Real change, not superficial tweaks

My colleague told me about this about a week ago -- this blog post by Adrian Holovaty was written in 2006, but it's spot on in terms of describing the fundamental problem that the media industry, specifically print, has in negotiating technology and the internet.

He looks at the way in which the newspaper industry is presenting and sharing news on the internet. What he suggest in simple -- stop having such a story-centric (read: blob of text) view of the world and look at presenting news/information in different ways, say through databases.

Of course that brings up the question, is this journalism? To which he says:

Journalists should have less of a concern of what is and isn't "journalism," and more of a concern for important, focused information that is useful to people's lives and helps them understand the world. A newspaper ought to be that: a fair look at current, important information for a readership.

Ultimately, he says, newspapers should move away from the story-centric CMS (content management system) and start having CMSs that can "slice and dice" information and collect them in databases, which can then be used help to explain trends, and inform readers. Importantly, it's about enriching the readers' access to information, not about replacing stories.

Read more here:
A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change
Written by Adrian Holovaty on September 6, 2006

Greenslade on why there's no need for subs

Yes, you read it right. An advocate for good journalism dissing subs? Have a read and tell me what you think:

Subeditors: another attempt to explain why they are becoming redundant

An interesting little discussion broke out yesterday afternoon over the value and fate of newspaper subeditors during a Publishing Expo seminar at London's Olympia.

I used the opportunity to make clear where I stand on the subject, but probably failed to get across that I do not approve of the wholesale junking of a section of journalists. (And whatever writers, reporters and columnists might think, subs are journalists too). MORE

The future: journalists-slash-developers?

A good piece on interactives ventures at the nytimes.com website. The way of the future for newspapers, methinks.

The New Journalism: Goosing the Gray Lady

What are these renegade cybergeeks doing at the New York Times? Maybe saving it.
By Emily Nussbaum Published Jan 11, 2009

On the day Barack Obama was elected, a strange new feature appeared on the website of the New York Times. Called the Word Train, it asked a simple question: What one word describes your current state of mind? Readers could enter an adjective or select from a menu of options. They could specify whether they supported McCain or Obama. Below, the results appeared in six rows of adjectives, scrolling left to right, coded red or blue, descending in size of font. The larger the word, the more people felt that way. MORE

Market goes down, news sites go up

An article on the growth of online news sites that are linked to newspapers, rather than wire agencies, and how they have proved their worth during the current financial crisis.

Online news sites lead the battle for eyeballs
Scott Murdoch | September 22, 2008
The Australian

THE days of financial market traders glued to the screen monitoring wire news feeds could be lessening, with the growth of global online news sites. MORE

ABC's take on the media crisis in Australia

Here are two Australian Broadcasting Corporation stories on the current Fairfax Media cuts and the general decline of the media industry.



1. 7.30 Report

Media industry in crisis as standards decline: Davies

Kerry O’Brien speaks with investigative journalist and author Nick Davies about his new book, Flat Earth News. Davies argues that journalistic standards are declining the world over as cost cutting and government pressures take toll on the industry.

Read transcript.
Watch video of extended interview.

2. Media Watch

Trouble at Fairfax

The rise of the internet and a slowing economy has led to the announcement by Fairfax that it will cut 5% of its workforce in Australia and New Zealand. Will these cuts come at the expense of journalism?

Read transcript.
Watch video.

Quality v quantity

With the impending Fairfax cuts in Australia comes more opinion pieces about the future of journalism. This one from Jack Waterford in The Canberra Times is one of the better ones I have read.

I like what he writes right at the end:
"The real test of it all is not with newspaper bottom lines. It is with circulation and readership, bearing in mind that the core readership is of baby boomer age or of the generation above it. By no means does it follow that younger journalists will have lower standards. Or that the simultaneous renewed focus on ''new media'' means that proprietors have given newspapers away. But if 50-year-olds are not comfortable with being informed, or hectored, by 25-year-olds, it is likely the demise of the newspaper will be quicker."

