Gravity Medium

There have been so many great news services popping up in the last few years in the online space. Politico.com has been one of the big success stories. They make most of their money on a print edition distributed on Capitol Hill and K Street in DC, but their web property is followed nationally and their writers and pundits regularly appear on talking-head shows.

Now they’re undermining the Associated Press. Good for them.

At the rate things are changing for the AP and the news business in general, you’d think the AP would unleash a new plan to get folks interested in their services again. But I think not. The AP is still a juggernaut in the news business with a long way to go before their execs begin to freak out over lost customers and revenue. It sure is interesting to watch, though.

It’s has been — and remains — insane at the office these days. We’re in the midst of a pledge period for TV, we’re preparing for another one in FM, and for the most part it’s my first run-through these events as the person ultimately in charge of our streams, so there’s a learning curve. I’m finding it easy to pick things up — it just takes time. Plus, the company is still shaking out some of the changes from about a month ago as we radically redesigned the management structure. So far, so good.

I’ve been neglecting Twitter and Facebook and this site for nearly a month as these events have played out. Luckily, it’s kind of a quiet period in public media as folks work through pledge drives and just get back into the non-summer swing of things.

Yet this past week a critical post went up from Dennis Haarsager that’s required reading for pubradio folks and I think for public TV folks as well:

• NPR’s digital distribution strategy

It makes a good deal of sense to me, as it gives a revitalized reason/purpose for national/local collaboration, as opposed to simple distribution. I’m not quite convinced it can be successful, but it’s got a shot if a critical mass of system leaders get on board. I know I’m paying attention.

That said, I’m concerned about future collaborations of all kinds, especially in the wake of a semi-private discussion in which I participated recently.

It seems public media’s chief difficulty today is not one of distribution, but one of mission. Why are we here, really? And do we all share the same response to that question? “Public service,” is not a real answer. We need a product, a specific service that can bind all of us together.

Personally, I think that’s news. I’ve railed against the national TV news media before for their lack of real public service, and I’ve suggested that public media’s greatest strength comes from news.  Not music, not arts and culture, not high society, but news. (Those other things are nice-to-haves, but they aren’t core things around which we can easily collaborate on various geographic or business scales.)

What does news, as a primary mission for public, have going for it?

• The Associated Press is breaking down as newspapers and stations — including my own — tell the AP to take a flying leap with their high costs and their regurgitated stories
• Newspapers are distracted as their profits crumble and they seem unable to find a way forward
• TV news is an abysmal, rancid landfill of time-wasters and poor information
• New low-cost journalism methods (not necessarily bad stuff, by the way) is on the rise, both in video and print, offering us new opportunities
• Digital exchange of information and finished media products has never been faster, cheaper or easier
• We have a public service mission unparalleled in the commercial world — a world setup to distribute commercials, not thoughtful information

NPR grew as media consumers discovered that quality news and information was, in fact, a good thing to have around. It grew in an otherwise toxic radio environment.

We have a chance, now, I think, to develop this shared mission and build collaborative structures around that. At the moment, Haarsager’s initial diagram (PDF) speaks to a broader service set than news alone. But keep the mission focused and the distribution / collaboration system begins to make sense.

Anything new that proposes to simplify collaboration in an ecosystem of diverse and often competing missions probably won’t get us very far.

I have no vested interest the “old order” of journalism, be it at newspapers, in public radio or elsewhere. I don’t have a journalism degree (though I do have the kissing cousin degree: English). I’ve collected a paycheck from the media world for less than 4 years now, having spent many years before that in a variety of businesses.

But I would hope that even if I had studied journalism in college, spent a 20+ year career in the field, won awards and so on that I would show a hell of a lot more professionalism and simple human decency than the ugly curs trolling one newspaper intern’s blog this week.

Admittedly, it’s a volatile situation as people are losing their jobs at the Tampa Tribune and the newspaper company is confronting the facts: if they change nothing they’re definitely dead, and even if they change everything they might still be dead. That’s a tough situation for everyone.

It’s terrible to be laid off (it’s happened to me). Layoffs cast all reason out the window in favor of pain and fear. But come on. That doesn’t give you either the right or the moral authority to attack an intern as your personal scapegoat for everything that’s “wrong” with the media industry (in your eyes).

It’s been nearly 24 hours now since I read the post — a fascinating insider look that most journalists wouldn’t share with the public (oh, the delicious irony!) — and I’m still floored by the nasty and even threatening comments made in response to the post.

If your ivory tower is collapsing, shouldn’t you be looking for a safe way out or a safe place to land?

This Week in Tech (TWiT) is a great little tech-oriented podcast with a broad international following (somwhere north of 200,000 weekly listeners). But on the March 31 show they went off the tech industry track and tackled issues related to news, newspapers, news radio, NPR, podcasts, blogs, Twitter, reporting and more.

Public media folks may be interested to hear how folks that work in media — but outside our industry niche — talk about what we’re doing and the major trends affecting everyone publishing everything.

You can listen to and/or download this week’s episode here.

Great article over at the PBS-hosted MediaShift Idea Lab on the battle for attention, resources and respect between the completely separated online and traditional newsrooms at the Washington Post companies. The money quote:

The entertaining part of the drama lies in the pronouns. …the finger-pointing always targets “those people,” “those folks,” and other, less polite, designations. …”we” generally takes a breather.

Sound familiar? I hope not, but alas it’s still all too common.