Future of Journalism Podcast

Podcast

Podcast Script

Welcome back, everyone, and to all you new listeners out there, this is the latest installment of my podcast series entitled “The Evolution of Media.” In this episode, I am looking at the future of journalism, and focusing on a recent spat between two media giants. On Thursday, March 10^th, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, posted online his article for the upcoming edition of the NYT Sunday Magazine, entitled “All the Aggregation that’s fit to Aggregate.” Notice the play off of the standard newspaper motto, “All the News that’s Fit to Print.”

In this article, Mr. Keller argues that the future of serious journalism lies with the like of the New York Times, and not aggregation sites like the Huffington Post. He does not believe all the positive hype surrounding AOL’s recent purchase of the Huffington Post. He doesn’t believe that it’s a sign of AOL moving into the business of actually creating more of their own content. In his view, news aggregation today means taking content created from others, repackaging it onto your own website, and in effect stealing the revenue that might have gone to the originators of that content. In his own words, Mr. Keller believes that Arianna Huffington “has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.”

Now, of course Ms. Huffington herself had to respond to this harsh criticism of her work. She posted a response later that same day on her site, with a title of “Bill Keller Accuses Me of “Aggregating” an Idea He Had Actually “Aggregated” From Me.” In this post, she defends the work of the Huffington Post, citing the fact that along with AOL News, it has over 70 percent more unique visitors than the New York Times. She flat-out refutes his characterization of her site and reminds us that it is in fact in the business of content creation. In her words, “Even before we merged with AOL, HuffPost had 148 full-time editors, writers, and reporters engaged in the serious, old-fashioned work of traditional journalism.”

Well, to be fair, the New York Times does have approximately 1100 full-time employees engaged in the same old-fashioned work or traditional journalism. But, I’m not here to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. I’m here to put this in context and maybe offer some of my own original thoughts. This back-and-forth is a part of the larger discussion of what the future of quote-unquote serious journalism looks like in this country. Can old-fashioned newspaper stalwarts like the New York Times survive and make enough money in this digital age where more and more people read their content for free online? And can sites like the Huffington Post earn enough revenue from advertising to support their business-model of aggregation and minimal original content creation?

Mr. Keller and Ms. Huffington are leaders of two of the most prominent media empires of our day, so we are smart to pay attention to what they have to say on this topic and of each other. While I want to side with Mr. Keller out of respect for the institution of newspapers, I do think that the Huffington Post is making the right move with AOL. Although I do want to challenge Arianna Huffington to ensure that she defies her critics and uses this merger to beef up on paid content providers for her online newspaper. I hope she resists the urge to focus on her unique view count, and places serious and well-researched articles at the top of her site rather than “sexy” or “eye-catching” pieces. She can also avoid the labels bestowed upon her by Mr. Keller by making a clearer distinction between stories that belong on the front page, and stories that belong on the Tabloids. Her site does itself a disservice when it places these two kinds of content next to each other, giving viewers the impression it believes they are of equal importance to society.

Well, that’s it for this episode of “The Evolution of Media.” Stay tuned next week when I will be discussing the uses and abuses of Twitter.