didn’t have a phone number OR email address for me. I could sign into their website … but not re-enter a new credit card number. I had to personally call the organization’s employee and read my number to her over the phone (after a bit of phone tag). Hassle.
The second organization never contacted me. Luckily, I keep in contact with the individuals on the receiving end of this scenario, who mentioned in passing that my donation hadn’t gone through. It’s difficult enough to fundraise; most people in ministry should not be responsible for chasing banking details halfway across the world. Additionally, once I did fix the credit card number, there was no option to reprocess the payment that failed, which matters little to me but potentially throws of someone’s carefully planned budget, needlessly.
The third organization did nothing. It just quit auto-emailing “thank yous.” When I signed in to my account, I couldn’t change my credit card number. I could only cancel the payment and create a new payment.
Some of this may not seem like a big deal. I admit much of my frustration is because I work with user experience in my job. With all the care we put into making an experience carry little hurdles for someone downloading a *free* iPhone app, you would think that we could make donating to good causes easy.
The path of least resistance should be the one leading to a fulfilled donation to a good cause. Also, there should be a streamlined process. Why are all major non-profit organizations using different technology to process payments? Why don’t they all use PayPal? Is the fee too high?
This is a HUGE opportunity for a company to create something like PayPal, but specifically for non-profit organizations. Someone like me could log in and manage my charitable giving in one place. Each organization could customize their settings to send out additional campaigns, thank you letters, and such. It would be a communication platform on top of a donation platform. And, it could either be a vertical inside of PayPal, Dwolla or Square, or, it could be a startup on its own.
Make this for me.
And don’t get me started on how difficult it was for me to cancel a $30/month donation to World Vision after about six years of giving.
Danielle vs. The Machine
One of the basics of business journalism is the quarterly earnings story. Every business journalist can write one of these. It’s formulaic. You get accustomed to using certain words when the company’s stock price increased, and different words when it increased drastically, and so on.
When I was a student at Medill, I covered Kellogg for Medill News Service and wrote this quarterly earnings story in winter 2010.
I later took a class called Journalism and Technology. We created data visualizations related to the census. But, an earlier term of that class did a project that later became a company called Narrative Science. A few of my classmates now work there.
They started with sports stories and created a system where you could plug in the game stats from a sporting event and it would create a story. Based on writers digging through the formulaic way they write and applying it to a software system. Now, they’ve expanded to business stories, and yes — Narrative Science gets a byline.
How does my quarterly earnings story compare to this one, penned by the machine (sort of)?
Donald Miller Comes to Flood Church
I don’t know what makes me happier — that I sat in the front row at church to hear Donald Miller speak, or that I have a group of friends who *all* wanted to sit up front to hear Donald Miller.
I have awesome friends.
Donald Miller at Flood Church by Danielle Fankhauser
I don’t know how great the iPhone recording will sound, but once he started talking I decided I couldn’t write fast enough to get all the good stuff down, so like a good journalist I pulled out my recording device. You’re welcome.
A letter to Foursquare’s product team
I had an idea this morning, and I’m fairly certain it is brilliant. I should preface by saying that I want to meet people. I am (skeptically) reading a book about dating and joined a gym this morning, but I spent last night (Friday) watching Community at a local coffee shop because I don’t have WiFi in my apartment (this week’s ep was fantastic indeed!).
But this isn’t really about dating. It’s about living in a wonderful city with lots of fun things to do, being too busy to do them all and when you are free, not able to find a person to enjoy things with. As much as I love art walks and film festivals, it’s at least ten times more fun to attend with someone.
I thought to myself, why isn’t there a social network that allows you to create a calendar of things you’d like to do, by putting specific places or events onto specific dates, and other people could search the calendar and find a buddy to join them on the excursion? I would want a basic profile, including a picture, some hobbies, what neighborhood I live in, my favorite things — just enough information to give a stranger a glimpse of who I am.
Should this be an app for an existing network, like Facebook or Foursquare, or be its own thing?
