“You don’t need to work at the L.A. Times anymore to be a significant journalist in L.A.” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, at a Sept. 2 presentation at USC Annenberg.
Instead of celebrating the ability to interact with the people most affected by the day’s events, instead of using them as a resource of information and correction, he laments this paradigm shift as journalists have lost their status as the gatekeepers.
“We may have a gate here, but the fence is torn down on both sides,” he said.
Amen.
Rosentiel is searching for a way to save newspapers, but frequently referred to newspapers as Journalism. Journalism will continue in any scenario
“Journalism’s challenge is not fundamentally an audience problem,” Rosenstiel said. “It is a revenue problem.”
Actually it is an audience problems as their print product continues to have fewer subscribers and readers go online for news.
“Audiences are migrating online,” he said. “The way we read a newspaper or watch a broadcast is dramatically different from the way we interface with information online.”
He describes the new paradigm: “Online we are hunter-gatherers, not having a relationship with just one news organization. And while a search ad may be complementary to this type of online activity, pop-up and banner advertisements present an intrusion for audiences seeking information.”
That’s why the new advertiser will not push content on to a customer, but offer a product the customer is already looking for.
The new business person will not market to a general audience such as newspaper subscribers, but participate in and support a community that is filled with people likely to want or need their service.
All these strategies – targeting the right customer, actively joining a discussion with likely users, creating brand loyalty through dialogue and common interests – are available through online communities such as Citilista.
Lastly he claims the Internet is not the democratic dream we’d hoped for, citing Google’s power of search.
At Citilista we don’t see Google’s search algorithm as an impediment but as a challenge to make readers happy. Yo make them happy helping them find the information they are looking for. That will increase your rank and put you on the first page when someone searches key terms.
Google search works on the the citation principle – that the more useful a website is the more people will link to it. It also takes into account the time people spend on the site once they get there.