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I just shared with you on Twitter one of the best pieces I've read lately, Todd Gilpin's article on the five werewolves of American journalism. I am, as you know, keen to understand what is behind the decline of the newspaper industry. Not only from the academic viewpoint but also from the social media and new media angle.
I don't know if I buy is the serendipity defence of newspaper, but I would recommend you to give it a revisit after having put on the glasses of Gilpin's analysis. It's a good read.
I did, however, thoroughly enjoy this post (as I almost always do with your writing!).
Best wishes
and posted a link to it on Twitter. I think he is dead on target with his
overview of the five "werewolves" and what they are doing to the industry.
I particularly liked his observation about how newspapers appealed to an
"accidental public," some of whom were interested in informing themselves
about issues and some of whom just wanted to be entertained or amused. That
is one of the central dilemmas of any form of publishing, in paper or online
-- how much should you appeal to the former and how much to the latter?
@selfmadepsyche That's McKeen's big argument as well.
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@mathewi I completely agree. Reinforced maybe because I enjoyed the same issue of the Globe. But then it is a reasonable good paper.
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I also enjoy the serendipity aspect of newspapers and always kept that in mind in my newspaper-editing days. But I have to say that I come across a wider array of serendipitous content from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media (I haven't used my RSS reader in months; Twitter is way better for me) than I did/do from newspapers. I'm sure you're right that some of those stories you cited wouldn't come your way through electronic filters. So I don't think we get the same serendipitous content from both sources. But digital content that I wouldn't have sought finds me several times a day (sometimes, I'm pretty sure, in links that you tweet).
there is a much broader range of serendipitous content that we get exposed
to on the Web and through social media. I rely on that and enjoy it
immensely. But I still think (maybe just nostalgiically) that there is
value in the particular blend of curation and aggregation that newspapers
provide -- not all of it, but certainly some of it.
While I agree that "social media" leads to social discovery, I think a lot of people worry about the effects of the 'echo chamber' with what people share. If no one reads and shares news about apartheid, are we still going to see it?
Matthew,
I would like to see a comparison between your article and Gina Chen's article about how<a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/10/readers-expect-news-to-find-them/
">readers expect the news to find them
. What do you think?
When I have serendipitous consumption of satisfying news in traditional news product, whether dead wood or online, it is because the editorial staff decided it was important for people to know. Hey, there's limited time or space or resources to print/produce, one must pick the best stuff only.
When I have satisfying serendipitous consumption of news via Twitter, Facebook or other social media, there are oftentimes new relationships involved, or are happening because of the relationships I've decided to have online. I see an interesting link from Friend A, who saw it on a publication that's completely new to me, and my social world has expanded. I comment on something that's interesting to me and I meed a new contact online. The online version, by nature, is captivating and rewarding with new experiences, new opportunities, etc. Print just can't do that for me. Even the perfect print experience can't do that for me.
So, one serendipity (print) might be in itself fulfilling, but the other serendipity (online) will lead to another, and another, and another...
As a lifelong newspaper and magazine reader there is nothing like an issue of any of the leading Saturday or Sunday or Sunday papers or a great issue of the New Yorker and many others. You don't know what you don't know.
One last comment. Would love to see a week of no major media presence on the Web - no wire services, no NY Times network, no WSJ, no TV sites, etc. Imagine the immediate decrease in blog posts and tweets. What would people quote?
Newspapers help filter and condense and aggregate content. Yes. But they don't do very a good job of it on net.
The thing I keep coming back to with the 'serendipity defence' is the really poor information architecture at newspaper websites.
Newspaper designers/editors had two centuries to get it right with the physical medium: the art of the headline, the right juxtaposition, and the right amount of column inches for the right story. Now none of that matters, but most sites are still organized exactly like their print counterparts.
Instead of 200 years of internalized design sense, newspaper site designers have only had 15 years. Most sites look and act their age -- like awkward teenagers with a misplaced sense of importance. I think we are still a few iterations away from getting the alignment right (see the latest redesign at thestar.com or see the infographics at the NYT or see the wholly new approach proposed at konigi http://konigi.com/notebook/redub-designs-better...) but hopefully things will fall into place soon because I agree with you serendipity is KEY but I still buy the paper on Saturday.
included -- simply copy the format and structure that worked in print,
rather than taking advantage of this new medium and the way people consume
and understand content online. Hopefully we are all learning quickly :-)
valuable one, and you are quite right that there are arguments on both sides
that are not bolstered by any data whatsoever. But how does one measure
serendipity or the lack thereof? It seems to me that the whole concept is
so abstruse and indefinable that I wouldn't even know where to start.
@NYT_JenPreston @mathewi I always thought @NYT's newspaper skimmer cld restore some of that serendipity online http://bit.ly/1zMNTs<br />
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I had a similar conversation with some followers this a.m. on twitter. I asked followers about how they read the Sunday "paper" online, and how it's the same or different when they read the hard copy, the one you hold in your hands.
