Journalism's New World and how Media companies should adapt

Earlier this year, at E-tech, I went to a Dan Gillmor's presentation about Blogs, Journalists, and Publishers. I enjoyed it very much, as well ad Dan's upcoming new book, "We, The Media" that I definitely advise you to read and buy when it is out. Last week, Dan agreed to send me his slides and I incorporated many ideas into my presentation to Media companies around Europe, so I thought I could also write a post about it. Of course, I adapted and commented Dan ideas so look forward to the original author's voice, I hear that Dan is going to launch a blog about his book.

Journalism's New World

Journalists and mass media now publish their news amongst more than 5 million bloggers. Anyone can publish easily information and also most sources are available to everybody. The tools available allow them to report and publish in a very advanced way at low cost, using multi-authored blogs and moblogging.

In the past, journalists were saying "This is the news", and "buy what we sell" (or don't). The readers feedback was generally difficult to get (snail mail) and usually not published.

Now, Journalism becomes a conversation:
-we tell you (we, journalists) what we have learned
-you tell us if you think we are correct
-then we discuss it
-it is self correcting to an extent

Journalists who say something wrong in the Media, don't have much feedback, if they say it through blogging, feedback may arrive in minutes, "Fact check my ass" as many people would say.

I experienced strongly these conversations and the way all speakers where fact checked, in real time, at E-Tech.

"It means less bullshit in Public Events" (Howard Rheingold).

What is also new to Journalists is the feedback they can get on their articles immediately via comments, trackbacks, Technorati and also see if they are popular instantly in Technorati's News Talk. Note that both in News Talk and in Current Events, most original sources are from the well known Publishers, fewer from bloggers, but some bloggers of course get a big audience (often more than some regional newspapers) and are even invited to join certain events with the same treatment as journalists.

The immediate feedback is probably bad news to many journalists, because they are not used to it, but here is the good news: Bloggers link to Publishers' articles and increase their reach (The Guardian online has a huge US readership) and audience, much more than their traditional website would do.

Of course, if their content is by subscription only, it is a disaster, let me illustrate this by comparing the Technorati Cosmos of some titles, showing their popularity and reach in the blog World:

-CNN: close to 30 000 links
-BBC: more than 28 000 links
-The Guardian: more than 16 000 links
-USA Today: around 5500 links

Compared to subscription based Publishers:

-The Wall Street Journal: 400 links

How to communicate to Journalists in this New World ?

Traditional press releases are going to die soon. Journalists get hundreds of them everyday by fax and email. This is one of the reasons why we (companies) pay PR agencies to call the Journalists and try to get their attention. This is not the way to go.

How many people are still interested in the Official Story ? Not that many.

Journalists and everybody's interest in the voice and stories of people working in these companies will grow. I really prefer to read what Microsoft employees have to say about Microsoft (see Robert Scoble of course and I understand that hundreds of Microsoft employees now blog too) or what Macromedia has done:

Macromedia has a dedicated Macromedia blogs section, where you can read everybody's blog at Macromedia. They also have created an aggregated feed of the weblogs. Want to read and talk to the Chief Software Architect ? Here is Christian Cantrell's weblog, with links to all other Macromedia blogs. I really think that it is the way to go.

Of course, Companies need a blogging policy, and Groove Networks has a very good one.

More bloggers in businesses means more transparency, more personal messages, a "face" or many faces, instead of the official story.

Of course Publishers get it. Many have started their weblogs, such as The Guardian, Time, Liberation or the French Computer Mag SVM (and so many others).

What is interesting is that some Publishers position the blogs as "The blog of the Publisher", some others do blogs for events, other ones launch blogs by journalists. Approaches are very different and I guess they are all testing the blogs up to now.

I really think Publishers should promote the use of blogs to avoid their journalists starting confidential ones, which also happens a lot, and promote their use internally.

In summary, to embrace the blogging phenomenon, Publishers may consider:
-promoting the use of weblogs for their journalists
-"being linkable or die"
-using RSS (see Reuters RSS of videos, or Nokia Content Syndication Program)
-defining the rights, let the bloggers use some articles if it is for personal use, use Creative Commons
-using bloggers as sources too (like The Guardian did with Salam Pax)
-linking bloggers when they talk about them in their articles, which is so rare

The above are very obvious, but far from being used in a broad way.

What do you think about these suggestions ?