Tag Archives: Jack Shafer

Digital Journalism: Another Failed Business Model?

Accountability, Media, Online News, Social Media, , , , , , , , ,
H. Iris Chyi.
University of Texas media researcher H. Iris Chyi says heavy shift to digital news was a mistake. Chyi photo.

By Casey Bukro

Here’s an interesting idea: The rush of newspaper management from print to digital journalism was a terrible mistake.

Cyber media was supposed to be the next big thing, the answer to plummeting circulation, advertising and readership. Soon it became clear that digital journalism got off on the wrong foot with a “bad business model,” this new way to get the news for free. That set an expectation of reluctance to pay for it.

“What if almost the entire newspaper industry got it wrong?” asks Jack Shafer on Politico.com.  He is Politico’s senior media writer.

“What if, in the mad dash two decades ago to repurpose and extend editorial content onto the web, editors and publishers made a colossal business blunder that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars? What if the industry should have stuck with its strengths–the print editions where the vast majority of their readers still reside and where the overwhelming majority of advertising and subscription revenue come from–instead of chasing the online chimera?”

Fascinating speculation, and Shafer admits it’s a contrarian viewpoint, but he bases it on a study of 51 U.S. newspapers by two University of Texas researchers, H. Iris Chyi and Ori Tenenboim. They published a paper in Journalism Practice, an academic journal.

That paper, said Shafer, “cracks open the watchwords of the newspaper industry to make a convincing case that the tech-heavy web strategy pursued by most papers has been a bust.” That strategy, Shafer adds, “has been a losing proposition for most newspapers.”

Come to think of it, history shows an “all eggs in one basket” strategy can lead to disappointment. The U.S. economy’s reliance on petroleum led to high costs and disruptions by unreliable sources. The electric power industry relied heavily on coal until air pollution and other problems forced the industry to turn to alternative and cleaner energy sources, like solar power. Nuclear power was heralded as the technology that would turn deserts green, but safety concerns derailed some of those hopes.

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Anon

Accountability, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , ,

 

By Casey Bukro

 

Pssst! Hey buddy, over here. Got some really important news for you. Can’t tell you where I got it. But trust me.

That, in effect, is the con played often on the public by some of the nation’s leading newspapers, like the New York Times and the Washington Post. It’s called anonymity.

This con was neatly spelled out in a Reuters piece by Jack Shafer, who counted the number of times the Times offered corrections recently on stories based on anonymous sources, citing anonymous sources again to make the corrections.

That’s carrying the con a bit far.

Shafer traces the history of citing anonymous sources from a time when it was rare, to a time when it was rampant. It’s probably  fair to say that this journalistic disease is especially prevalent in Washington, involving government and political reporting.

Most reporters know that stories are only as good as the reliability of identified sources who are quoted.

“Anonymous sources reduce the pressure on official sources to take responsibility for their utterances,” writes Shafer. “And it promotes the gaming of news outlets, with anonymous sources gravitating to the most pliant reporters and editors.”

Weak or lazy scribes sometimes think they’re acting like “the big boys” by writing stories veiled in mystery, as though they know really important people who want to stay in the shadows. Sometimes these journalists know they are being used, but think that’s how the game is played. With more digging, they might find sources willing to be identified.

The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics says “the public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.” There are times when anonymity is warranted, such as protecting someone’s life or welfare.

Scholars believe the Washington Post’s Watergate coverage was the “watershed moment for anonymous reporting,” touching off a wave of imitators who lusted for the fame of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Getting cozy with news sources is another way to play the game, as Bob Garfield, host of NPR’s “On the Media” program pointed out in his scathing commentary on the White House Correspondents Dinner in a piece entitled “When the Watchdogs Wear Tuxedos, Politicians Rest Easy.”

All of this leads to a point made by Thomas Baekdal, who investigated the meaning of quality journalism. He found that although some of the leading newspaper managers say they are doing a great job, they are losing readers.

It’s just possible that readers are disenchanted with journalism that depends on anonymous sources and making nice with news sources, like the White House correspondents dinner.  It’s journalism with a wink and a nod.

Readers know what’s going on there, and they’re turned off. They know they’re entitled to a better journalism, and better journalists.