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if print dies, it’ll be suicide

It’s the old story of the glass half full or half empty – you can look at the same thing from different perspectives and choose to either have a positive or negative opinion about it.

When the first photographs appeared, the end of oil portraits was announced. Later came the TV and people starting digging radio’s grave. When the first CD was out, there was talk of bidding farewell to vinyl.

Some of these deaths were confirmed (who still remembers what a VHS is?) but others weren’t. The question that a lot of people are asking but that none can yet answer is: Is internet going to kill printed news?

But if you think it will, how come the newspapers survived the invention of radio and television? It’s true that paid newspapers are selling less but there’s still the phenomenon of free newspapers. Why not blame those instead?

What newspapers need to do is stop thinking about the internet as the enemy and embrace it. It doesn’t have to be one or the other and it’s not hard to have the same team of journalists writing for the newspaper and publishing that same content online. The Web is the key to their survival – I can’t stress it enough. Instead of trying to fight the enemy, you need to get in bed with it. Producing online content is the only way to keep selling newspapers.

I still read newspapers and, like me, millions still do. I think I probably always will. There was never a time in my life when I only bought the newspaper because I felt the need to be informed. No. Television has been around for a lot longer than I have. Watching the news on TV never stopped me from buying the newspaper. Reading the news online doesn’t stop me from buying it either.

Maybe I don’t *need* to buy it anymore. But need was only one of the several reasons for me to ever do it.

Unless they’re really short-sighted, everyone in newspapers knows what might kill them and what needs to be done to prevent that death. If they choose not to do it, then that will be suicide. I don’t think they want to shoot themselves (it is a business, after all). I might be wrong but, in my age and in my position, it’s a lot better to choose to think things are not so bad.

new media, new forms of citizen participation

during the time i worked for the newspaper in portugal, several people looked for me wanting to share stories, find out more about a story i’d written, say thank you or even complain (small privileges of those who work in ‘community-level news’).

whenever that happened, i always tried to take the opportunity to find out what those people thought about the newspaper, what could be improved and what being done wrong. it always surprised me that, for many of them, the favourite pages were the ones that the journalist had little or no effect on – ‘letters to the editor’ or columns written by other people, for example.

a lot of times, that investigation that had taken several hours to complete and another few hours to put into words was put aside because of the hole on the road next to mr smith’s house. because, for mr smith, that hole was a lot more important than any major investigation. it affected his life in a direct way.

none of this is surprising or new. proximity has always been one of the fundamental criteria in journalism. And I say proximity in many different levels and not just a geographic proximity. For example, whenever something newsworthy happens in timor, you can be sure you’re going to see it on the news in Portugal. In this case, the geographic distance is secondary because the emotional bonds between the two countries are stronger (and, therefore, come higher up in the hierarchy).

in a way, this is also related to the criteria that lead people to, more and more, choose the internet over other media to stay informed. instead of the passive act of consuming whatever is put in front of them, they select, choose, search and comment. the key for the success of the whole chain is the engagement of the reader/viewer/listener and that’s why web2.0 is so successful. people want to be part of the process and they want to feel like they contribute to it rather than just acting as a passive receiver. even if it’s just to say ‘I agree’ or ‘I disagree’, a lot of times without adding anything else, they just want to feel included.

this is also strongly related to the rise of ‘citizen journalism’ (with websites like cnn’s ireport proving its power) but that’s a subject for a totally different post.

the fact of the matter is that in journalism, like in politics, citizens’ participation is fundamental to prevent the structure from collapsing - whether it guarantees a more democratic society, that’s open to discussion.

local journalism is the future

i always thought that internet and globalisation will eventually empower local media. it’s easy to get the latest about the major events on the other side of the world but the easiest it is to access that information, the bigger it is the need for people to get information about their own community (and this doesn’t only apply to a certain geographic area, but rather to any group that shares a certain set of rules or values - and that kind of specialisation is where bigger media, like national newspapers, have a problem).

focusing on the geographic sense of the word ‘community’, i believe that local/regional/suburban newspaper are the ones that will survive for longer. because those local news can’t be find online - at least not yet. but even those newspapers understand the importance of taking the step into online media.

a good example is the newspaper i worked for in portugal before coming to nz: it’s a weekly regional newspaper that’s putting a lot of effort into its online content - the website is updated three times a day and all journalists (and we all know how small newsrooms are in regional newspapers) must contribute daily for the website. also, about a year ago, the newspaper decided to go one step further and start its own online television (without increasing the number of journalists, i must say). so far, it’s been quite successful and it’s fair to say that the online tv was a good move and should set an example for other local media - if you want to survive, you better embrace web 2.0.

the closeness to the community is another advantage that local newspapers have over national and international media. not only do they talk about the issues that matter to people but their offices are generally closer to the readers. and this isn’t just a minor detail. it wasn’t rare for me to have a reader coming in the newsroom just to say hello or give his 2 cents about an article - that relationship between the news producer and the news consumer is vital. the consumer (feels more like he) is a part of the proccess. that can be compared to what makes social media networks so successful - interaction - and that explains why newspapers’ websites have started allowing comments like bloggers were already doing - they realised that the readers didn’t want to be at the end of the chain and just receive the message in a passive way - they wanted to see their opinions taken into consideration.

what got me back to this subject was reading about the huffington post taking on local newspapers. that’s another very smart move and i have no doubts that it will be successful.