Google Wave represents a new opportunity for print journalism. Wave itself is still a buggy, empty platform, and it might never succeed. But it represents a potential new approach for journalism: Bringing readers and citizen journalists into the process, and making the developing story a product.
There are at least four deliverables from a transparent, collaborative reporting process: The immediacy of tweets and other social media updates; incremental short pieces in a Wave-like approach; what we now consider to be the finished product; and a kind of scrapbook of the pieces that is archivable.
Here's why journalists should care: It can make money.
By aiming this process-is-the-product strategy to mobile, we can hit a marketplace and audience that is willing to pay. It took many big companies years to make money online, but consumers have been far more willing to spend money on the devices and services associated with the mobile Web.
But they won't pay for tweets, which are free and omnipresent. And they won't pay for what print journalism has always considered to be our final product, because years ago we committed ourselves to the philosophy that information is free online.
They will pay for incremental breaking news multi-media stories that come in waves from events that they care about. It's a product they've never seen on their mobiles, and they can take part with social media. Web 3.0's geo approach can target users, and pair mobile advertising with stories.
This would look like a user in Chicago getting an alert on their mobile that the Olympic Committee was about to announce the selection of 2012's host city, with a short video, print story, photos, and the ability to share the story with friends, and an ad from Olympics sponsor Bank Of America.
The user could be updated every 15 minutes, and share the story while commenting. If they committed to the developing story, location-based ads could be attached to the story. ("Sad the Second City didn't get the Games? There are beer specials right around the corner...")
There are many moving pieces, but this pulls together some promising strategies. Journalism needs to take on the challenge.
I'm all for "vision" and using technology to help journalists better "connect" with their audience. But I'm not convinced Google Wave is the seismic shift some are saying it is, at least when it comes to the way "journalism" is produced and disseminated. (OK, I said that about Twitter too, and I'm still willing to defend my stance on that.)
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to come up with examples where, as a news consumer, I'd care enough about "a developing story" to pay to see how it comes together -- especially since I can already get most of that on CNN, Fox News or NPR -- or Twitter -- media that will always be better suited to live coverage of breaking news.
Watch one of the cable news channels (or a Twitter stream) as a big story develops. What you'll see are a couple facts (some true; some, uh, not so true) being repeated over and over and maybe a couple talking heads, usually providing knee-jerk reactions.
When covering "breaking news," those outlets generally don't give me the context and analysis that helps me put the news in perspective; it's relatively easy (and cheap) to put those talking/typing heads out there to wax about what they think is happening. But it takes time and hard work to organize (often messy) thought processes into a form that helps make sense of the news.
Despite some oft-repeated claims, I'm not sure I agree that the public is clamoring to peek inside that process. (Remember all those papers that rushed to put budget meetings on public webcams? Me neither...) I'd have to have a real vested interest in a story to spend time watching as it came together.
Plus, as a self-conscious writer, do I want the public to see a story before it's ready? If they have suggestions, they know my e-mail address; if I need their advice, I've got their number -- and a blog, where I can already solicit comments. Professiona journalists guard their notes pretty well for lots of reasons -- legal and otherwise; why would they want to voluntarily open those up?
I'm not sold on the "collaborative writing process," either. Sure, in the morass of "suggestions" I could get in a crowdsourced story, I might be able to find a couple of very helpful ideas. But I'd also spend a lot of time wading through garbage. Wikipedia is great for a lot of things, but though it employs a lot of editors who sift through all the "collaborative" entries, there's still a lot of garbage that slips through. Wouldn't my time as a trained reporter be better spent calling a source I already know to be knowledgeable?
Finally, as a news consumer, once I've digested "a final product" -- whether it be a story, a blog post, a video, an interactive graphic, a photo slideshow -- do I care that much to spend time with the forensic "scrapbook" of how that final product came together? By then, I'm on to the next breaking news ...