The death of packaged news, and what comes next.
Back in February, I read a post by Stowe Boyd called Traffic and Flow. The post really resonated with me and got me thinking a lot about how new tools for content distribution are changing the ways we consume information. ()
Speaking about “social applications”, Stowe wrote:
We are sending all sorts of traffic — different sorts of messages — flowing through the various implicit and explicit social networks that we define ourselves through, and through which we discover meaning, belonging, and insight.
This traffic flow — made more liquid by RSS and instant messaging style real-time messaging — is the primary dynamic that I believe we will see in all future social apps. Yes, we will want to have our traffic cached — for search and analysis purposes — but we will increasingly move toward a flow model: where the various bits that we craft and throw into the ether — blog posts, calendar entries, photos, presence updates, whatever — will be picked up by other apps, either to display them to us, or to make sense of them. We want to consolidate all into one flow — a single time-stamped thread — that all apps can dip into.
At the time, I was thinking that Stowe’s perspectives matched nicely with how I operate these days. Although I’m still a consumer of dead-tree newspapers and magazines, their utility is plummeting fast. For me, it is all about Netvibes playing traffic cop to dozens of information flows, which spit out hundreds of new stories every day.
But, I cautioned myself, we can’t be too quick to argue that journalism is dead. On the contrary, we need good journalists more than ever. We will always need good journalists, with strong writing skills, who are paid by large organizations, and overseen by editors with good judgment. And, good columnists are even more important. That will not change.
What is changing, I realized, is the packaging in which we wrap our news. While I love newspapers, their limitations are becoming painfully clear.
I can’t do anything with a newspaper. I read the Globe and Mail every morning at my favourite coffeehouse and then I throw it away. If I miss a day, I’m out of luck. I can’t send a friend a column or Dilbert cartoon, and I can’t find out any more than the Globe puts in their treeware version.
And, more importantly, what I read has been determined by people who don’t know what I want to read. They make assumptions, and, I’ll give them this, they are very good at suggesting ideas. They are super-referrers who are well paid for their keen sense of what is newsworthy, and they have people that they can get to write the stories they think I want to read.
But, they may write ten articles on the Virginia shootings, when I really want three. They talk about fiscal federalism, when I really would just like them to run the best pun headline in the history of the world.
So, to loop this back to Stowe Boyd’s post on Traffic and Flow, it became clear to me that something is broken, and that something is pre-packaged news is broken. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about the 75 page newspaper, the 4 ½ minute radio news broadcast, or the 44 minute television newscast. The utility of all of these news packages is dropping fast, and there is no turning back.
And then it hit me…This reminded me of something….
Wait for it…..
Ding.
This is exactly what happened to the Album.
I realized, in a flash, that media organizations will have to recognize that the same forces that ripped apart and killed the music album are coming after their packaged news business.
Napster, Gnutella and Bittorrent have not killed the music industry. They have killed the album. Instead of relying on music executives and artists to create music packages for us, we can now create our own playlists of the music we want to hear. We can take our library of music, and create an infinite number of playlists depending on our preferences of the moment. Or, we can subscribe to the playlists of those whom we feel have better taste than us.
The movement of the music industry from albums to playlists foreshadows what is coming for the news business. RSS aggregators, blogs, digg, fark, reddit, and other ’social media’ sites are making it possible for me to tune into a whole new set of tastemakers in the consumption of news and information.
This does not mean the death of serendipity, or more limited choice in what information we consume. While some people will go down the path of only consuming media they agree with, most of us will still be guided by the desire to know “what is happening” in the world, and most will still be enchanted by trips into undiscovered country.
Some things won’t change. Good writers will still be valued for their ability to interpret the world. Good editors will still play an important role as tastemakers. And, good publishers will still be needed to bankroll good writers and editors.
But, just as music listeners have sent a clear message that music producers can’t count on them to buy 12 songs they don’t like to get at the one they like, consumers of other media are going to be equally clear that they are not going to purchase the whole package just to get at the few stories in which they are interested.
I recognize that I am ahead of the curve on this, and that we have not yet seen the declines in media consumption that signal this change is upon us. RSS, in particular, hasn’t gained the momentum it will need to make this change happen.
But, mark my words, this is coming, and it will fundamentally transform the media business and how we consume news, information and entertainment.
