WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Jonathan Stray checks for the Nieman Journalism Lab the real sources of the recent breaking-news story about the China/Google hacking case and finds that”

– Out of 121 unique stories, 13 (11 percent) contained some amount of original reporting. I counted a story as containing original reporting if it included at least an original quote. From there, things get fuzzy. Several reports, especially the more technical ones, also brought in information from obscure blogs. In some sense they didn’t publish anything new, but I can’t help feeling that these outlets were doing something worthwhile even so. Meanwhile, many newsrooms diligently called up the Chinese schools to hear exactly the same denial, which may not be adding much value.

- Only seven stories (six percent) were primarily based on original reporting. These were produced by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Tech News World, Bloomberg, Xinhua (China), and the Global Times (China).

- Of the 13 stories with original reporting, eight were produced by outlets that primarily publish on paper,  four were produced by wire services, and one was produced by a primarily online outlet. For this story, the news really does come from newspapers.

So how are we going co cover real news without original reporting?

And who is going to pay for real reporters?

And real journalism?

Let’s get real.

Earl Wilkinson writes in his INMA blog:

Reading through the inevitable year-end looks back at 2009, it’s amusing to see how the pundits have just now “discovered” that the worst economic pounding in eight decades didn’t actually kill newspapers after all.

That hardly makes newspapers a growth industry. That hardly means there aren’t more cutbacks to come. That hardly means we shouldn’t double and triple efforts to regain key advertising categories. That hardly means we shouldn’t shift budgets toward business-building activities such as sales, marketing, research, and digital. That hardly means it hasn’t been one hell of a ride.

Yet it does mean that what INMA has repeatedly said this year has proven true:

• There is no pending death of the newspaper industry.
• Second-tier newspapers in the best of times would die in the worst of times.
• Debt-laden corporate parents stole the headlines, while the newspapers they owned quietly scaled operations and maintained profitability.
• Newspapers with generic missions positioned in the middle of their markets will be at-risk for the foreseeable future.
• Newspapers were dramatically over-staffed with journalists, a bubble inflated by advertiser demand and not reader demand.

Despite continued cutbacks in the vaunted Washington Post newsroom, for example, the newspaper still employs more than 800 full-time journalists – roughly double the number that worked there in the halcyon days of Watergate…

Spot-on.

New leaking sources, and an old reporter, reporting:

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict “will likely result in failure,” according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

Afghanistan?

Another Vietnam.

With the generals playing the same song:

“While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”

Give me a break!

In the last six months, the shares of Apple went up 78%.

During the same time, Dow Jones went up only 4.5%, The New York Times shares went down 12.7% and The Washington Post ones lost 8.4%.

If this is happening during the worst months of this recession, imagine what could be the value of the Apple stock in the near future.

An amazing ride without Steve Jobs leading the company.

Once again the same lesson: nobody is irreplaceable.

Including, yes, Steve Jobs.

Rob Curley is a very nice guy.

I met him just once.

Last year, both of us were speakers at the same Canadian Newspaper Publishers conference.

After his terrific presentation, I invited him to run a “Day with Rob Curley” in our periodic Harvard one-day seminars for our best clients.

Unfortunately, his crazy job prevented any assurance about any specific date too much in advance, and the one-day seminar idea didn’t work even though he was willing to do it.

So today when I read the news of his departure from The Washington Post, I was very sad.

Here we have another online news pioneer leaving a first-class newspaper company at the time that the elephants need a lot of of Rob Curleys.

Minutes after I posted my “bad news” comment, I got a nice message from Rob wanting to talk.

And he called very soon to tell me the full story.

As I said to him, I am not interested in the inside politics of the Post, but in a more global and disturbing trend: why so many Rob Curleys are leaving big newspapers and going … to new “pure digital media projects” (like Mario Tascon from Prisacom, Gumersindo Lafuente from El Mundo or Juan Varela from ADN in Spain in the last few months).

The good news here is that Rob is not leaving the newspaper industry, and he has two interesting remarks:

First, at a small newspaper, you don’t have too many layers of bureaucracy and things are done and implemented on the spot.

He likes this.

He was raised in this culture and he expects this way of life in Las Vegas.

Second, if you do great things at a big paper, other papers will say: “Yes, it’s great but we don’t have the resources, talent and visionaries that the big guys have.”

So, going to the Las Vegas Sun, Rob told me, is going to be great because no one will have any excuse not to do it.

If the Las Vegas Sun can do it, anybody can do it …

Well, I said to Rob, if the Las Vegas Sun is a rich family-owned company that has just hired some of the most talented new media people in the country, then it is not the standard local U.S. newspaper company owned by the big publicly-traded newspaper chains that are killing print and online newsrooms.

And this is, again, the good news.

A local newspaper like the Las Vegas Sun can become the new mecca for the next generation of online news conquistadores.

When I told him that three years ago we presented his Kansas case in our INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS Global Report, Rob said: “Look, Juan, come to Las Vegas and in a few months you will be able to report about the most innovative online news operation in the country.”

And for this reason Rob is heading for the Far West.

So, good luck and God speed!

Find here the full list of this year’s winners — with The Washington Post leading the best of the best.

Interesting: this year there was no Editorial Writing award!

An award for distinguished editorial writing, the test of excellence being clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning, and power to influence public opinion in what the writer conceives to be the right direction, in print or in print and online.

The Washington Post Print Paper ‘Probably’ Dead in 10 Years.

Well, it seems that Tom Brokaw wants to join the “wrong predictions club.”

Welcome to the club of Ted Turner, Bill Gates and other famous predictors who have said “in five, ten years … you will be dead.”

Dead?

Really?

Perhaps we will see the end of the evening TV news programs before print newspaper die.

So, what we need, Mr. Brokaw, is not silly announcements about our coming death, but serious help and suggestions about how to make the transition from print to digital.

And how to migrate toward quality digital journalism.

Our business is not, and never has been, to print paper, but to find, edit, present and deliver the news.

But what will never die is the demand for quality news.

On print.

On air.

Online.

All the time.

Everywhere.

Newspaper companies know best.

Our future is multimedia.

The ones that will die (for sure) are the mono-media print companies.