A few months ago, I was collaborating new media models with both journalists and developers at a Knight-Mozilla News Challenge event in Seattle called hacks/hackers. About halfway through our brainstorm, a brave Seattle Times journalist spoke up and asked:

“But wait, what about the elephant in the room?”

(blank stares)

“You know…monetization.”

(frustrated stares).

Oh, yeah, that.

Indeed, monetization is the question everyone is asking about regarding the future of journalism, and no one really seems to have an answer for yet either. How on earth are we as journalists supposed to earn money for our content when online advertising revenue is dropping and people are so used to getting news content for free?

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The nonprofit journalism organization I work for, the Common Language Project, now has some unexpected company. The New York Times reported Friday that the IRS has granted nonprofit tax-exempt status to James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas.

You might remember O’Keefe as the mastermind behind the clandestine videos that brought down two NPR executives and outed questionable practices by ACORN employees. O’Keefe told the New York Times that thanks to the nonprofit status, the group would be able to train an army of volunteers to mimic his tactics.

The group has wrapped themselves in the mantle of “muckraking” and “investigative journalism,” apparently without a care or a clue as to what that means.  And while I’ve gotten used to the term “journalist” being used to describe everything from a guy on the scene of a crime with a cell phone camera to the owner of today’s trending Twitter account, O’Keefe has gone too far.  He’s no journalist and here’s why: Read more…

The Seattle Times has a couple of niche sports apps on the market right now and both are doing very well. As a newspaper guy, this is exciting. There is likely a future here for newspapers and plenty of money to be made. Identify a niche audience (that you already write for) and develop an app that caters to their interests. I’d pay lots of money for these Seattle Times apps, they are that good.

I have a journalism degree and daily newspaper experience, but I’m also a digital media nut and a huge Husky football fan. Imagine my euphoria when I first saw the Seattle Times was launching a Husky football app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Their Husky football blog is like the Bible to me, and an iPhone app sounded too good to be true.

But how useful would it be? Would I trust the content? How about the functionality? I didn’t want this to be a giant advertisement for the Seattle Times.  I wanted it to be all Huskies all the time. One season in, I’m happy to report this is purple and gold nirvana. It’s the most immersive, accessible and, of course, portable Husky football experience I have ever known. Thank you, Seattle Times!

OK, OK. Enough gushing.

I respect this app. It’s a big step for journalism and the newspaper industry in general. Readership is down across the country. Revenue is shrinking, and newspapers are struggling to reach new audiences in a digital age that crippled their business model long ago. Enter the niche app. This is a new dawn for newspapers.

I could already find the information and stories featured in this app on my iPhone using mobile Safari. But I don’t always want to tap dance through various bookmarks and zoom in to the content I want to read. The app puts it all in one place. It costs $2.99 for a one-time download, but I would pay $2.99 a month for this. I’m not the only one, either. Managing Editor Heidi de Laubenfels told Lost Remote the app reached “20 percent of our total expected sales in the first two days and continues to do quite well.” The Times’ latest app, one for the Husky men’s basketball season, currently ranks on the iTunes list for top paid sports apps.

My question initially was whether or not I would trust a similar app released by a non-objective news source. The UW Athletic Department did just this, releasing a Coach Sark app not long after the Seattle Times released its football app. The content, not surprisingly, was not as deep. The interface was wonky, and it wasn’t objective in the slightest. Not even the fact that proceeds from the $2.99 purchase went to charity could rescue this app from the bottom of the league standings.

Time and trust are in limited supply these days. The Seattle Times is an organization I trust and provides me with content I believe in. Newspapers everywhere should take notice of this endeavor. Find a market—foodies, concertgoers, American Idol-lovers—and meet them where they are. Smartphones are growing exponentially and apps such as this are, hopefully, a sign of things to come.

I love free stuff, but this is the kind of content I want and will pay for. Are you listening, newspaper executives? I would pay for this. I would pay monthly. And I would pay a lot more than $2.99.

You gotta love Russian President Dimitry Medvedev (or maybe not!). He’s the world’s most powerful Deep Purple fan. And it seems as if he updates his own Twitter account — at least the Russian-language version.

Of course, it’s easy to assume that heads of state have teams of handlers who do their direct online communication for them. For instance, I’ve gone back and forth on whether Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s now-hacked blog broadcasted his personal musings direct-to-the-people. But judging by the personal voice of Medvedev’s Twitter feed (i.e. “My father taught a lot of graduate students from Vietnam. It was very nice to meet some of them today“), I’m thinking that he probably writes his own tweets, but maybe gets help uploading the photos from his SLR.

