Why “Link Journalism” Won’t Save Your Ass
Media companies are in really, really serious trouble. Solutions currently in vogue: charging for content, reorganizing news organizations as nonprofits. And, of course, "link journalism."
"Link journalism" gets to call itself journalism because it's linking done by journalists. Here's how the theory works: The journalist scours the Web for stories and blog posts, links to them, and provides some analysis or snark on why the item in question is worth a click. By putting all the links and comments in one place, the thinking goes, the journalist/aggregator (choose whichever term fits your self-identity, whether that be journalist or new-media avatar) provides a valuable service to readers, drives traffic, and boosts revenues (though not necessarily of the site the link journalist is working for).
Another term for this activity that's popular among today's digital cognoscenti: "curation"---as if all these pieces of garbage on the Web were worthy of the most delicate and sophisticated aggregation methods.
For a love letter to this journalistic model, see this Steve Rosenbaum piece in the Silicon Alley Insider. Rosenbaum cheerily argues that journalists have "always" surveyed the media landscape and passed along the useful tidbits to readers; now, with the Web, it's just easier.
Rosenbaum runs a company that--wait for it--"curates" video. I predict vast popularity for a video site where users can upload videos, comment on them, and add them to their Web sites. Especially if its name is YouTube or Hulu.
(Rosenbaum uses two clichés in his second paragraph, says something called an "overwhelming explosion" in content is going on, places punctuation inside and outside quotation marks as the fancy takes him, and occasionally spells "curator" with a capital "C" to emphasize its importance. Also, he fails to mention in his post that most of the companies he cites as exemplars of "curation"---Taste of Home, Bicyling, New York Magazine, Zappos.tv, and Jones Soda---are customers of his Magnify.net. A curator might not have a problem with that, but an editor just might.)
Just think about the possibilities: If Rosenbaum manages to proselytize enough influential people, fantastic things could start to happen. Companies could launch new products that follow this curatorial model. They could hire some staffers and perhaps get some financing.
Oh no! That might be a problem, because financing lies at the root of all the problems that Rosenbaum is supposedly providing a solution to, problems that no one can link their way out of: debt.
The advertising crunch is serious. But it alone isn't killing papers. The real cancer is the unsustainable levels of debt used to acquire other media properties. This paper was nearly sunk by debt. Tribune Media Services is $13 billion in debt. I couldn't link-journalism an accurate picture of the New York Times Company's corporate debt quickly enough to meet the fast-paced demands of today's changing media landscape, but a series of brave acquisitions--the half of the International Herald Tribune it didn't own, About.com, the Boston Globe, and, don't forget, the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette---hasn't really worked out. I could go on, but enough linking.
I'm not too worried about that company's flagship paper, but I'm worried about this one, and lots of others. Former CP editor David Carr recently wrote about the Austin (Texas) Chronicle, which the article's subhead calls a "thriving weekly with a mission." The Chron's response to the recession? No layoffs, no plans to do so. Might have something to do with the fact that it owns its building and has no "significant debt."
Americans are slowly coming back around to the biggest lesson of the last depression---if you don't have the cash, don't buy it. I hope that sinks in to media businesses. It would be a shame to have to sit down on Sunday morning to read the week's best curation. Sorry, Curation.
Photo by Flickr user bru76; curated by yours truly
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9:29 pm
There's lots to say about this post, and since it's about me, I figured I'd respond to a number of these criticisms.
First, on the two points you get completely right: The proof read on this post wasn't great. Is that me, or the blog - or both. Guilty as charged. Second, re: my use of sites as examples from my platform. I wrote this as an opinion piece as the CEO of Magnify.net, so probably should have been a clearer byline.
But, where you're wrong. Curation WILL save your ass. Completely. Because if you're a talented writer, and you're building a site around a topic that you know best, the ability to both write AND gather and filter is going to give sole practitioners the ability to balance making content with aggregating content.
I'm hardly 'cheery' about all the pain my friends are feeling - but Journalism, like the Auto industry, is built on old models of big, expensive, centralized industrial age systems. Printing plants. Delivery trucks. Broadcast towers, FCC licenses. The web - like it or not - makes all those things obsolete. The good news is that humans have limited time in the day, and therefore the best collection of content that meets my needs will have value. How that value is unlocked is a work in progress, made worse by a bad economy. But I am absolutely confident that "your ass", if its talented, will find work and revenue and income. Don't advocate for delivery systems, advocate for the people who made great content, and want to continue to do so. I'm excited to subscribe, tip, or click to make sure that those writers find new ways to get paid.