The real threat to newspapers comes from quality not quantity
BY JACK WATERFORD
30/08/2008 10:14:00 AM

The big challenge for any professional journalist, particularly in a city such as Canberra, is that a good proportion of readers probably more than 30 per cent here know more about your subject than you do.

They know the subject because it is their job to know it. That job, perhaps in the public service, or business, or academia, gives them access to a lot of other information, including most of our sources of raw information. If the subject is within their field of interest, they may well have already skimmed the latest information upon it even before they pick up this newspaper, or another one. MORE

I reckon we still need those subs, eh?

I've attached David Marsh's comment on the Giles Coren rant. He does put a good point across that subs are more important nowadays in the digital age. What I wonder though is this - he mentions all these people who diss subs, including, might I add, colleagues in his own paper. No surprise there.

The thing is that if the people who hold the purse strings feel the same way, then the cuts are going to happen anyway right, whether or not the quality of the media product deteriotates or not.

What do you think?

Excoriating the coruscating Coren
Giles Coren's blistering rebuke to a hapless Times subeditor actually highlights what a vital role subs still play in the media

If only Giles Coren had given his email to a good subeditor before sending it, he might have got his point across effectively without revealing himself to be arrogant, petulant, pompous and, frankly, the last person you'd want to be stuck in a restaurant with.

As a sub by trade, it pains me to say it, but the foul-mouthed food critic was actually in the right: the hapless Times sub who removed a harmless sounding "a" from the last sentence of his column did subtly change the meaning and remove a joke (although one so obscure that it must be said Coren poses no immediate threat to the writers of, say, Peep Show).

What the email lacks is a sense of proportion. After ranting at length about his knowledge of Yiddish, laboriously explaining the aforementioned joke ("looking for a nosh has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob" – hilarious!), and comparing the sub to "a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance [sic] fresco and thinking jesus [sic] looks shit with a bear so plastering over it", our tortured artist turns his attention to metre: "Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on 'nosh' is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable." This, apparently, is "pre-GCSE scansion" (what kind of advanced academy of linguistics was Coren attending at 15?).

Then comes the eloquent clincher: "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." Well, to be fair, it scans perfectly.

Putting to one side the thought that being a sub at the Times right now must be about as rewarding an occupation as trying to sell Mother's Day cards to a Canoe Wife's sons, I'm struck by the fact that Coren's onanistic outburst is the latest in a series of recent attacks on subeditors. MORE

Full text of Giles Coren's rant to Times subs

Absolutely hilarious and a must read, though not for the subs at that time I suppose ...

For all the poor subs getting axed out there. You matter!

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i'm assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.
1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles

Outsourcing subbing? Where else but India

Remember this company folks - Mindworks. It's one of the first Indian companies to do copyediting for US newspapers from India, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

Copyediting? Ship the Work Out to India

Not far from New Delhi, Mindworks now has eight overseas clients, and it's mounting a big effort to go after more U.S. publications
by Nandini Lakshman

In a squat, gray building in Noida, a leading outsourcing destination 15 miles from New Delhi, is the headquarters of Mindworks Global Media. Here, 90 young men and women peer into their computers, editing copy, designing and laying out pages, and even reporting over the phone. Mindworks isn't a new publication. It's a company to which media groups in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.—including the Miami Herald and South China Morning Post—outsource work that journalists and copyeditors usually do. The Mindworks staff works two to three shifts a day, seven days a week. Tony Joseph, 46, an editor-turned-entrepreneur, is Mindworks' founder and chief executive. He sometimes drops by at 6 a.m. to see his employees, just when U.S. clients are putting their papers to bed.

