"Postcards from the Cutting Edge" Future of Journalism conference keynote San Francisco State University 23 April 1994 Iıve been asked to set the stage a bit and talk about some of the emerging technologies and related issues that will affect you as journalists and as citizens of the world. In my usual fashion, I will ask more questions than I answer. The world is changing so fast, that anyone who tells you they know whatıs going to happen is either lying or trying to sell you something. The first thing and most important fact, if you havenıt already figured it out, is that the means of production are in the hands of the people. This single issue will affect you more in the near-term than any fancy technology coming down the pike five years from now. Fax machines, modems, word processors, laser printers, still and video cameras (and even CD-ROM creation stations, though on a different level) are becoming inexpensive enough for ordinary people to own and use them. And when it comes to news. that means everybodyıs a reporter. Itıs become axiomatic to use Rodney Kingıs camera-toting neighbor and the fax machines at Tianamen Square as examples of this trend, but they only scratch the surface. Desktop publishing equipment means that not only is there more print than ever, but itıs almost all in digital form, ready to be redeployed. The plummeting cost of fax machines and modems means that redeployment is unbelievably simple ‹ and compared to smearing ink on a page, significantly less expensive. Though not as deeply entrenched in digital media as the print world, desktop video editing tools are creating a whole new group of producers that will have access to the vast capacity of tomorrowıs TV network. That puts network providers such as AT&T, the telcos and the cable companies ‹ the builders of infrastructure ‹ in the distribution business, in the very same way that goods are moved along roads today. Which is obviously where that metaphor of the information superhighway came from, by the way. AT&Tıs notion of the ubiquitous digital network is to make everyone a publisher ‹ just stick a wire into the back of your computer and youıre in the information business. Thus, because of technologyıs relentless push down the cost curve, news has officially become a commodity. But of course, you already know this, whether instinctively or through your own experience. You can get ³news as it happens² during crisis periods on CNN, certainly. Or you can log onto The WELL or America Online, home to alternative news wires, eyewitness reports and modem jocks who just love to sit there and type in everything they hear on radio and TV, or what ever they read in their hometown papers across the country. The fact that news is a commodity creates a few new problems and opportunities, if you want to be positive about it. The problem is that there is an incredible amount of noise out there. Get into the ³news² area on America Online. Every day, various sources ‹ from the New York Times to Reuters to various tiny wires and industry-specific news services ‹ pour thousands of stories onto the network. You donıt find what youıre looking for by looking for someoneıs byline who you trust. You donıt scan an attractively laid-out page and let your eye catch something and draw you in. You scan headlines, all stacked up on each other, written in all capital letters. You type in a keyword that pulls up all the stories the networkıs software thinks might be related to what you want, which it often isnıt. Thereı s no way to know, until you actually get into the story, who itıs by or where it came from. As more and more of your organizations move into electronic publishing, whether you like it or not, you have to try to make your stories heard over the din. The problem, then, is twofold: How do you find your way through all the stuff to get to the stories you want to read? And even more important to you, Iım sure, is how do you attract attention to your organization, your stories ‹ how do you ³brand² your information and set it apart from everyone elseıs, when everything is on-demand? Thereıs a question. Living on networks poses a few other interesting problems as well. Reporters have to learn to live in a world where their words arenıt fixed on a page for posterity, but float in cyberspace and allow them to engage in discourse with their readers that would otherwise be impossible. That is a very good thing, and in fact, many of the magazines that have gone ³online² are finding tremendous interest on the part of their readers to engage in discussion. Other than the obvious problem of ³Iım already working 15 hours a day, and now you want me to hang around online and listen to people abuse my writing and my reporting? Thanks a lot² ... there are some interesting legal issues that reporters should keep in mind. One is intellectual property in cyberspace. Time Online recently sponsored a live discussion (typed in) between John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Dorothy Denning, a computer security specialist. They were debating the Clipper chip, which Iıll talk a bit more about later. Barlow had captured the live discussion on his hard disk, thus he had a transcription of the conversation. He cleaned it up and sent it out over the net ‹ and got into a flame war with one of the Time Online staffers who said, essentially, that Barlow didnıt have the right to distribute his own words because it took place in a window on a computer screen that said ³Time Magazine.