Thing is, on Foursquare, you can already make a to-do list. And when I think back to when I first tried Foursquare — a year and a half ago (early adopter!) — I was under the impression that the concept was, I check in to a place, and my friend Wanda who lives in town will say, hey, Danielle’s at The Linkery, I could go for a burger — I’ll go meet up! Thing is, Wanda can’t meet up for a burger if she’s in the middle of a run. Hanging out is time sensitive. We need to plan ahead.
So, perhaps I could plan my weekend on Thursday, make a list of all the things I sort of want to do. I might not get to all of them, but maybe a friend I haven’t talked to in awhile was hoping to hit the same farmer’s market. We’re friends on Foursquare, she can see my calendar, and shoot over a message. Or, just + my to-do to her to-do list.
But these excursions should be public. Someone new to town could pull up a calendar and see what is going on this weekend. Even switch to map view for a specific day to see what is going on nearby. Today, it would have been nice to know that St. Patricks is having a festival two blocks from my house ahead of time, rather than discovering it when driving by on my way somewhere else.
Any location you can check in, you can add to a to-do list, on a specific date, and write a short summery on what is going on there. You’d select the location — Gaslamp Theaters — but note that it is film festival weekend and the flick you’d like to see is at 3 p.m. Or, put Julian on your list for all day Saturday, because you want to drive up and get some apple pie, go for a hike and walk around town. Brunch. I don’t have enough brunch in my life — what if a whole group of people met for brunch?! Ah, the possibilities.
I believe there is not enough of “meeting people with similar interests” that happens. This isn’t just about dating, but it could be. If you want to meet someone, they tell you, go do things you like and meet someone who likes the same things (Must Love Dogs, anyone?). So then you date the only interesting guy at the gym, because you like to be active, it doesn’t work out, so you do what … join a different gym?
Execution is key. A network like Foursquare already built a reputable platform where you can hide the location of your house for privacy and safety concerns. People aren’t suddenly going to start seeing it as a meat market to find hookups just because you can can post a place you’d like to go on a date and find someone who’d like to join. It’s activity-based, not person-based. And for every person who does get a good date out of it, 20 more could just find friends in a new town! Just think of all the people in my town who have DVR and might have let me come over to watch Community — could have saved me a $3 hot chocolate!
I don’t know; maybe Foursquare already has this in their future (I hope so!). Perhaps they’ve already ruled it out as not the direction they want to go. Maybe I’m just terrible at meeting people and would like to take the nerdy route and make an app for it.
So that’s my pitch — I think it’s solid! If you’d like to know more, or contract me to help develop this concept, Foursquare, please find me at @danifankhauser. Thanks.
People want news that matters
The brussel sprouts vs. cookies argument is one of the first I remember in respect to “future of journalism” conversations. In fact, I would say that in J-school, I did not study journalism, but instead, I studied the changing face of journalism. We never talked about what journalism is, we talked about what it once was and what it is becoming. Maybe academic study has always been this way — I don’t know.
Brussel sprouts and cookies notes that, with declining numbers, some publications ramped up celebrity coverage to keep up circulation. And some people see this as a slippery slope, where reported news just goes further and further to shit.
Meanwhile, this happens: The web allows anyone to create a blog and publish easily and for free. Now a person can get science news from a scientist who likes to write, rather than a writer who likes science. (Jonathan Stray calls out science blogging here).
Thing is, solid, civic, hard, brussel sprouts-flavored news will exist somewhere. Maybe aggregating tweets from local political pundits is better than writing three paragraphs in your own words. Maybe this is even cheaper for a newsroom and an easier task for an employee, and a better experience for the audience.
My point is that we shouldn’t have a cookies vs. brussel sprouts argument. The change we are seeing is in tools and distribution.
Edward Wasserman pointed out that digital tools (which are also companies that need profit of their own) come with strings attached. I wholeheartedly agree with this point. But I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game. Just because Facebook makes money off WaPo’s content doesn’t mean WaPo can’t also make money off that content.
Bringing me to another point: Nobody ever bought content. Once, 25 cents bought distribution of a newspaper. And advertisers bought an audience.