Such as this Twitpic from November 1st, replete with status update:

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After new media turned the old-media world upside down, a couple of digital hipsters tilted their heads and gave analog a second look.

Ben Terrett and Russell Davies, of the European design firm Really Interesting Group (RIG), spoke this month in Boston at the Razorfish agency’s client summit. They were discussing their venture, Newspaper Club.

Their goal is to move “past digital infatuation and analog nostalgia” and into “the post-digital world.” They want us to recall the power of physical contact with tangible things, and to use the right tools for the right purposes. A friend had aggregated various readings from the Web into a book titled “Things I Would Rather Read on Paper.” The RIG boys saw this and realized computer screens are a “really terrible way to read,” and books and newspapers are “a fantastic technology for reading.” Read more…

A diverse group of more than 200 journalists, entrepreneurs, techies, nonprofit organizers, artists, activists and others gathered last week at UW with the grand mission of re-imagining the news ecology of the Pacific Northwest. This Journalism That Matters “unconference” focused on journalism’s relationship with the community.

I was delighted and relieved that this was not a pity party about the good old days of journalism. The participants were open to change and were there to figure out the future, not to pine for the past. Sure, when you get dozens of laid-off people in a room, there are going to be some depressing chats about filing for unemployment, but overall, the mood was amazingly optimistic and upbeat. “The snark level is very low,” remarked one woman.

For me, the biggest benefit was meeting people who are involved in a variety of interesting startups and experiments. I learned about Xconomy, a news site that covers tech industries in three cities, and TheNewHive.com, an innovative social networking site set to launch by the summer. I learned about InvestigateWest’s business model and the need for a better online system to share content among community radio stations.

It wasn’t possible to be a part of all of the sessions and chats going on, but based on my observations, several themes emerged:

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As go-to sources for innovative content, amateur bloggers have been teaching mainstream media professionals some new tricks. Once considered the sideshow of journalism, blogging has taken the center ring. Even traditional media outlets have joined the fray, bolstering blogging’s reputation. But for amateur bloggers not writing for a trusted brand, establishing a trustworthy reputation remains important. For Justin Carder of Capitol Hill Seattle, consistency is key: “You do the same good stuff day in and day out for long enough, and you become trustworthy. It’s a function of effort as much as anything.”

In addition, here are five tips for gaining your audience’s trust, and writing like a pro—even if you aren’t one:

1. State your credentials: When positioning yourself as a blogger, you must inform your audience of your qualifications. Credentials inspire confidence, and the term does not exclusively apply to professional degrees. For instance, if a blogger is an experienced ballet instructor and writes about ballet’s emotional benefits, her opinion has merit, even though she is not a licensed behavioral professional.

2. Write what you know: When you write about subjects you have in-depth knowledge about, your insights are richer and more authentic than when writing about a topic requiring extensive research. “Because I care about what I write, I can help my audience by making useful suggestions, interesting observations or just making them chuckle a little at what happens to me,” explains Candy Martin, author of the Seattle P-I reader blog Mother of Style.

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On Tuesday, March 17, 2009, the Seattle Post Intelligencer will cease operations as a print newspaper. Seattle PI.com will be re-launched with a new vision and staff. Summarizing the words of Executive Producer Michelle Nicolosi, here are the salient points of the new venture:

“We don’t feel we have to cover everything ourselves. We’ll partner for some content; we won’t duplicate what the wire is reporting unless we have something unique to offer; we’ll continue to showcase content from 150 reader bloggers and we’ll link to content partners and competitors to create the best mix of news on our front page.

Readers are also interested in photo galleries for all kinds of news and features. Our daily news of the world photo gallery is one of the most popular features on Seattle PI.com

We have just sealed a new partnership with Hearst Magazines that will give us great new health and wellness and at-home content from their many titles.

We’ve also signed up dozens of prominent local leaders to write columns for us.

A lot of our staff efforts will be on coverage of government, spending, crime, and harder news in general.

We don’t have reporters, editors or producers — everyone will do and be everything. Everyone will write, edit, take photos and shoot video, produce multimedia and curate the home page.”

Overall, this sounds like the new PI.com will be positioned to cover most of the content areas that have high readership and interest. The collaboration with Hearst’s stable of magazines will also bring a fresh new look, and potentially cross-platform advertising. The new online service has yet to discuss advertising or budgets, but Nicolosi points out that the online edition has been in the top 30 most popular US newspaper websites, as measured by Nielsen, for a long time. That they are sticking closely to the watchdog-on-city hall value of objective journalism gives me hope for the future.

And here is a comprehensive look at new models for the future of news from Prof. Jeff Jarvis at CUNY.
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