Old Dogs New Tricks and Crappy Newspaper Executives

Digital First reporting:
Speech by John Paton: 
It’s an embarrassing display played out time and time again at conferences where our industry heads look like aging ingénues at Stratford declaring they can still play Juliette. And nobody has the heart to break it to them.
Or worse still, mediocre journalists, wrapping themselves in the flag of long-form journalism, to deride the value of social media as a reporting tool. A tool they don’t understand or care to understand.
And then having to watch them use that ignorance to dismiss the phenomenon of participatory journalism.
When I hear these hacks cry out that their work can’t be reduced to 140 characters I always think – if only – and pine for the useful hours I could get back in my life if spared their thumbsuckers.
And while these false, zero-sum arguments play themselves out, Rome burns.
And in the United States of America, where I work, the fire is burning faster and fiercer than ever before.
Since 2005, the U.S. newspaper industry has lost more than 60% of its advertising revenue and so many jobs no one can accurately count them.
And while this is not yet the story in Canada, I would say the only difference between here and where I work in New York City – is time.
It’s not like the Internet isn’t coming to your town.
...
In 2012, in the US, it is expected there will be more advertising on the web than in newspapers and by most estimates more Americans now access their news via the web than print.
The customers have spoken.
But are we listening?
I would argue not nearly hard enough...
If you haven’t read Shirky’s essay Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable and you are in the newspaper business then brother let me tell you – you are not paying enough attention.
His message is simple:
“If the old model is broken, what will work in its place? The answer is nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the Internet just broke.”
And his message is clear:
You don’t tinker or tweak a broken model. You start again anew. And I would add build upon our foundations.
To do this you have to let go of those things we once held true. Like:
- We are the gatekeepers of information.
- That we are the agenda setters and that we decide what news is and what is not.
- And that we keep the Outside world outside and only let in the chosen few – people like us.
http://jxpaton.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/old-dogs-new-tricks-and-crappy-newspaper-executives/