Did the Demise of Newspapers Have to be?

Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine has an interesting commentary on how the Economist is succeeding while the majority of newspapers around it fail. His point is that being a quality publication allows it to buck the conventions of the Internet age (particularly the convention that everything must be free).

This point was also raised by David Simon (writer of the Wire on HBO and a former Baltimore Sun reporter) in an interview on Bill Moyers Journal. When they were flush with cash in the 1990s, rather than investing in themselves and alternative ways of monetizing their services, newspapers bowed to the pressures of corporate consolidation which drove them to cut corners to help boost stock prices.

In an interview with Michigan Radio today about citizen journalism, MSU professor Stephen Lacy talked about how newspapers can't be hyper-local (which has prompted the rise in citizen journalism - to cover what is being neglected).

My question is - why can't establishment newspapers be hyper-local? Why does each one have to expend its resources trying to cover all of the world/national news as though there aren't dozens of other outlets doing the exact same thing in the same market on any given day?

What if ... newspapers invested in doing a good job catering to the niche right around them (instead of pumping their papers full of baldly-edited wire service stories and syndicated content)?

What if ... instead of aiming broadly with one huge metro edition, the newspapers put their regional editions on steroids and crafted a newspaper around the interests/news of a particular community (going so far as to only discuss national/world matters as they pertain to the hyper-local community)?

What if ... instead of trying to compete with the Internet, TV and Radio to break stories as fast as possible, newspapers concentrated on their traditional strength: depth (and tweak that by offering a customizeable local news experience for each user that would help recommend content via some Amazon/Netflix-esque engine)?

Maybe someone smarter than me has already asked and answered these questions. It just seems that there's a lot of opportunity out there just waiting to be harnessed with a little innovation and some heart. Are there seriously no opportunities to seize upon with iPhone/Blackberry apps, or Kindle licensing? No opportunities to sell highly-targeted ads like Facebook and Google?

Must-Watch Clay Shirky TED Lecture

John Gilmore once said "the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." As Clay Shirky notes, that was illustrated very clearly in Iran this past week as wired Iranians were able to communicate and organize demonstrations against the election results.

Watch Clay Shirky's TED Lecture

Shirky elegantly puts into words what we're dealing with: the Internet is the first medium that makes possible the "many-to-many" communication model which renders obsolete a great many long-held conventions (from when the media was limited to one-to-one or one-to-many). This helps me better explain the implications for two spheres of thought very important to me:

1. Journalism and the Future of Democracy

One of the things that worries me about the idea that we're coming to rely more and more on citizen journalists and less on professionals is the fact that we stand to lose the most important function professional journalists provide: investigative journalism.

If, however, the "many-to-many" paradigm established by the Internet (reinforced by social media) - will it matter? If anyone with a conscience can leak anything to the entire web-accessible world - how will any organization public or private be able to keep anything a secret? As for-profit news entities are shuttered, it strikes me that one of the most important things we can do is build up strong legal protections for whistleblowers and encourage platforms like WikiLeaks.

2. Education

Think about this quote in the context of the future of education:

"In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap ... In a world of media where the former audience are increasingly full participants ... in that world, media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals. It is more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups. [...] The question we all face now is 'how can we make best use of this medium even though it means changing the way we've always done it?'"

Anyone think for a second that the next generation of students are going to have patience for an educational process that doesn't welcome their collaboration at every level (from curriculum design to assessment)?

Seth Godin vs. the Textbook Industry

In a recent blog post, Seth Godin took the textbook industry to the woodshed ("Textbook Rant"). I have a couple of points of disagreement, but overall I think most of his analysis was spot-on and highlights some of the paradigms about education that need to change.

• My first point of disagreement was his assumption that marketing textbooks are representative of textbooks in general - I don't necessarily think that's the case. Some fields (like marketing) are more malleable (for lack of a better word) than others (like algebra). Compared to algebra, marketing is somewhat newer and is inherently more subjective in nature. Moreover, while there are always new developments in mathematics, they don't happen as rapidly as those in fields like marketing.
• My second point of disagreement is that I think Seth tends to interact with self-directed, high-achieving individuals who function very well independent of the traditional academic system. For the majority of students, the approach most textbooks take tends to be more effective because they have a bit more difficulty following the more esoteric references or directing their own activities/exercises to reinforce the material.

That said, however, he's right: textbooks are too expensive, lack an innovative spirit, do too little to inspire students about a particular topic, and are impractical. This is why so many faculty rely heavily on coursepacks (or even multiple texts for a single course).

That's partially due to the industrial design of our [now-outmoded] education system, and it's partially due to the constraints of having to aim for a very broad audience (which limits how creative one can be in the presentation of subject matter). It takes a long time to put together a textbook because the text is only a small portion of the whole job. I would wager nearly half of the work involved in a textbook goes to producing the host of tools, assessments, guides, and other materials for use in the class which reinforce the material and help faculty assess the progress of the students in retaining and applying the material.

These realities don't excuse textbook manufacturers from their culpability, however. They could be innovating, but they're not because they've hit upon a lucrative way of doing business and have grown complacent ... which means it's right about time for someone innovative to come along and upend their business model and run them out of circulation.

As Godin notes, one could imagine the model of textbooks moving completely away to exhaustive, one-time paper texts and toward a constantly-evolving web-based model that is updated/maintained by a collaborative of faculty and experts (I would say even students would bring some valuable insights to the process).

Unfortunately I don't think it's as simple as Godin suggests. A cursory glance at the debate raging over where scholarly research should be published hints at the unseen complications that exist. Here are a few I can see (and some possible solutions):

• The first barrier will be the publishing industry (which includes some academic institutions that have their own publishing houses) which won't go down without a fight. Similar to the music industry's reaction to file-sharing - they'll likely try to maintain their monopoly by suing or lobbying their competition out of existence (a lawsuit from a single intellectual property violation could decimate a start-up venture). They're also not above bribing faculty in the same way drug companies schmooze health professionals.
  [Solution: have a powerful academic institution house the effort so that it could fight off vexatious lawsuits.]
  
