Robert Paterson's Weblog

Local Newspapers - I am no longer a Guardian Reader

Our subscription to the Guardian came due last week and Robin and I have decided not to renew.

Local newspapers are dying all over North America and while the Guardian may be the last to go maybe my decision has some relevance. Why did I drop my subscription?

1. There are few real stories in the paper - The local news is recorded but not REPORTED. There is no effort to get to the bottom of stories. For instance - Polar Foods, the real debate about energy on PEI, the real story behind healthcare or farming are all missed as stories. No one explored the story that Polar was doomed as it its reason for existence was to provide processing jobs for a product, frozen canned lobster, that no one wants. Where is the story about why doctors will not come to rural Canada? Where is the story about who uses healthcare on PEI? Where are the stories about why PEI can become energy independent? Where are the stories that get to the heart of why farming does not pay? Instead of stories that demand journalism we get events. Press releases are printed verbatim. There are endless photo ops of elected officials "studying a plan for a new building etc. So there is no insight into what is going on here in our community just events. News events are only a commodity and have no pull on a reader. The paper does not do its job of getting behind the headlines.
2. The paper has no opinion and hence no edge - The Guardian is neutral and seems afraid to rock the boat or to ruffle feathers. I don't mean that it should take sides in a party sense but there is no edge to it in its leader writing. By trying so hard not to offend it has little attraction. It has no personality. Good papers have people who like them or hate them. Both are OK and stimulate circulation and power. In a world that is full of information, bland does not cut it.
3. The paper invests in the past and not in the future. The paper's bias is to community reporting - the cake sale type of event. While this attracts a certain readership, it precludes again proper reporting of say what happens in local politics. What is really going on in the city hall of Charlottetown or Summerside? What is the background to what is going on in the legislature? The readers who love the cake sale are dying off. There are few young people that read a paper anymore. Why would anyone under the age of 35 read the paper? By not investing in the future, the Guardian will die.
4. Much of the future is in the web. The paper has made a minimal attempt at moving online. In 10 years nearly all news and opinion will arrive online. Starting to deal with this then will be too late - the New York Times already has 3 times more readers online than the print edition and now has 300,000 subscribers at $50US a pop. I would pay for a good online edition if there was some good journalism in it. An online classified ad section would pre-empt competitors. Print also ties the paper to an expensive distribution system and to paper. As it is a major reason for canceling was all the waste paper that is the end product. It is not that paper will go away but to have no beachhead in the new frontier is to have given up and will condemn the paper to oblivion soon enough. A great online edition could attract a large expatriate readership.
5. The gravy train is over. For soon someone will take most of the ads away from the Guardian. - Online alternatives are killing local papers all over North America. It will happen later here but it will happen. There is no sign that the Guardian is preparing to cope with this inevitability

So I am not a typical reader. Many will take the paper unchanged until it folds. I am however an early adopter and organizations that miss the message of the early adopter die as the Guardian will unless it wakes up and looks at what is really going on in the world of media today.

It is not too late my friends over at the Guardian. There are lots of people on PEI who can help and would like to help you not only survive but thrive. Look around you at what is really going on with media today. If you rely only on your traditional reader, you condemn yourself to death

Technorati Tags: Media, PEI

More Space - What a Web 2.0 World may be like

One of the reasons that I have been a bit busy recently is that I and 8 other bloggers have been working to finalize a book about what our world may be like as the age of blogging evolves. If you want to get a sense of what this will all mean - please give us a look. Hey buy the book!

Todd Sattersten has been our editor and energizer. Imagine the effort of getting 9 bloggers to deliver! Here are the Authors

Jory Des Jardins
Lisa Haneberg
Rob May
Johnnie Moore
Marc Orchant
Robert Paterson
Evelyn Rodriguez
Curt Rosengren
Jeremy Wright

What attracted me to the work was firstly the idea of being able to think about what all of this was going to mean. I do not see Blogging or Web 2.0 as a narcissistic fad but as a release of energy that will rival the Reformation in how power is redistributed in the world. Some of you enjoyed my first draft - Going Home - What also attracted me to the project was the quality of the other contributors. I feel quite humbled by what they have done and am still a bit amazed that I am part of this.

