What's In A News Story?

WSJ columnist and author Jeremy Wagstaff, who I mentioned in my post All The News That's Fit To Debate has responded to my criticism of his point that medium in journalism now takes priority over content.

Under the title The Economics of Journalism, Mr. Wagstaff notes flatteringly that I make "a fair point", and that what I wrote was "a good thoughtful post (I'll forgive him getting my name wrong)" but that "sadly", he doesn't agree with my stipulation that "content is what it's all about".

"The economics of journalism is to make money through advertising, and to a lesser extent, through subscription," he continues.

The content -- how many reporters can be hired, how far they can travel -- is largely determined by this. Some publications manage to ignore this with the help of wealthy patrons, but eventually they all fall into the same equation. Newspapers have been economic for so long because they represented a viable logistical operation for delivering content (and advertising). But if the technology of logistics changed, so would be the business model. That is what is happening now. The delivery mechanism has changed so radically that it's also changing the content mechanism. If bloggers on the streets of Bangkok can get pictures and news of a coup before the wires and TV crews, why not make that part of your content?

I apologise here for getting Mr. Wagstaff's name wrong (absent-mindedly, I did indeed refer to him  as "Andrew" in the original post), but the point he is making - and there are many who would agree with him - in my mind does not quite add up. For if the economics of journalism is driven by advertising and (to a lesser extent) subscription, then the ultimate driver must be readership figures. To put it more precisely, there is a positive correlation between an increase in readership numbers and advertising and subscrption revenue to any given publication. So the logical question if you are a news proprietor is: how do we get readership numbers up?

Changing the medium of your publication may indeed be one necessary measure to stay competitive, but only insofar as it affects the content you can deliver. To use the analogy from my first post, it is necessary for newspapers to publish photos, since this directly affects the content of the publication. And Mr. Wagstaff's point about bloggers breaking the Bangkok coup story is much less about the fact that the story was boken over blogs than the fact that the content being provided was at the time fresh and original. Even then, this is not the best example, since the AP broke the story first with commendable coverage.

Contrary to popular opinion, the fundamental business model in journalism is not changing at all. The fact that you can now get news online as opposed to just in print does not change the fact that without quality, original (and I would add investigative) news reporting, there will be few readers, and hence few advertisers and subscribers. This is one of the main reasons for the importance of foreign correspondents: by actually being in a place, they are close to a number of different and apparently insignificant events which when, once the reporter puts a common thread together, begin to form the basis for major news that is very much in the public interest, and which has mostly been missed by the latter.

Bloggers may contribute to the process of news creation but they are only one aspect of it, acting more like a press release in function that a newspaper. News platforms - be they paper freesheets, online websites, or subscription dailies - are not affected by modern blogs as much as people suppose, largely because they have to offer something more than instant pictures of tanks in Thailand to be valuable, and it's precisely this that keeps them in business.