• Second, though many engaged faculty would leap at the model he suggests (of cobbling together a customized text from crowdsourced "chapterettes"), there are a lot of more complacent faculty who won't be interested in assembling their own text (or in doing it for free, as many receive a slice of the profits from textbooks).
  [Solution: Make the platform user-friendly and compatible with enterprise content management systems like Oracle/PeopleSoft and Blackboard.]
  
• Third, it may also be difficult to find people to do the less fun tasks associated with producing textbooks (like creating the test banks of questions, exercises, classroom activities, lecture guides, etc.) which is what makes the traditional model appealing to over-worked faculty looking to outsource as much of the labor associated with teaching a class as possible.
  [Solution: If a prestigious academic institution backed this effort, one could appeal to creators by allowing them to associate themselves with that institution.]
• Fourth, someone also needs to create the platform or build the network that would enable enough creators to gather together to create enough content to make the system viable.

Fortunately I think the wired world is up to the task, and it's only a matter of time.

How the Web Reaffirms Journalism as "an Activity"

A fascinating exchange about the future of journalism has been unfolding online.

Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine wrote a superb article (Product v. process journalism: The myth of perfection v. beta culture) defending online citizen journalism from its critics in the more elitist wing of the traditional media. One of his colleagues, Charles Arthur, weighed in on the topic as well (David v Goliath in the newsroom, and why we need new wrappers for journalism), prompting another response from Jarvis (David, meet Goliath).

Of particular interest to me in the Jarvis/Arthur dialog is the illuminating concept that transparency is really the major feature that differentiates a story that the New York Times publishes versus a story published via a blog post. There's also an artificial "definitive" quality in the traditional media that is exposed as false by web-based journalism (that is to say, information isn't neatly disclosed in sequence and as a result it isn't always possible to make a final judgment about the facts).

This is why I bristle at criticism of Wikipedia. I much prefer its transparent editing process to the opaque process used by traditional encyclopedia producers. I also like that it doesn't make judgments (driven by profitability) about what merits inclusion and what does not - every obscure detail can be cataloged online. It's also vastly more current at any given moment than any encyclopedia based simply on the length of time it takes to produce a printed work.

This dialog has reaffirmed my optimism that the web may be able to help fill the void being left by the decline of the "mainstream media." It also comes at an opportune time as the "Neighborhood News Bureaus" project here in Grand Rapids is beginning to really take shape (the project now even has a name: "The Rapidian").

The Contentious Debate Over Academic Freedom

The group Free Exchange on Campus has published an excellent report rebutting the allegations that the whole of public higher education is a gigantic propaganda outfit that brainwashes students into leftists. It also tracks the origins of the movement against academic freedom (which is curiously similar to the movement that has berated the media for being liberally-biased) and identifies the principle players pushing to insert .

Given the current contentious political climate and some of the recent developments at GRCC, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes an issue and there is new pressure to enact Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights."

View Report: Manufactured Controversy (.pdf)

On Crediblity and Higher Education

I'm of the opinion that too few higher education institutions are making strides toward ensuring their relevance as human communication continues its Internet-enabled seismic shift. This is increasingly clearer as I read two seemingly-unconnected reports (posts? accounts? who knows what to call them anymore).

First, Seth Godin blogged about an intriguing venture he's been working on ("Learning From the MBA Program") - an unaccredited, invitation-only MBA program. One can already hear traditional academics sniffing with upturned noses . The program is almost entirely hands-on practical learning and involves only 5-20 hours of lecturing per week. It's also heavy on field trips and superb guest speakers.

Godin recalls his own graduate school experience:

"We didn’t do this at all at when I was at Stanford. We spent a lot of time reading irrelevant case studies and even more time building complex financial models. The thing is, you can now hire someone to build a complex financial model for you for $60 an hour. And a week’s worth of that is just about all the typical entrepreneur is going to need. The rest of the time, it’s about shipping, motivating, leading, connecting, envisioning and engaging. So that’s what we worked on. It amazes me that MBA students around the world aren’t up in arms. How can schools justify taking $100,000 in cash and teaching exactly the wrong stuff."

Second, the Charlotte Observer and New York Times have reported a Clemson staffer has turned whistleblower and spilled the beans on how the university has manipulated its rankings in the the US News & World Report annual rankings.

Those in higher education likely know to take them with a grain of salt given how difficult it is to compare colleges/universities as they're constantly-shifting and complex institutions. I don't think the same is true of the general public, a significant portion of which relies on these rankings to make this important life decision (also evidenced by the facts that a reputable university would take this sort of risk to get ahead in the rankings).

The link between these two stories is credibility. A connection to a respected institution from which one can derive credibility.

We in academia sort of assume that "accreditation" objectively confers credibility and that it will remain the gold standard forever (in the same way a lot of people sort of assume that a degree will remain the gold standard in education). While I think both will continue to hold value - they're losing a bit of ground to other ways of demonstrating credibility as a result of the democratizing power of the web enables upstarts to flourish.

I can't speak for others, but I certainly would consider a job applicant that was hand-picked to run through a program by Seth Godin. Yet, in the current industrialized model of human resources someone without an accredited degree might be weeded out of the application process for a large organization before the interview phase, but I bet there's already pressure to change those practices (because there's surely a lot of talented people being unfairly excluded).

All of this presents an opportunity for colleges and talented individuals like if they're innovative enough to seize upon it.

Update: More rankings shenanigans have been uncovered at the US News & World Report, this time with the University of Southern California.