10:47 pm
Hey, Steve: Again, you randomly capitalize Auto industry and Journalism and keep placing the comma outside the quote marks. Also, the word "probably" should not be in the sentence about disclosing your conflict of interest.
More importantly (most importantly), journalism (and Journalism) is not built on an outmoded Industrial Age system. Newspapers and their business models certainly are, yes. But the practice of journalism -- speaking truth to power, helping to inform the populace -- has inherent value, value that depends on maintaining certain standards of quality.
Those standards are what Mr. Beaujon was advocating for, not an outmoded delivery system. Even this "curatorial" model of yours would benefit from learning some basic journalistic principles.
And I will totally be linking to this post, dude.
10:23 am
Steve, thanks for commenting. Can you point me to a single aggregation or "curation" site that's making a profit?
3:13 pm
"Can you point me to a single aggregation or “curation” site that’s making a profit?"
I think that things get mixed up here. Are we talking about the people who are professional Journalists and need to remain employed, or the practice of Journalism and the need for it to thrive and survive.
Let me address them both.
Journalism is a bit hard to define today. Is the New York Times Journalism - Yes. What about The National Enquirer? What about the Pennysaver? CBS 48 Hours? What about my blog? Each of them has different sets of standards of objectivity, fact checking, balance. While all of them would claim some sort of Journalistic basis - each of them operates under different rules.
In terms of profit. Journalism may or may not need to be profitable in order to be socially significant. TV News, was for the longest time not a profit center in television -it was a public service. Then 60 Minutes came along, and that changed. Today local TV News is a critical revenue generator for local TV.
So, my point is - things are changing. I think that you'll see huge dollars shift from TV, Radio, and Newspapers in the next 5 years, and some number of blogs, websites, and aggregators will benefit from that shift of both reader/viewers and ad dollars. But not all of the dollars spent today will follow into the future. I used to spend a ton of money on classified ads. Today, with Craigslist, I spend 0$ and have a better experience. Bad for newspapers, good for users.
What I'm really saying is - let's talk about what in the future we're willing to pay for.
I'm willing to pay for filtering, quality, and content. I buy the NY Times 7 days a week. I could read it on line, but I choose not to. As more consumers can vote with their credit cards, there's some reasonable people who believe that quality will see subscriptions rise.
This is an important topic - and one I take very seriously. Aggregation is part of the story, but it is not the answer. It is a tool - part of the solution - and worth this kind of exploration and debate.
3:36 pm
AB, I believe Mr. Rosenbaum's War and Peaceish answer to your very basic question is:"Pass."
i wish somebody would give you a straight answer, AB. there's always been a fine line between visionary and phony...
3:46 pm
Agreed. Before this Rosenbaum character rolls out more smoke-and-mirrors theories on the media, he should enroll in a remedial grammar class.
3:55 pm
Wow, ok it's a 'credit' throwdown.
I'll go first, Dave.
Created BROADCAST: New York (1988) (2 Emmy Awards)
Created MTV UNfiltered (1992)
Produced CBS iWitness (1999>?)
Piloted: Free Speech (Studios USA)
Produced 100's of hrs for AETN's Investigative Reports
Series, Specials, for MSNBC, CBS, AETN, HBO, Discovery,++
Directed: "7 Days In September" (9/11 multi-pov doc)
Directed: "Inside The Bubble" (Kerry Campaign)
Founder, Magnify.net
I've worked in 8 videotape formats if you count VHS, Hi8, 3/4" Beta, Betacam, mini-DV, HDV, and now MPEG-4
My point is, vision is great. Actually making content is better.
I'm not preaching any 'vision' thing, I've been part of the evolution of both distribution and storytelling for my career, up until this point.
Ok, Dave - your turn.
4:05 pm
An impressive resume, I guess, but the question stands.
Can you name a single aggregation or “curation” site that’s making a profit?
5:08 pm
Steve Rosenbaum:
"I’ve worked in 8 videotape formats if you count VHS, Hi8, 3/4″ Beta, Betacam, mini-DV, HDV, and now MPEG-4."
so have most pornographers, steve! and, come to think of it, a lot of them ARE making a profit on the 'net. so maybe YOU are onto something here, steve!
butt seriously: ANSWER THE QUESTION!
