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Could Smaller Indiana be a player in the "new" media business?
From Fast Company. With newspapers’ traditional business model in free fall, the top media minds at global design firm IDEO (designer of the Apple mouse, consultant to Fortune 500 companies) were asked to imagine: How will we get our news after the traditional model falls apart?
THE ONCE PROFITABLE NEWS INDUSTRY IS TEETERING ON THE BRINK. The recession has battered advertising. Dailies are folding. Printing the New York Times for a year costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle. The Daily Show is a more trusted source than network news. And consumers have been marginalized in media dialogue about how to save journalism.
Yet how we define and experience news can--and should--change for the better, if we ground ourselves in what people really need and want. The next four pages showcase two environments that put the future of news in the context of our daily lives. In these scenarios, we see that information has become even more personalized and hyperlocal--and, paradoxically, more communal, participatory, and global. Journalism is more like having a conversation. People speak with unique voices, take ownership of content, and establish credibility, which in turn enables strong communities in which news can thrive. Anything that's notable to a person in a particular moment and place becomes newsworthy.
This future journalism is less beholden to current models of production, distribution, and advertising support--but nimble brands still find ways to thrive. Formerly obscure companies, like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia--now household names--are joined by other powerful companies in a network of touchpoints that lets us find the information we want as soon as we want it. News is supported by a web of contributions from consumers, for-profits, nonprofits, distribution partners, and other entities. Rather than eschewing risk and possible failure, brands (at least the ones that endure) shift from a top-down model of centralized distribution to become incubators for journalistic experiments.
Does Smaller Indiana have a chance to be a player in the "new" media business? Share your thoughts here
THE ONCE PROFITABLE NEWS INDUSTRY IS TEETERING ON THE BRINK. The recession has battered advertising. Dailies are folding. Printing the New York Times for a year costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle. The Daily Show is a more trusted source than network news. And consumers have been marginalized in media dialogue about how to save journalism.
Yet how we define and experience news can--and should--change for the better, if we ground ourselves in what people really need and want. The next four pages showcase two environments that put the future of news in the context of our daily lives. In these scenarios, we see that information has become even more personalized and hyperlocal--and, paradoxically, more communal, participatory, and global. Journalism is more like having a conversation. People speak with unique voices, take ownership of content, and establish credibility, which in turn enables strong communities in which news can thrive. Anything that's notable to a person in a particular moment and place becomes newsworthy.
This future journalism is less beholden to current models of production, distribution, and advertising support--but nimble brands still find ways to thrive. Formerly obscure companies, like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia--now household names--are joined by other powerful companies in a network of touchpoints that lets us find the information we want as soon as we want it. News is supported by a web of contributions from consumers, for-profits, nonprofits, distribution partners, and other entities. Rather than eschewing risk and possible failure, brands (at least the ones that endure) shift from a top-down model of centralized distribution to become incubators for journalistic experiments.
Does Smaller Indiana have a chance to be a player in the "new" media business? Share your thoughts here
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Chris Horn on -
Currently social media sites aren't making money. Perhaps in the future they can, if so they can hire reporters. But that wont happen until someone comes up with a business model for these sites/services to make omney.
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Permalink Reply by Steph Woodward on -
That's not true. They are "making money". And if they make money, then they could potentially pay a reporter, who could potentially generate content that would make them MORE money, and so forth.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Horn on
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if you want to run your company into the ground you can do that. why would you take on more expenses when you arent profitable at what you are already doing?
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Permalink Reply by Steph Woodward on
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Well, first of all, just because something isn't immediately profitable, doesn't mean it never will be.
Secondly, there's been no proof that this wouldn't be a profitable venture. Proof, please?
Third, when did we start discussing this being a profitable venture? Even if it only pays for itself, that doesn't mean it couldn't be done. Chris has stated, definitively, that it can't be. Yet, he has failed to back it up.
Proof. Proof. Proof. Please.
Actually, on second thought, I'm just going to bow out now. I've made my points, and this is getting ridiculous. We can keep arguing over semantics, or we can let other people chime in on the actual topics that are worth discussing. We all have a dictionary, so I'll let you guys keep going round and round about how you want to define things in a desperate attempt to draw the thread off topic in the hopes that nobody will notice that your underlying ideas are incorrect. Enjoy.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Horn on
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that doesnt solve the fundamental issue of finding a way to make the site profitable. until a pricing structure is figured out (do you charge users for the site, do you allow more advertising, do you offer a free verson full of ads and charge for a "premium" ad free site?, etc.) you wont fix the problem. adding new features to a system that doesnt work ecconomically doesnt all of a sudden make it work. it just isnt a sustainable model.
