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Windsor Digital

Handmade digital strategy from the heartland.

Every picture tells a story

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Look at this photo (unfortunately a low-res screencap) for what’s currently right and wrong about journalism:

pi
Screencap from Seattle P-I web site.

Here’s my take. The two women in the foreground are doing the work of a newsroom, reporting news and publishing it. Immediately. Online. Unfortunately, it’s the news of the potential death of their news organization.

Everyone else is focused on the man with his back to us, Hearst’s Steven Swartz who’s giving the news that the Seattle P-I is up for sale and will likely stop printing in 60 days.

If you watch the video of this announcement here, you can see The P-I’s managing editor David McCumber on the right in this picture (left in the video) standing and taking the news as best he can until Swartz says that the days of the printed P-I are over. That’s when the air comes out of him. That’s when it strikes home. That’s the worst possible news.

I don’t note this to minimize the very real angst of the talented and dedicated people in the P-I newsroom, many of whom find themselves thrust suddenly into a tough job market, but I can’t help but see a metaphor in this photo.

The only people facing forward are doing the job of journalism in the new digital reality. Everyone else is sitting vigil for a dying friend, focused on a potentially destructive nostalgia for print.

This business of journalism must change. One important clue is contained in this photo.

(Big hat-tip to Don Day of Lost Remote, who first noted this photo. He and I saw slightly different things in the photo, which is why I decided to make this post here as well.)

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I think you're reading too much into that photo. I'm sure there are plenty of other people in that room who are focused on the new reality, but first they've got the reality of families and mortgages to worry about. And, yes, the "business" of journalism must change, but that involves the folks from advertising who haven't figured out how to monetize the journalism we do online.

  2. I'm really tired of all the bloggers, J-schoolers and Twitterati who jump up and down about how much they "get it," and everyone else is the problem. While the Web is allowing for new/faster/better/different/social ways to relay information to our readers, no one has convinced me there is a viable business strategy that will allow newspapers to continue on the scale they've always enjoyed on the backs of classifieds and display advertising. It's not the journalism that is broken, it's the business model.

    If newspapers had invented or bought into Google back in the day, then there would be more than enough money to support both online and print operations, but that ship has sailed.

  3. Tim,

    I think your metaphor works. I don't think you're minimizing their pain at all. I think the people in this picture feel real pain. I would if I were them. But I think the metaphor works because we have no choice but to look forward. We don't have time to look back. This is the time when we as journalists have to act as if we're not terrified when we are. We need to innovate and create and change even though many of us just want crawl under a blanket and hide. That's just reality.

  4. Most people guiding the helm at newspapers — and even many working as reporters and editors — still have no idea the power of the web and of social media — because they generally don't really use it firsthand, beyond Google, Facebook, and Lexis-Nexis. If a news executive went job-hunting 20 years ago and a recruiter said: So, what newspapers do you read? And he said, "Well, I hear a lot about newspapers and some of my direct-reports tell me about their importance, but I don't really pick up a copy myself…." That executive would be shown the door.

    But there are people who get paid a lot of money, who work in MSM/newspapers, who make decisions about strategy and direction, and who just don't use this stuff themselves. And that's just wrong. Yet, they're in charge of huge budgets and the professional lives of thousands.

    First, Google and Craigslist took the meat-and-potatoes of the newspaper industry's revenues. Next, if the industry doesn't let go of certain false presumptions*, other social media-powered outfits will eat their dessert.

    * False presumptions among MSM/newspaper outlets:
    1) That you will own "breaking news" in the age of Twitter and live web video.
    2) That your news websites — with fewer reporters than ever because you've laid so many off — will still be "the definitive source" of news.
    2) That mobile/smartphones are just another "platform." (Wrong. They're a game-changer.)
    3) That your news website is "social" enough because it has talk forums and readers can post articles to Facebook.
    4) The Whine: "No one has answers to get us out of this mess." Bullshit. The answers are there. You just have to be willing to take RISKS, and not cover your ass and lay people off.