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Why Traditional news establishments must evolve

I have had my regular dose of information, knowledge and awareness on events around me for more than 25 years now from the newspapers. The form has changed now - earlier it used to be newsprint and now it is digital.



Personal Experience

I started at an young age of 8 and it has not included not just news papers - It has grown to include journals, white papers, blogs and other content curated from any sources possible. I have even read academic material and interviews given by any diplomat, official or any other stake holder anywhere in the world. I read news 20 hours a day and the only source I don’t use is twitter. :)

It is hence sad to see that some of the major newspapers worldwide struggle with how the world around them is changing. I have read the entire damning report on New York Times and am also seeing the struggle that every other respectable news establishment is going through. It is very sad that they are failing to connect with people who consume it at a rate that their model is not used to.

News establishments have a responsibility. They have to make the society around them be aware and also be responsible. They have to be neutral and at the same time make sure the society moves forward - be progressive , not regressive and also be socially responsible.

A lot of the news establishment that I respect and grew up with have a lot of processes and structure to make sure that they stay responsible. Editorial boards, vetting of sources and proper verification of news are very important. At the same time, editorial boards are also not without their biases. They have to make sure that there is a certain sense of subjectivity to the news  - subjectivity that they can use to make the news more palatable and relevant to the masses. There are some news establishments that I do not agree with but still respect - most notably Economist - that are very good at this.

Key Flaws

However, most of these processes that were developed years back have 2 key flaws that I am not sure the news establishment are even aware of. If they are aware of these, they don’t seem to be doing anything about them.

Flaw #1: The rate of news consumption has exponentially increased and hence some of the news that come is not current anymore.

A lot of the processes around editorial boards, vetting and verification were more structured for the 20th century asynchronous mode of communication. The only way of letting a news establishment know what the reader thinks is through letters that are mailed and published after careful consideration.

This asynchronous mode of communication gave news establishments feedback that was too late and was ignored. 

The move of news readers to digital where transmission of information is really fast and consumed at the same rate has taken the news establishments by surprise. The second fact is that for 80% of the news articles - the level of scrutiny that the news establishments do is not relevant to the readers anymore.

For example, If I know that there is an election going on in any part of the world, What most of the readers care is which side is leading. The level of scrutiny for getting the numbers right is not needed. By the time the final numbers come, no one cares anyway.

Flaw #2: The misunderstanding on who is your real customer.

I have seen this trend happening on several large indian national news papers. For news papers, we all know that the consumers - people who really use them - are the news readers. However, who is the real customer. Some time in late 1990’s it turned out that the consumerism wave pushed a lot of advertisers to go to these news establishments. Hence the advertisers became the customers. 

That is a HUGE flaw. Advertising is a by product since you are helping the advertisers reach the news readers. If you lose focus away from news, you lose advertising revenue as well.

Some options:

So how do news establishments handle these challenges of retaining news readers as well as advertisers - since both of them are needed for a viable commercial proposition.

Revisiting my first point - I came to news establishments to read about news and get knowledge, awareness and information. Today, I have to reach out to various sources and I do the curation myself. I would love some one else to do all the curation and provide me with a good bundle of news, knowledge and information. And I mean expert information.

You cannot do it in newsprint anymore - it is archaic and slow. Websites are good and can be structured - but you cannot make me pay for that anymore. It is a foolish endeavor for you to make any one pay for news.

I personally circumvent any methods of news sites making me pay - legally - since they also syndicate their news to other news establishments. 

However, I would be willing to pay a good amount of money if they had real good content that would be for experts. For example, if there is a expert policy discussion on public policy or on taxation . on city planning, I would be more than willing to pay and attend some of these conferences. or even pay to access the content.

Some news organization have started to do that. However, you need to get your house in order to do that. 

Most of the news establishments that have websites that seem to be from the early 1990’s. You need to step up. To give an idea of the scale of change that most news establishments are facing, Wired - a relatively new establishment - had to take around 2.5 years to get their web site in shape. And they are really really good.

Conclusion

If news establishment around the world do not adjust to the new world order - of just enough information at the right time, they would give rise to a lot of intermediation that is not of good quality. This could do the society more harm than good. So it is in all of our interest for the news establishments to step up and take the challenge.




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