The Future of News - Pay or you'll get cr*p

Fourth up yesterday at the Financial Times Digital Media & Broadcasting conference was "The Future of News" with a panel discussion featuring:

- Steven Brill, Co-founder, Press+
- Claire Enders, CEO and Founder, Enders Analysis
- John Ridding, CEO, Financial Times
- Arthur O. Sulzberger, Chairman and Publisher, The New York Times Company

Leaving aside that the issue is now moot in the UK with today's announcement about BSkyB, this panel to an extent was like a GroundHog Day session, I hear the same thing rehashed every time I go to a "Media meets Digital" type of panel/conference. The Olde Media (TV, Music, etc) wails and tears its hair out about the terrible things being wrought upon it, and yet - year by year - the industry structures look much the same, the people running it are the same, the complaints are the same. If this was an industry in dire straits I'd expect to see more major restructurings and radical changes (and I'm not talking about governments sponsoring News International takeovers).

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said some 200 years ago that:

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. "

So, I was looking for the "what's different" this time, but saw nothing except a datapoint Claire Enders made that attention paid to news was, per day, on average:

- 35 minutes on a newspaper
- 25 minutes per day on TV
- 15 min on Facebook if devoted, 5 min if not, average low (huge difference in behaviour bewteen addicts and normals on social media I suspect)

In other words they are not totally insane, it should still be possible to make the Olde Media work for some time yet. But not by carrying on doing the things that aren't working.

However, I will tell you the One Big Thing that I got out of this session - its not so much that anything new is emerging, more that something is clarifying, and that is this:

- High quality, unique content (FT, Economist) can charge money for subscriptions today

- You are not going to get curated truthful News for free, it will be Advertorial friendly opinions or subsidised via New Barons with Agendas. News will be what the (Ad filled) Internetz News Content farms wants people to want.

- Right now there is still not a workable business model for free online good quality "general purpose" news (New York Times et al). The market has a real risk of splitting into the above two areas unless it can find a different model for "paid for" truthful reporting than Ad funded, traffic chasing, linkbaiting cr*p. Timing to get a model I don't know yet, but lets say 3-5 years.

However, the Olde News media also needs to make sure it is actually processing good quality news, or else nothing will save it - as Craig Newmark pointed out in 2009, as to why the Old Media "Quality" was losing ground:

Firstly, the media failed its public's interest:

An increasingly media savvy online public sees that recent major problems involved some really good journalism, particularly the current financial crisis, and also that "weapons of mass destruction" thing. Good reporters told us that something was amiss in both situations, and we did see some really good journalism in both cases. However, the really good journalism was buried, not curated into the front pages, and then, infrequently if at all repeated. As news consumers, if big news is not prominently displayed, and then repeated, it's a tree falling in the forest.

So, these major news organizations reported on matters of great importance to the world, but the curation model failed to really warn the public about those issues, in any way that genuinely delivered the message.

Craig saw this as a failure to understand the role of trust and effective curation:

The new model for news curation and selection, I feel, will be a balance of professional editing and collaborative news filtering. In one incarnation, news organizations will look at feeds from highly respected news fans, and that will drive stories that are featured more prominently.

Now, remember that "trust is the new black."

Another issue is hiding unpleasant truth behind "objectivity", often used as a way of obfuscating commercial interests

In presenting two sides of a story, news organizations will allow both sides to present their positions. That sounds fair, but it's common practice to give those opportunities to "front groups," or "astroturfers," people who are paid to deceive the public in specific matters. This has been very well investigated, documented, and reported. It's a major problem in the public forum, for example, in the health care reform debate, badly hurting our country.

His proposed solution from 2009 is still very interesting:

- The successful news organizations of the future will pursue models for news curation/selection which is a hybrid of professional editing and collaboration among talented consumers [Add algorithms to that].

- A major opportunity is to be found by rejecting the involvement of professional disinformation groups. New models for fairness in reporting will balance the current vision. That's probably captured in the statement that "transparency is the new objectivity."

That was 2009, has anything changed with "quality" news in by 2011? If not, it is, as Craig implies, little better in realty than the hodgepodge of PR churnalism, sleb advertorial, mystic mumbo-jumbo and Content-Farmed Opinion that charecterises "free" news today.

And doing what he says would be unique.....