From Wasserman’s blog: “What’s under way is a deliberate marketing campaign to deputize the rising generation of journalists as auxiliary recruiters for an industry of [social media] giants whose business requires assembling vast populations for advertising targeted by age, location, interest, taste, preference, alignment …” (Brackets mine).
Couldn’t this have been said about print journalism, and about broadcast journalism?
A friend of mine called fashion magazines a marketing ploy. Haven’t journalists always been part of a marketing ploy? The difference is that before, it was Tribune Company’s marketing ploy, and the ad sales revenue supported editorial. Now, Google’s ad sales do not stream back to the content creator (unless you’re Jeff Jarvis and run Google ads on your blog).
For me, the answer is entrepreneurial journalism. A smaller machine can swerve more easily, and can utilize and then drop these new tools faster (in the case the tools begin using us). The second answer is verticals rather than a single general appeal publication. Advertisers are looking for a specialized audience.
My dream is that every newspaper would reinvent itself as a blog collective, each with its own lead product manager, programmers and editorial staff. Ads could be sold across the network. Additional revenue could come from events, ebooks or even better ideas that I know we will see soon.
People want the news that matters to them, and they want community. Content enables both of these things. Long live content — let’s just play with the packaging.
If I Die Young
Recently I’ve been obsessed with this song — playing it on repeat in my house — and I can’t get over how beautiful it is.
I think it resonates with me because I am absolutely having the time of my life. I love my job, I love my neighborhood and the place I live and I have great friends. I feel like I am accomplishing something and making a positive change in the world. I am happier than I have ever been, I think, in my entire life. This kind of happiness — it can’t be sustainable, right? There are times when my circumstances looked perfect, but inside I was still miserable and torn apart. Surely I’ll go down that road again.
But let’s say that I don’t — let’s say that I continue with an attitude of being a servant to the world, to building other people up, creating beauty in my work and in my relationships and can actually hold onto this joy. Practical? We will see.
So this song, and how it reflects how I feel, that I’ve achieved just enough and enjoyed just enough, hit me harder when I found out a classmate had passed away.
The last two times I’ve found out that someone died, I’ve started to smile. It is an awful, shameful moment, because my head is telling me to be sad but my knee-jerk instinct is to smile, and I don’t know why. But maybe I’ve figured it out. I was raised to believe in heaven and that death means being present with God, and I love God and God loves me. It is the moment you are fully loved and fully yourself.
I think it has even more to do with when my grandma passed away two years ago. I felt distant from her the last few times I talked to her. She had a lot of health problems, in fact, she had been in pain for many years. So, it was sad for our family to lose her and lose everything she brought to family gatherings (life of the party!) but we also knew she was finally free of that pain.
I think, when someone has cancer, and is slowly losing life, maybe it is a cause for joy at the end. Our loss, but that person is free of pain, finally. And is it so different when a person is depressed and despite professional help and supplements is still trapped by their own mind? We’ve all been depressed to some degree, and it is painful. Of course it is sad for us to lose someone who has such potential, but I think we can breathe a sigh of relief when that person is set free.
This world can be beautiful and miserable all at the same time — navigating physical wounds and emotional traps is tough. It just is. I consider myself lucky to believe that one day, everything will be made right. If you don’t hold this same belief, I would encourage you to search for it.
End of the newsroom’s iron curtain
Would the real entrepreneurial journalism please stand up?
Journalists are not supposed to be interested in money. It’s an ethical dilemma. That is why there is an iron curtain in between ad sales and editorial — if you know what ad space Macy’s is buying in the Sunday paper, how can you write that article on Macy’s corporate fails? You’ll be influenced. So, you turn your head, and the salespeople keep their hands out of editorial.
Even accepting a gift from a source, or letting the source pay for lunch, is an ethical dilemma! Readers trust you, and something as simple as a Subway sandwich can threaten your carefully built credibility.
Plus — there’s your ego. Journalism, capital J, is a public service. It’s like being a teacher — you do it because it is good for society, because it brings you joy. We commonly say, “I’m not in this vocation for the money!”
