Seeing as how I’m going to be working for the Times this summer, I’ve put in a bit of thinking about the role of news, newspapers, and journalism in today’s hyperconnected world. The death of paper newsletters has been predicted for a while now, but strangely enough, they are still around. Wired Magazine, in their 15-year anniversary retrospect, highlighted one of their unfulfilled visions: “The Death of Media”. Wired called for the death of “Old Media” over and over again, but Old Media is still around, and rumors of their death are exaggerated…for now.
The physical medium of a newspaper is convenient for a lot of people - mostly the older generation that is used to physical paper. But, as the younger generation takes control, the physical medium, I think, will die a quick death. Then, what is a newspaper, without the paper? Well, a team of trained journalists and editors who provide really high quality content, and some more.
Well, what, exactly? When any blogger can provide “news”, the Times does have some competition. What can their team of reporters and editors accomplish? That sort of concentrated talent can really focus on all eight of the “Better Than Free” generatives listed by Kevin Kelly (founding editor of Wired). At this point, the paper version of the Times already provides:
- Interpretation - The Times always has excellent commentary by informed experts.
- Authenticity - Who are you going to trust more: Joe Schmoe Blogger, or, the Times? No contest.
- Findability - Any edition of the Times is packed with content you probably aren’t interested in, but there are certainly gems you don’t know you care about. Finding those is really valuable.
- Embodiment - Some people will pay for a thick heavy paper copy of the Sunday Edition, so they can lounge around all day, and just work their way slowly through all the stories. Let them eat cake.
What about the other four? Well, the online version of the Times, nytimes.com, fulfills these, but there is room for improvement:
- Personalization - my.nytimes.com covers this, although I’m not quite satisfied with the implementation. This is a Hard Problem however, so I can’t fault them.
- Accessibility - This is a relatively simple solution with the appropriate technologies, and a proper API (see below)
- Patronage - Don’t mistake this for a subscription. If the content is free, but readers have the opportunity to pay a small amount after reading a story they really enjoyed, the feeling is completely different. And the Times gets real, valuable feedback, to boot.
- Immediacy - no argument: nytimes.com can present news a lot faster than a dead-tree edition. Not just over the Web to your computer, but to your phone, or to any other systems where you need it.
What caught my eye recently is the announcement that the Times will provide an API - a programmatic way to get access to their stories, ratings, and other structured content. This is a great move, because it allows anyone to use the free data, and it proves the Times gets it - anyone should have access to the data, because only the Times can provide the added value of Kelly’s generatives.
(Strangely enough, I couldn’t find an official announcement for the API - not on open.nytimes.com, not on code.nytimes.com, and not on Google: “nytimes api” leads back to the ReadWriteWeb article.)
What would really rock my boat is for the Times to integrate Reuters’ OpenCalais semantic web application - giving access to the data to programmers (via the API) is a good thing, but the machines need access too. OpenCalais takes unstructured text (such as a Times article) and returns RDF-structured semantic data consumable by web crawlers and information agents.
All this progress is exciting, and I hope to get a glimpse of more efforts this summer. I start next week, and while I may be working on something else, I’ll keep a close eye on anything going on in this space.
Comments
It does seem inevitable that
It does seem inevitable that “physical” newspapers will be phased out, however, I don’t see this happening for a while. I see newspapers as being a very integral part of society, that can’t quite be replaced…they’re representations of the particular day they reported news from. Example: the day that man landed on the moon, a lot of people kept the newspaper as a sort of memento. Sure, if a major event like that happened today, you could print the article off of NYTimes.com, but it wouldn’t be the same. Looking through a newspaper from many years ago shows you what life was like at that time– the kinds of products being sold, what sorts of shenanigans the politicians were up to, what the dollar was worth…sure, you can find all of that stuff on an internet news source, but newspapers compile it into an all-in-one, convenient stack of paper. Granted, if we did phase out newspapers, we would save a ton of paper, however, many people would lose jobs, and people would have to schlepp their laptops onto the subway if they wanted to read the news on the way to work.
What do you think?
Alex - you make some good
Alex - you make some good points - newspapers do provide some nostalgic value. But, I don’t think a newspaper is as important to the younger generation - I’ve seen my friends saving meaningful SMS messages, emails, Facebook wallposts, etc - sure, these are just arrangements of bits, but newspapers are just arrangements of atoms. We can make meaningful to us anything we want.
The date-based consolidation provided by a newspaper is also to be valued. However, there is no reason this can’t be digital - in fact, the Derek Gottfrid of the NYTimes just posted about TimesMachine - a web-accessible, scanned archive of all the Times papers from 1851-1922 (their public archive), wrapped up in a nice interface with a handy calendar.
Saving paper is indeed a good thing, but I find the argument about lost jobs unconvincing - any new technology always displaces the old workers, but people are always needed to build and maintain the new technology. The delivery truck drivers will have to find new jobs, but the editors and reporters aren’t going anywhere, I think.
And, laptops are on their way out too (albeit, slowly, just like newspapers). You can read news on your cellphone or smartphone, your micro-notebook, your Blackberry, or your E-Book reader/Kindle. Laptops may be slightly bulky now, but they are only going to get better.
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