6:25 pm
When talented journalists, or Journalists, are tasked with filtering, curation, and creating clicks for other people's content, what suffers is the time they used to have to use their real talents: reporting, writing, "creating," and, just as important, editing. Want to know what I will pay for when the trucks and the printing presses go to pasture? It's editors. Because every blogger needs one, including Mr. Rosenbaum. The "filtering" that good editors do should be making raw writing and aggressive reporting better, more reliable, and more accessible to readers. Andrew is right: Link journalism may have its place and all of us here do it, but it won't bring my company out of $40 million debt, no matter how much my company is, as my CEO put it, "in love with" the concept. Further, instead of reading and commenting on the well-reported, well-edited, well-photographed stories their papers are still writing, despite the cutbacks, my company's higher-ups choose instead to read and send around links of Mr. Rosenbaum's work, who still won't answer the question.
7:17 pm
Once the newspapers die, what links will the linkers use? Linking to each other? Meanwhile, the corrupt politicians rule.
1:33 am
Your resume sounds impressive, Rosenbaum. That makes your unceasing crimes against the English language all the more inexcusable.
I'd go on, but Jule and McKenna already demolished you much better than I ever could.
Take Jule's advice! Hire an editor to go over your stuff, ASAP!
9:18 am
Hey Dave - Can I hire you as an editor? That's a great business idea! Love that I could pay per-post to have someone 'edit' me, fresh pair of eyes, feedback, perspective. Sign me up.
10:18 am
The "Question" am I aware of any company that relies on "Curation" that is profitable.
It's a fair question.
Today, I'm not aware of any news organization that is profitable. Historically, Newspapers were privately held and often their economics where murky. Television news was, historically, a public service component. It's just in recent history that private equity groups and public markets have looked to news as a 'business', and television news, with the advent of magazine format programs, became low cost profit centers.
There is a legitimate open question about how content gets paid for. But that is not limited to jouranalism. While it is easy to say that some mix of advertising and subscription is the answer, the various posters here want to know when that gets sorted out - if ever.
I think that its easier to answer that question outside of news, which niche content around topics (cooking, skiiing, mountain climbing, etc) has immediate economic ties to ecommece and CPA advertising.
(ps: Dave McKenna- Was "Butt" a typo or a pun, I wasn't sure).
11:28 am
Me, your editor? Judging by the amount of errors in your copy, I don't think I want to make that kind of time commitment. I need a work/life balance, as they say. I can't put in the 80 to 100 hours per week that would be needed to be your spell checker.
12:13 pm
"Steve" not only displays poor mechanics in his writing, he also fails to answer "the question". He must be related to that idiot Don Rumsfeld.
The only part of the newspaper industry with increasing profits is the Spanish language segment. One reason is that their journalists write about topics that affect the lives of regular people. This is in direct contrast to the Post, where the self-proclaimed "elites" care only about issues that affect their fellow "elites", and really, every single Post writer wants to write books, not journalism. Hence, poor journalism and misguided editors are leading to the death of the Post.
1:18 pm
Ugh. Let's try to avoid devolving into petty insults and name-calling.
Steve, once again, you're sidestepping the actual question. Nobody is asking your opinion regarding the historic profitability of news organizations (newspapers, historically at least, were immensely profitable).Rather, the question was 'can you name a single aggregation or “curation” site that’s making a profit?'
Can you? The question still stands.
1:58 pm
I think Steve's non-answer neatly answers the question, which is, No, nobody's making a dime off of "curating" content.
But looking at Steve's resume answers another question: He's a TV guy. Television "news," with some exceptions, is not the same type of journalism (Journalism) practiced and cherished by the people left at City Paper and other dwindling newsrooms.
But the TV model -- quick, bright, colorful, shallow -- is closer to what's happening online in blogs, Tweets, etc. That's why Steve's so psyched.
I weep for the future.
8:59 pm
Seriously, you're going to judge my work based on generalizing about all people who work in TV? I could make judgments about your handle - since Woodstein doesn't tell me who you are, and I'm signing my posts.
But instead, why not Google me and read my clips:
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A02E4D9153EF935A3575AC0A9649C8B63
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Rosenbaum
Come on - I'm staying here because I want to have a real conversation about Journalism, Curation, and how they fit together - not to be called names by folks who can't take the time to learn about who is in this thread. I read every reporter who commented here - at least those who used their real names.
The answer to the question is: 1). No one is making money on Curation alone.
and
2). There's nothing that even remotely resembles a business model around content yet. That, I agree, is a serious problem. But blaming the technology and the practice isn't going to change that. The AP's stance, if it had a mechanism, would have at least given us something to talk about.
7:31 pm
"No one is making money on Curation alone."
I disagree. Look at Druge and HuffPo.