And then you prove your point by living on the poverty line. Some slave away to cover the news, paying freelancers a minimum and paying themselves nothing, depending on the month. Sometimes, putting personal savings into the news venture. This is called entrepreneurial journalism.
Of course, all entrepreneurship takes risk (making it very different from intrapreneurial, a smaller venture inside an established company). But in normal situations, entrepreneurship is risk followed by a potential payoff, and I don’t mean a warm and fuzzy watchdog “gotcha” payoff.
Journalism hasn’t changed. We still stand by these ethical standards.
But the audience? Did change.
So maybe, journalism needs to adopt a new set of ethical standards that allow us to serve this audience.
In old journalism, articles were edited excessively, because once the ink was printed, we were stuck with it for a whole day. Now, I catch a typo in TechCrunch, and it’s gone when I refresh the page. We don’t have readers that treat us as gospel anymore! The internet is known for scams and porn. Nobody believes half of what they read online. They will Google search, they will Quora and there’s always Wikipedia. People fact check as they read.
The audience is skeptical. If there’s the slightest bit of doubt in your copy, there will be a snarky comment to show for it. The founder of a small topic-based news site can manage just editorial, or both editorial and sales, and the skeptical audience will fact-check just the same.
We’ve got Arrington running around, dipping his hands into reporting on startups and funding them, at the same time, and claiming it is ok. There are many strong opinions on what this means, but what if he’s right?
I don’t think transparency gets us off the hook. I think we need to try to be objective. Just as objective as the reporter who was writing about corporate affairs at Macy’s, wearing an awesome Macy’s sweater dress but without knowing the Macy’s ad budget.
And I think journalists still shy away from aggressively chasing revenue models. Making money for doing something for the good of the people feels … wrong. It’s not.
News organizations were never in the content business. Nobody bought content. Advertisers bought an audience. Content herded an audience. Nobody pays to look at DamnYouAutoCorrect.com, but they might pay for related merchandise. Especially when we focus on topics, common beliefs, that an audience will join together and be excited about — there are things people will pay for. These are communities someone will pay to reach.
I hope entrepreneurs begin to recognize the opportunities around content, and news producers get comfortable with being a real entrepreneur — taking risk in anticipation of a cash payoff. These two groups can learn from each other.
The future of online news video
My entry into this month’s Carnival of Journalism:
First, I’m rather offended that the title of this carnival limits to online video because I think mobile news video is a much bigger trend. I’m going to refer to both, and call it digital video here.
In the golden age of TV, video was a novelty. It took top technology and equipment to get a video device to a news scene and put that footage on air. Now, each news story likely has an average of 20 vantage points — people with smartphones taking low-quality, amateur videos. Three of the 20 short videos might include a decent clip. Each person can post to YouTube or Facebook, to their own networks and contacts. Tracking and harnessing this content is an area of opportunity.
The new model will have journalist as producer, weaving the best together into a cohesive news-telling experience. Almost like a Storify for audio and video editing, with a drag and drop interface allowing one to quickly piece scenes next to each other.
So, value will be on speed and vantage point rather than quality. Video online and on mobile will see a rising demand because there is a need for the to-the-minute news of digital with the second-tier attention level of video (listen and watch while cooking, eating, driving, etc.)
But at the same time we will see a rise in documentary-style news video online. Ten minutes instead of three, and shot by a professional with a nice camera, resulting in beautiful videography. I’ll link here to a great one by Grant at KPCC on pogo (which is actually only three minutes). This will seem a luxury next to quick video news updates and bolster in-depth storytelling that we love.
Ads or better, sponsorships, will be the business model. I’ve heard many a news dinosaur scoff at the idea of putting ads on a graphic video of riots in Egypt — look, people fighting … Eat Kraft Macaroni & Cheese! Not an ideal brand impression.
I vote we find a connection between the rise in corporate charitability campaigns and news video. Sponsorships work well online and are not zingy like 30-second commercials spots. Brands still need an audience and I think we can find a tasteful way for them to continue working in conjunction with news publishing.
I appreciate comments — let’s grow this conversation and innovate away!
30. September 2011 by Dani Fankhauser
Categories: Commentary, Journalism | 4 comments