² A little something about freedom of speech there, I think. But that argument can backfire, too. I spoke last week at the American Society of Magazine Editorsı annual conference and an editor in the audience asked one of the lawyers on the panel about reporters talking to readers online. It seems one of his reporters had been engaged in an onscreen discussion with a reader and in the course of conversation, started talking a little too close to home about unnamed sources in one of his stories. The lawyer found the situation fascinating. Because once such information has been made public in any forum, whether in print or in a private message in cyberspace, legal protections about protecting sources has been voided. Privacy Much of the promise of digital networks is that we will be able to conduct all kinds of commerce over them ‹ home banking; home shopping; selecting, paying for and having delivered our entertainment products; video telephone service; education; and the usual stuff like creating and disseminating information, as we do in our chosen professions today ‹ storing notes, phone numbers, etc. The same digital technology that allows people vastly improved freedom of expression can also turn into the most widespread surveillance tool in the history of humanity. When you float information off its physical medium ‹ the page, the video cassette, whatever ‹ then transform it into the binary code of the computer and start sending it around a global network, you make it possible for anyone with sufficient desire and capability to tap that network and translate that information into a form they can use. Hackers have been doing it on banks and credit card companies and government computers for years now. The NSA and the FBI havenıt been quite so clever, but theyıre working on it. This move into the networked life is also a bonanza for marketers who salivate at the ability to target their advertising pitches for diapers directly at households with infants, for example, or wine ads for those who order a lot of alcohol over their home shopping channel, etc. The information superhighway is presenting them with an unparalleled opportunity to create a growth business. Civil liberties groups concerned with individual privacy, as well as industries concerned with protecting their intellectual property, are rallying to protect that information. The government would prefer that they didnıt. I suggest you get up to speed on both the Clipper chip and the Digital Telephony legislation quickly. Both of turn global networks into de facto surveillance networks that touch virtually every citizen in America, if not the world. There are so many technologies and issues that touch the lives of journalists as we enter this new digital era ‹ € who gets access to information services and who pays for them, € how do you change the way you work together as journalists, covering this change € narrowcasting, on-demand programming and the death of mass media, € how to move away from the scoop mentality into adding value ‹ maybe with technology, maybe not ‹ but Iıll stop for now because Iım really interested in what the other speakers have to say as well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ed Casaccia -for every problem, a counterpoint opportunity -privacy counterpoint is access to information -growth of the network allows us to know these things about people --itıs the companion threat Local cable - expectations are very low. Target for LCN and companions: quality TV news broadcast at lower cost point. Nothave to use TV as mass media, broadest audience and carve widest path,but new business, more focused. How will they participate in interactive? Newspaper reporters doing TV. Iım not sure that the media actually blend ... being able to do both doesnıt mean that you want to do them together. Exec producer of news at KGO. Traditional bcast medium was too much ³the transmitter,² the transmitter was Mt. Sutro. Our feeling was that we were software providers, and the info was what was being marketed. Worry less about medium. Will there still be newspapers? It doesnıt matter if there are newspapers or TV stations. Still a need for intelligent, creative people to perform the act of journalism, despite the medium. News isnıt a commodity. Information is a commodity. (Investigative work isnıt news.)--YES, BUT THEN EXPLAIN TO ME WHY NEWSPAPERS ARE CUTTING THEIR INVESTIGATIVE STAFFS. donıt discount the human aspect. still requires going out and asking people rude and embarrassing questions. ------------------ Neil Shine Comfortable profession, we know what it is. Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable, give you information and let you act on it. We stand behind traditional journalism, about not doing anything about the horrors that we see. ³Itıs not our job.² ³Children in the Crossfire² -- talked about them, about their lives and how dreadful. Shelf life of urban outrage is 3-4 days. Then move onto the next crusade, getting people worked up, telling them itıs not our job to do anything about it. 13-yr old kid...wrote a will. Newspapers as scorekeepers & statisticians; you donıt tell us how to win, you donıt help us win. Sponsoring Little League, Legal Advocacy unit for kids, jobs program for kids, health programs, $500K money into it. The future of journalism is assured. Last bastion of individual freedom left in this country. Respondents Doug Put it on the net or on the 24 hour channel -- panel Death of magazines was right around the corner in the 70s Death of newspapers was around the corner in Salinas until they reached out to Latinos Investigative reporting was dead. CIR deal w/60 Minutes ... early 80s. KQED for documentaries ... documentary was dead Mother Jones was dead Journalists have a tendency to revel in doom & gloom, esp. about ourselves Donıt allow anybody to throttle out the enthusiasm & the excitement that Fallaci called ³the license to be curious.