Feb. 25 reading

I'm glad we read about Spot.us in the article by one of its founders, David Cohn, because I think it's important to start pitching ideas about how to save the journalism business model rather than just complain about its failures. However, I don't think Spot.us is it. I'm glad, also, that Cohn realizes that the site has faults as well. From what I've heard, Spot.us has been pretty successful since it's gone live but I'm still very concerned about citizen reporting and a lack of editing. Especially the lack of editing. When reporters are getting paid by the citizens who want to read these stories, are they going to have certain loyalties? Certain biases? Those are important questions without answers. There's no oversight there. How can anyone trust what they're getting? And what's more, who's actually paying for these stories? If I owned a business in town, might it not be the same price to pay a reporter to write what is presented as an unbiased story about my organziation than to pay for advertising - which may or may not be effective to consumers? And in answer to my own question - the people who are paying for stories are people who can afford to spend money on that sort of luxury - the luxury of choosing what the news is. Doesn't that leave a large gap in the demographic of the readership who gets the stories they want told? I think Spot.us is an interesting experiment but could never be used as a business model for the news industry in general.

As Jim Kennedy and Josh Korr also write, it's obvious the industry needs a new model. But I agree with Kennedy that everything is happening so fast that people are scrambling to come up with new ideas, many of which aren't working. I, personally, don't understand the model Korr came up with - "link journalism" sounds like another catchphrase to me and I find it disheartening that after particpatory journalism, citizen journalism and the million other terms they've come up with to reinvent this profession, we are still in this stage. The one element of Korr's plan for a link based exchange that I did agree with; however, was the idea that it could provide readers with a reinstated trust in journalism. It's similar to the idea presetned in last week's reading by the Businessweek editor who created Businessweek Exchange. But I prefer the businessweek model because it separates traditional journalism with the more innovative and experimental ideas. So Businessweek provides both for its readers -but wants them to know that their roots lie in professionalism. I'm not sure I see a huge benefit to Korr's model of a link exchange - it's basically just a social network for journalists, which is a good idea, but I don't think we need to overplay it into an idea of a new and separate kind of journalism. That's not journalism and there is a real danger in constantly relabeling the profession because it loosens the ties between it and its deeply-rooted practices.

I appreciated James Gannon's article on the news service he started in Virginia more so than the other models presented in this week's reading. I like the idea that this veteran journalist and editor served as an editor in this capacity as well, the lack of oversight is my main problem with other business models presented to save journalism. And I think that, contrary to the fact that the Web has made the world "flat," people are becoming obsessed with finding a niche. It's almost as if the more people's world are opened up the more they want to retreat back to something small and more managable. We've already seen and read that niche publications are doing well and becoming more popular - I think we can assume location as a sort of niche itself. People want to read about their own niche in the world. I think this is a model that we can use when we are planning our own news sites in class. We should remember to stick to coverage we can manage and not reach too far. We should also remember that Gannon proves that people still want in-depth coverage and analysis, and not every news organization has to switch to a Twitter-like model of brief synapsis.