@d_hamann tweeted, "I think that's one of the main differences between print and online reading. In print you read articles you didn't search for."
Today, many people say they don't need to search for news, if it's news, it will find them. I think the news finds me online, on twitter, via RSS, etc, but some stories that would never find me online, find me when I read the paper.
@RobinJP : We try, but honestly, you miss things if you don't look at both print and digital editions. So much in both places.
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@madshrew I know. But, given 500 RSS subs and 600 Twitter follows, how many more articles am I stumbling across that I wouldn't have seen?
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@gmarkham Unfortunately, we also must ask ourselves whether serendipity matters much to news consumers.
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@billdinTO there is that. readers more likely to see it as "variety"
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@selfmadepsyche You find so much more on the internet than in the papers.
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@selfmadepsyche Oh, I'm not defending McKeen, I actually had a problem with it when he mentioned it my freshman year.
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@madshrew I agree. But maybe that's just us web-savvy new junkies?
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@gmarkham You only get serendipity from a paper if you read the whole thing. Many don't. That behaviour is magnified online.
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@billdinTO I think scanning will turn uo the serendipity, too. Which, of course, is a potential strength of the web.
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@gmarkham Online's a search, not a scanning medium. But a good serendipity tool for me is NYT.com's 'most-emailed.'
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@billdinTO Search is big, but I "scan" FB, Twitter, my RSS feeds, etc.
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@gmarkham It's like saying, I don't want the G&M when Joe X or Selma Y were the news editors. I don't like their judgment. :)
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@gmarkham Ah, but you choose who to folo on FB, Tw, RSS, so is it truly serendipity? :) ...
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@billdinTO Serendipity comes with the flow, because I follow such smart people:-)
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@MarkDykeman I believe in good newspapers (LA Times, NY Times, Parool, etc) but doubt that the medium of paper is one that will stick
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@gmarkham Do the smart people you follow reward your loyalty by surprising you or by delivering a predictable experience?
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@gmarkham 'Serendipity' - the faculty of making happy & unexpected discoveries by accident.
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"The conventional gripe print-lovers make about online news is the lack of serendipity. But, of course, the website and various apps offer alternative forms of serendipity — the most e-mailed list, recommendations from people in my TimesPeople universe, tweets from fellow readers. All of those alert me to interesting work I might not have gone looking for on my own."
http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/10/bill-keller-tr...
Even if aggregators aren’t perfect yet, they can be augmented by the online sites CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CNBC, etc, and local sites as well for the human interest stories that readers desire. For instance, I can set up iGoogle to feed me the aggregators and the news sites of my choosing. Plus, with Twitter on iGoogle, I can also follow these sites for up-to-the-minute breaking news, plus add in local sites for the "human flavor" I desire.
While the large metro and national papers have been in decline, my unscientific (and unmeasured) small-town newspapers have actually started to gain subscriptions as well as online readership. To me, this points to a trend that supports localized news (in a big city, maybe neighborhood sites, or sites for certain zip codes, rather than online or print subscriptions to the Chicago Sun-Times or the NYTimes. While readers want to be informed of global events, they also want to know about things in their respective living areas; crime rates, building permits, candidates for Alderman or City Councilman, restaurant reviews, etc. Sites such as Chicago’s Everyblock.com reviews crime statistics, permits, home sales, restaurant inspections, new business openings, business permits, housing permits, and even local events. (There is a drawback to EveryBlock: their main news feed often comes from the Sun-Times or the Tribune, but I believe they are working to move away from reprinting stories from the local papers—both of which are currently in bankruptcy).
I’m not trying to be critical; rather, I am providing a point of view from someone that works with clients that have, for as long as I’ve been in advertising, been steering their money away from the papers. Part of it has to do with the outrageous cost (comparatively) newspapers charge for both print and online services, declining circulations, and honestly, years of poor service from most of the nation’s metro papers. For years the newspaper conglomerates sat in the cat bird seat and were unwilling to negotiate costs (other than volume discounts) while TV, Radio, Online, and Out-of-Home providers dictated their sales by how the advertising market fared. The other reason that previous clients (car dealerships especially) have moved away from the papers is poor reproduction quality, even when in color. Thus, in a karma-like turn of events, newspapers are now reaping what they sowed.
Additionally, newspapers (print) and now online are extremely cluttered with advertisers and they’re either unwilling, or unable, to provide separation between competitors (like hospitals) from one another. Online papers don't supply special sections like the print versions, and the special sections were only instituted to help boost circulation.
There was a crucial juncture in newspaper history where the papers had a choice of going one of two ways: providing straight news, or adding in special sections to help boost sales. To make a long story short, the special sections weren't able to help circulation numbers. The newspapers simply did not listen to what their readers wanted: News.
So, that’s my .02 cents. Hope that it made sense and provides some perspective.
Thanks for making me use my brain!