² Future ofour outlets is linked w/two things: shape of the highway and globalization of culture, politics and journalism. some of us will be working for NHK in a few years. Globalization of the economy will have a big effect. ³Fortune cookie television² and ³Bumper sticker politics² Finding access to the superhighway, and for students to discover multiple ways -- donıt stick with one medium. Learn more than one. Talk radio, magazine news shows on networks. Be flexible enough to move from one medium to another. Biggest concern: who is going to do the baseline work of reporting, with proliferation of new outlets that rely primarily on talk and analysis? Whatıs lost is the gut-level emphasis on reporting -- 60 Min based on NY Times stories. #s: 1988, 28,800 reporters in newspapers. 93, 25,920. 10 percent drop in 5 years. New emerging interactive technologies going to pick up any of the slack, employing reportres that notice that $1.5 billion spent on spy satellitefor x interactions. Radoi and TV reportrs who do that work? Pick up the slack of that loss instead of simply having the remaining reporters put in the same position? Will new work be any good? Aside from cable, Access to new information technologies. Audience segmentation. Means of production are in the hands of MORE of the people, Doug. Afer long haul and massive effort, newspapers are morediverse than they were a generation ago. Will those battles have to be fought again in new outlets? Who will make editorial decisions? People are too sensitive to appropriateness ... faux journalism delivered electroically. Place more faith in information that appears magically on screen, loss of awareness about who is speaking. Newsroom standards wobbling on commercial pressures, etc. Ed said, It doesnıt matter if there are newspapers. Worry is that the segmentation in media reflects commercial side -- where are the journalistic bridges that take newspaper-type information into the new media. None of us invite depressives to breakfast or dinner -- asking us to take them every day is asking a lot. Neil -- become captive to the reform groups; donıt remember that youıre a j-outlet and not the childrenıs defense fund. 2nd, news judgment v. being a cheerleader, sometimes takes you out of the role of observer. Nancy One word from each speaker: DC: trustworthy Ed: meaningful Neil: help us win what N described, v difficult to do in a newspaper; discrediting organization. objectivity left behind, but discredited by not doing anything. J objective: no personal POV law: normative, not ³not personal² This has to do with loss of credibility in journalism. Economic forces: donıt think about the fact that nps would be regulated if not for first amendment. giving away our information and selling our readers. what you pay to buy a newspaper, areıt buing info but advertising. business is marketing & disatrib, not news if a market issue, what are the markets? taxes & technologies affect the markets Newspaper Association of America, meetingherethis week, looking at fuure of np publishing. 4 scenarios Rosiest picture, cannot develop a scenario where they canholdonto readers & advertisers. Experience the telephone companies will get first amendment rights, the way cablecompanies did in the 70s. Different kind of competition for information. Butif journalism ...point re: quality and trustworthiness is where we need to focus. Oneof the probls with j today, itıs not reliable. serendipity is good, but utility of findingout what they want to know is go to instruments that are reliable. WSJ, yes. Daily NP, donıtknow what youıllfind. Councilmeeting and late sports and stocks, yes, butnothing else. Research project, real rptg v journalism reporting for quality & dependability. Bothprofssions, law and j, run oninformation. Law, find anyting. J, find nothing. ORganizational devices tb put in place to makeour info reliable. Now news is a combo of fact, analysis, commentary and opinion. Not labeled in terms of whatıs what. We have to get better and disciplined aboutwhich instrument weıre using. Need for us to be responsible about what weıre doing. Reporters,journalists, talkingabout how life is changing andhow unfair it is. Look at what other peoplehave had to do. But gift of j is a precious gift; developed and treated like an asset, not a privilege. Keep the public trust and try every day to make the world a better place. Otherwise, hard to be in it. ED; Nps do not cut across demographics. NEIL Thereıs nothing that we want to cover that we canıt. We grew the edit staff by 5 percent. None of us understood how lifestyles would change; Detroit News was an afternoon paper, people went to work very early. Morning paper was no. 3, but lifestyles have changed. Donıt come home and read the newspaper. Abbate: re crosstraining and union work rules. Fairness of changes? Speed theyıre being made? How we should comport ourselves. Ed: strongly believe that the true cost svgs, econ salvation of many j businesses wonıt be found in having rptrers carry cameras or cutting the newsroom. Found in more efficient means of distribution. Fewer things that machines do and more things that minds do. ((what does that mean?)) Techno solutions remove these things from the equation; doesnıt cost more to have a program that does 15 rating points and 50 percent more rev. No incremental cost per viewer. In the long run, smart biz people wonıt cut the product they show to their audience. ((How does it get subsdized if itıs on demand? Per story you watch? If so, how does the revenue come back?)) Information IV vs. a good meal. ((Choices are really the bottom line here ... if you need to get a pile of data, you get it. If you want to read, you get the paper. -- Nancy re: managing uncertainty. If critical and certain, predetermined. Start to look at what is critical and uncertain, then start making stories about what might playout. Nice way to look at thefuture. Dowie: stats-- 1992, half grads went directly into public relations. same time in US, 130K prof journalists and 170K pr practitioners