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Permalink Reply by Trevor Bradburn on -
Hasn't facebook received several hundred million dollars infused into their system by this I mean companies taking partial ownership. I know this isn't making money from the standpoint of revenue-expenses, but if these sites are able to start become popular over a short period of time so much that it attracts the attention of some of these big companies that don't mind putting money into the company leaving the creators with more money than they know what to do with. Again this isn't the same as making money but as long as they can sell off a portion of the company for substantial bucks I don't see how these sites can't help but florish over time
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Permalink Reply by Erik Deckers on -
I think we'll always have a place for news gathering and reporting. I don't think journalism is in trouble, but rather newspapers. TV news is still going strong, and the ones that are doing well have also embraced online news.
Weekly newspapers are still doing fairly well, because costs are low (they don't own the plants, they outsource their printing), the stories are local, and the advertisers are too.
Online-only newspapers are starting to come into existence, like the Denver Times which replaced the Rocky Mountain News, or one of the papers I write for, The American Reporter, which has been producing online-only news content for years.
Can Smaller Indiana be a player in the NEW media business? Yes, in a sense that a newspaper needs to start creating a community for its readers. It can no longer just be a purveyor of news, but a creator of community and a place to discuss the news. Smaller Indiana has done that, so if we could find a few media partners to work with, we can be a part of it.
Do we want to be a player in the media business? No, I don't think we should. Although some of us have a variety of media backgrounds, I don't know that we have the time, knowledge, mental bandwidth, or money to suddenly become a source for news and reporting.
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Permalink Reply by Nwokedi C. Idika on -
I think if you have at least a blog on the Web, you have a *chance* of being a player in the "new" media business. The real question is "how great of a chance do you have becoming a player in the new media business?" In SI's current form, I think the chance is extremely slim.
Pat, I know a while ago, you mentioned having different tracks on SI. Some folks would blog about Entrepreneurship, others about Design, others about Politics, etc. Users could then get feeds to the different categories they were most interested in. And if any single poster in any these sections can get exclusives regularly or write up op-eds that get *a lot* of attention--there's a higher likelihood for SI becoming a player in the new media biz.
There's another alternative that doesn't require gobs of money or effort. If SI had something similar to Hacker News (HN), I think the likelihood of becoming a new media player goes up. There's rarely any original content at HN, but the comment threads and the modding of users allows you sift through news items and understand what the general sentiment is on different issues. Reddit (very similar to HN) offers an opensource solution that anybody could use to clone its site. There are other players out there that allow similar functionality relatively easily.
So, in fact, SI could have a Reddit/HN part of the site where you have different tracks (sections), where people can mod up or down articles and/or uses based on whether they agree/disagree somebody's comment. HN and Reddit have become quite a force (at least within the hacker/techie community).
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Permalink Reply by Nwokedi C. Idika on
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The pure categorization of "news" versus "commentary" is now blurred. Watching CNN or Fox News doesn't guarantee unbiased pure news--and frankly, I don't think some folks care if it's unbiased and pure--provided that it's new to them. That is to say, "news" is relative--if I get my news from a social media site like Digg, then Digg is where I get my news from; even though Digg didn't originate the news.
Moreover, there's nothing inherently wrong with getting news from blogs. I know I get a lot of tech news from blogs (techcrunch, webware, readwriteweb). If I'm not mistaken techcrunch is syndicated through Washington Post.
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Permalink Reply by Steph Woodward on
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That would be an inefficient use of time. I mean, why bother repairing an outdated resource?
I can spend my time trying to repair my broken typewriter, or I can take that time to figure out how to use a computer. Feel free to do the former. I'll be happy to print off some instructions on typewriter repair for you from my computer in a bit.
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Permalink Reply by Steph Woodward on
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Perhaps you haven't heard of sites like hulu.com that are quickly gaining popularity. No need to pay for DVR, and you have access to your fave shows anytime, anywhere. Why bother with the rigid restrictions of having to watch things on somebody else's schedule, and only where a television is available, when you can have everything "on demand" with a laptop and an internet connection?
Oh... and just as an FYI here, my father, who can't even send an e-mail yet because of his resistance to new technology, regularly watches television online. To me, that's a tremendous statement about the potential for such technology to capture the older demographics, rather than just Gen X,Y, and Millenials.
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Permalink Reply by Steph Woodward on
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Not everybody has a television either. Your point?
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1. Please use your real name (first and last) when you sign up, or we cannot open your account
2. Please do not use logos or commercial images for your profile photo
3. Events should be posted in the events calendar
4. You can post pretty much anything you want on your own personal page (self promotion, etc), and you can change the style of your personal profile page to reflect your corporate identification if you so choose.
5. Please keep all comments civil and polite. It's OK to feel strongly about a subject, and it's OK to be critical of ideas, but please refrain from personal attacks of any kind.
If you witness or experience any issues, please contact admin@smallerindiana.com and we will look into the matter.
6. Smaller Indiana is supported by its members, and by corporate sponsors. If you're interested in learning more about sponsorship, please call Pat Coyle at 317 332 7878.
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