Mindworks has been handling outsourcing assignments from non-Indian publishers for four years. It expects plenty more business as the cost-cutting in U.S. and European print media grinds on. Some Western publishers do their outsourcing in-house—Thomson Reuters (TRI), for instance, has moved basic Wall Street reporting on U.S., European, and Gulf equities to a new bureau in Bangalore. But other media companies prefer to outsource to the Indians directly. On June 24, Mindworks made global headlines when the Associated Press reported that the company had taken on copyediting and layout work for a couple of publications owned by the California media publishing group Orange County Register Communications. MORE

... but Greenslade says don't lose hope

Memo to journalists: don't be depressed by falling paper profits, the future is ours

I have attended four newspaper conferences in the past couple of months - in Italy, Australia, Sweden and Serbia - all of which have been dominated, in varying degrees, by concern about the immediate future. Some owners, managers and editors have been in denial, arguing that things are better than they appear.

In their view, newsprint is here to stay, though all have grasped that it cannot stand alone. Most have signed up to multi-platform journalism, though they generally see online as complementary rather than a viable replacement.

Others have been more rational, claiming that newsprint is on its way out. For them, it is only a matter of time before the online alternative replaces paper altogether. But they, like their less radical colleagues, tend to view the problem through the prism of commerce.

What exercises almost everyone connected to the newspaper industry - and industry is the key word here - is the belief that websites cannot generate anything like the revenue enjoyed by media companies throughout the last century (more properly, the last 60 years). They are cast down by their inability to "monetise the net".

Why the worry? Profits, of course. Online news sites will never generate the kind of money that has made newspaper ownership so lucrative. Corporate owners in Britain and the US - along with their investors - have revelled in achieving 30% plus profit margins in the past and cannot conceive of lower returns. The investors, ruthless and logical, are looking elsewhere for higher dividends. The owners are left with companies facing declining revenue amid a technological revolution they do not want and cannot control.

Meanwhile, many journalists who have grown used to the idea that their work is inextricably linked to profitable enterprises are scratching their heads. They cannot conceive of a journalism that is gradually freeing itself from the yoke of commerce. Without business, without profits, who will pay their wages? Who will fund the foreign assignments? Who will provide the resources for long-form investigative journalism?

ADVERTISING SLUMP HITS REGIONALS

Such journalistic anxiety is understandable, but it is no good wailing about it. We have to envisage a future with an entirely new business model based on smaller returns that will fund a small, high quality staff, probably serving niche markets. (The days of mass media may well be over). But we have to admit to ourselves first that things will never be as they were in the last millennium. MORE

What do you think?

'The sub-editing function is obsolete'

Comforting isn't it?

In deleting subs, CityAM is in good company: a 'paper in Peterborough or somewhere'

Is London's financial freesheet undermining journalism with crude cost cutting, or just becoming more efficient? Simon Evans meets its owners

'Managers need to take care of stressed staff, especially now," proclaimed an article in CityAM, the London freesheet, last week. Just days earlier, the company's management had served notice on all of its sub-editing workforce, its web editor, a reporter and two members of the sales team.

Hardly the stuff to boost morale but a necessary move in the current climate, Jens Torpe, the paper's co-founder, said on Wednesday. "I don't understand why people are so surprised," he says in a rather exasperated way. "A number of newspapers in the UK have been doing without subs for a long while."

Unfortunately, he scratches around to name any, save for a "paper in Peterborough or somewhere".

He rebuts the suggestion that the move, coming after nearly three years of a subbed and generally well-regarded CityAM, has been forced on the company because of a lack of cash in the credit crunch.

"I don't know how many hundreds of people have been made redundant at the Telegraph, but nobody says they are going under. It's absolutely ridiculous. When we launched, we gave the editor the authority to build his editorial staff. He did it, and within budget, in a very short space of time.

"In the last couple of months, we've looked at potential ways to make the company more efficient, and feedback from editorial was that we should put more resources into front-line writing journalists," he adds. "There is a limit to the resources we have. That was how the new model came about. We have done three days under the new regime now, so it can be done. I have every confidence and trust in our journalists."

Co-founder Lawson Mun-caster is rather brusquer: "The sub-editing function is obsolete. I believe writers can take responsibility for filing copy that is readable and correct with a headline." MORE

Possibly the best slideshow so far ...

Photographer Lucas Oleniuk and columnist Jennifer Wells reflect on the Conrad Black trial.

Know any other good ones?