Here is our site. You can not only order the book but also download any part of it and or download any author reading their chapter. We are trying to offer you the full experience. Seth Godin kindly wrote the forward.

The death of Aliant?

Look at the follow on - Are we weeping?

The Times-Picayuneand Nola.com - Pulitzer?

Here is Jeff Jarvis - red hot

Please listen to Jim Amos - hearing him makes their achievement so real.

The Times-Picayune and Nola.com — former colleagues, all — have been doing a spectacular job using the web to get their news out because they no longer had presses and trucks and newsstands… and a city. This morning on On the Media, I listened to a good interview with T-P Editor Jim Amos, who said that blogging was absolutely essential to delivering the news. Rex Hammock says they deserve a Pulitzer for their breaking news blog.
I agree. The Pulitzer committee would do journalism well to separate the content from the container, the medium from the message, and recognize good journalism wherever and however it happens.
It’s a helluva hard way to discover the full value of the web (and not a little ironic for me), but the Times-Picayune has done it. And it’s not about PDFs and fancy formatting. The stories are fed into a simple weblog. Get that RSS feed and you will find great reporting from the biggest story there is.

How does the New Nexus work in Real Time with Citizen Journalists?

Here is a wonderful piece by Elliott Massie (via Learning Post) who observed how the CNN News Team are drawing in and filtering and then broadcasting a flood of blogs, video, photos coming in from Citizens and how their own journalists are turning to use satellite and final cut pro locally to turn around material immediately.

Major extract follows

The New Media Nexus in New Orleans

Here is how the Times Picayune has become the lifeline for its community. By using its brand as the Paper of Record it is the most useful centre for web based citizen forums in NOLA

The perils of flashing in the Camera Phone Web Age

Thanks to Jason this pic plus comment on flickr of a guy exposing himself on the subway - how many millions have seen him now?

One way of dealing with folks like these - as you will read the police cannot help

The perils of flashing in the Camera Phone Web Age

Thanks to Jason this pic plus comment on flickr of a guy exposing himself on the subway - how many millions have seen him now?

One way of dealing with folks like these - as you will read the police cannot help

Update thanks to Gabe - he is on the front page of the News

Is the CBC a Beached Whale?

Is this the old CBC?

150 staffers met this week in Toronto and agreed to set up a national internet alternative linking into Community and Campus radio across Canada. What an epochal event! Roll the calendar forward to say the end of October, no settlement, a terrible CBC full of reruns and a full web based system being run by locked out CBC staffers.

This web alternative network is global, it is national and it is strongly local. It is full of high quality material. It can turn on a dime - being a network and has a huge feed from citizen journalists. It has a developing international network of bloggers all over the world. A bomb goes off in Paris, Parisian bloggers feed pictures and comment. Stephen Harper admits to being gay. The gay community welcome him! Real pros like Michael Enright can use Skype to call and interview anyone. It has a growing and deep local system. You see the local hockey team - videoed by a parent. You hear an interview with a local author - interviewed by her neighbor. You catch the local fire - fed by a local with commentary by the chief. Your brother becomes a film or restaurant critic - with no limit to time or schedule, the local station can cover everything. You only download what interests you.

The bureaucracy that costs so much is left beached like a rotting whale. Which CBC is alive and which one is dead? Which CBC deserves our tax dollars? Who gets paid to work? Which is truly national? What is the model for the future? Which one costs less than the other but delivers more value and pays its talent more?

Which is the dolphin?

CBC Unplugged - A Site where CBC Reporters will be Podcasting

Thanks to Peter a link to CBC Unplugged where CBC Staffers plan to Podcast. They start with a show from Fredericton taking about their side of the lock out

Maybe there is a silver lining here - When the lockout is over CBC staffers will have embraced the new technology and will transform CBC into more of a community organization.

What will that mean? Who knows?