Two things happened simultaneously

The crumbling of the newspaper business model (Cragislist supplanted the classifieds, etc.)
and the end of the acceptance of a hierarchical news model.

Now there are all kinds of experiments that involve getting people to pay for news online. Here's one from Slovakia.

Closer to home, the Times's paywall is coming.

Part of the problem is that the 'Net as an advertising meeting has never quite clicked, even though clicking is something you can track really well. 35 percent of media us = 14 percent of ad dollars, a trend which is leveling off. 8 percent of web users account for 85 percent of click-throughs. Example.

One of the first things to get ditched was explanatory journalism:

Technology is further shifting power to newsmakers, and the newest way is through their ability to control the initial accounts of events. For now at least, digital technology is shifting more emphasis and resources toward breaking news. Shrinking newsrooms are asking their remaining ranks to produce first accounts more quickly and feed multiple platforms. This is focusing more time on disseminating information and somewhat less on gathering it, making news people more reactive and less proactive. It is also leading to a phenomenon in which the first account from newsmakers — their press conferences and press releases — make their way to the public often in a less vetted form, sometimes close to verbatim. Those first accounts, sculpted by official sources, then can rapidly spread more widely now through the power of the Web to disseminate, gaining a velocity they once lacked. That is followed quickly by commentary. What is squeezed is the supplemental reporting that would unearth more facts and context about events. We saw this clearly in a study of news in Baltimore, but it is reinforced in discussions with news people. While technology makes it easier for citizens to participate, it is also giving newsmakers more influence over the first impression the public receives.

We should probably talk a bit about the Courant.

Try to remember

Early newspapers were, essentially, blogs.
And in their history, they have been many things.

The New/Old Echo Chamber

What does the news look like right this minute?

What is that a product of?

From Pew:

Reportorial journalism is getting smaller, but the commentary and discussion aspect of media, which adds analysis, passion and agenda shaping, is growing — in cable, radio, social media, blogs and elsewhere. For all the robust activity there, however, the numbers still suggest that these new media are largely filled with debate dependent on the shrinking base of reporting that began in the old media. Our ongoing analysis of more than a million blogs and social media sites, for instance, finds that 80% of the links are to U.S. legacy media.

Some of the tension between those two sources has led people to expect newspapers to be more open. And this is as good a place as any to talk about the comment function issue. (Remember the Coasean law.)

The bad news

Um, newspaper deaths.
Patch.
Fumbling efforts with paywalls.

The good news

The incredible role played by YouTube and citizen-generated video.

And perhaps an understanding that "news" can be presented a lot of different ways.
Patch.
Well maybe not Patch but hyperlocal sites.
When they work.
And here's one close to home.
At a statewide level, we have an unbundled site for government and politics.
Here's a slightly jazzier version. (remember Rapaille and codes.)

And a cool-looking semi-paywall version.
About $150 million in nonprofit money has flowed into news projects since 2006.

This is one of the more famous examples.

In many ways, the home feed of Facebook has become -- or can become -- a multivitamin news source.
Some FB users use their pages as, essentially blogs.

Twitter and Tumblr are elastic, searchable news sources.

Week 2 -- Let's start with a little perspective on the press.

Here's Jay Rosen.

A few general principles

Web. vs. Net

The notion of Code -- Clotaire Rapaille.

Short stays, the lack of brand identification, the Code of the Wild West.

The car vs. the bridge. (Hidden elements of Wikipedia and Google)

The Coasean notion of transaction cost. (apply to FB)

Focus-grouping reality on FB.

Crowd-sourcing.

The tool shapes the user.

Not every tool is right for every job.

Nothing is private.

Hot vs. cool environments, using Obama's candidacy and the notion of "not a finished product."

Also, two years later, the Tea Party as cool.

Second orality and Walter Ong.

(By lowering the Coasean cost, does the internet make us more oral?)

The Nicholas Carr critique.

(Keep in mind that most of these criticisms echo back to, for example, what Plato said about writing. And what scribes said about printing. And so on.)

Tribalism.

The history of information, searchability, the 17th century, the impenetrability of the book.

How the world surfs

The population trends.
The trends in use.
The shift from searching to sharing.
The Tunisia example.
What's the relationship to old-line media?

Eminem

Note to self -- pick this up around 2:30

Let's Get It Started