1. The Internet and Converging Media
Journalism Principles and Practices

2. What We Will Do in Two Concluding Lectures
Look at some underlying assumptions that may be moving us off track
Examine some emerging economic and editorial models (realizing some overlap)
Look at a couple missing pieces
Examine why the issue is so critical...for reasons we sometimes don’t consider
Offer at least one suggestion for solving the problem I’ve cited

3. First, Let’s Examine Some Assumptions...
Assumption 1: Internet killed news news because people can get it for free
No question partially true -- Hourglass
Newspapers seen revenue drop 50 percent in 3 years
TV down by about 25 percent
Newsmagazines Time and Newsweek cut half their staff since mid 80s
Newspapers earned only about $3.1 billion from online ads in previous year, compared to $37 billion from traditional advertising

4. But There are Other Reasons for Problems in the News Industry
Classified lost not to news but to Google -- which makes 80 percent of income off searches
News organizations did plenty of damage to themselves by massive debt
Slow to react and often focused on the trivial -- comment boxes
Collapse of economy didn’t help, but not entirely to blame
And big one relates to bottled water, get to at end

5. Assumption #2: People get their news from new media, fragmented media -- so old media are irrelevant
Pew Center analysis of over a million blogs found that 80 percent t information came directly from “legacy media”
Only 14 percent of top news sites produce largely original news
80 percent of web traffic to news sites goes to 7 providers -- CNN, NYT, Yahoo News, MSN among them -- and if you look at Yahoo News, basically aggregation of AP, AFP, Reuters, Bloomberg

6. Assumption #3: This has never happened before so it’s a Zombie Apocalypse
Read AOL’s new master plan -- optimize for search engine. Is this the zombie Apocalypse? The same thing happened before Civil War
Remember how home video was going to wipe out movie theaters? The opposite happened
Recorded music was going to put musicians out of work
Radio would be the end of recorded music

7. It took centuries for printing press to make its effect realized
Assumption #4: There’s one big thing that is going to change everything
It took centuries for printing press to make its effect realized
It took pretty much a whole century for technology and society to create modern newspaper industry.
Media needed a monetary base -- cash economy, gave birth to classified ads as people move from working at home to cities

8. Assumption #4 Continued
Took a decade or so for radio to establish itself as an advertising medium -- toothpaste
Took longer to overcome eleemosynary -- economic model
And for all those trying to invent the next big thing, it often goes in its own direction…
Edison
Bell
And in fact Sarnoff

9. Conclusion
Just because we don’t know the answer doesn’t mean there isn’t one, and we’re in good company