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48March 2015
48March 2015
MEDIA MOBILE JOURNALISM
I
N a widely shared blog at the end of
February, Fredrik de Boer, a doc-
toral student at Purdue University
mused on the sameness of many new
media outlets, from the “edgy” Vice
to the statistics-based news promise
of Five Thirty Eight. Each outlet, from
Gawker to Buzzfeed to Business Insider
to the Atlantic, may tweak the product
mix, but although they have different
approaches, they are all chasing the
same news stories.
“The mix changes; Grantland is
some more sports and a little less
news and whatever intern is cur-
rently writing the ‘Bill Simmons’
column. Slate is a little less sports
and a little more politics and Troy
Patterson endlessly writing the word
“gentleman” into his Mead notebook
in cursive while admiring his new
glasses in the mirror. New York is a
little of everything with some sooth-
ing noises to remind New Yorkers that
they are very very important. The
revamped New York Times Magazine
is a lot of the same edited by people
who think you can get more sexy Mille-
nials to your website by adjusting the
kerning on your font. The Atlantic is a
lot of the same plus Ta-Nehisi Coates
plus Coates’s creepshow commenters
asking him to forgive their sins. Busi-
ness Insider is a lot of the same only
written for the illiterate. The New
New Republic is the same stuff writ-
ten by every non-white male Gabriel
Snyder could find to exorcise the
vengeful presence of Marty Peretz’s
farting ghost, and thank god for that,
plus Jeet Heer with an essay made up
of 800 numbered tweets. Buzzfeed is
a lot of the same only as if life was a
Law & Order episode about the Inter-
net from 1998. Salon is the same stuff
but every single piece is headlined
‘Ten Things You Won’t Believe Repub-
licans Said on Fox News’ regardless
of content. Vox is a lot of the same
stuff plus a new-fangled invention
called the “card stack”, an innovative
approach which allows webpages to
“link” to other pages. The Awl is a lot
of the same stuff brought to you by the
emotion sadness. Gawker is a lot of
the same stuff, cleverly hidden across
1,200 sub-blogs along with several
thousand words of instructions for
how to read the site that are some-
how still an inadequate guide. Vice
is a lot of the same stuff written by
that guy you knew in high school who
told you he did cocaine but seemed to
only ever have that fake marijuana
called Wizard Smoke you could buy
at a gas station. Five Thirty Eight,
I’m told, exists, although whenever
I try to open it my browser seems to
show me a strange lacuna into which
the idea of a website was, once, meant
to congeal. But one way or another,
you could take 90% of what each of
these sites publish and stick it on any
other, and nobody would ever know
the difference”.
The same gimmick can easily be
applied to any market, whether in print
or online media, including Ireland. The
Irish Times is a bit more solemn and a
bit more Dublin southside. The Inde-
pendent is a bit more country and a bit
less rugby and arguably somewhat more
Denis O’Brien.
The Herald is a bit more soccer and
greyhounds. The Examiner is a bit more
Munster. Or even a lot more Munster.
The Mail is a bit more distaff. The Star is
a lot more sports. The Journal is younger,
snappier, and makes a virtue of brevity.
Legacy media often differentiated
itself from its competitors not by what
it reported, but by its geographic reach.
When the local newsagent only stocks
one or two titles, it doesn’t really matter
that all the titles are reporting essen-
tially the same news. But geography
becomes irrelevant online. A Donegal
reader who bought The Independent
or Times because the Examiner didn’t
arrive until close to midday is no longer
constrained, because each title is only a
click away, along with new rivals from
RTE.ie to theJournal.ie, or even Joe.ie
and Broadsheet.
Newsrooms can no longer rely on scar-
city as part of their business model. The
internet creates abundance, a wealth
of news literally at the audience’s fin-
gertips. The audience’s problem isn’t
where to get news, it’s deciding which
of the many competing news and enter-
tainment channels to spend (allegedly)
scarce time on.
Newspapers are in trouble because
of their sameness. As they move online,
whether behind paywalls or advertising-
supported, they lose their geographic
distinctiveness. The physical product
may continue to sell most strongly in a
particular market but, online, the target
audience is not defined by location. It
may be of interest to advertisers, so it
matters when it comes to which advert
is served by the algorithm, but their
reading habits are defined by age pro-
files (Generation X, Y,
Millennial, or Boomers?), adapted-
ness to technology and political views,
Mobile audio-visual
journalism is the
coming thing in new
media. By Gerard
Cunningham
MOJO, Bro
Each outlet,
from
Gawker
to
Business
Inside
r to the
Atlantic
, may
tweak the
product mix,
but they are
all chasing the
same news
stories
“
March 2015 49
more than location. And that audience
is as likely to click on the Guardian or
New York Times, or Telegraph or CNN,
as an Irish site.
That makes for a very crowded mar-
ketplace. It’s worth noting that, for all
that they pick up extra sales in Ireland,
the UK titles available on Irish shelves
make little effort to capture Irish audi-
ences online, happy to settle for covering
the major crime and political stories,
mostly through wire services. Frankly,
Ireland isn’t that important, and while
Irish hard-copy sales are a bonus to
the British titles, the island is too small
to justify major investment to attract
online advertising.
Earlier this month, Caroline
O’Donovan, a staff writer at Nieman
Journalism Lab, a fellowship programme
for journalists at Harvard, in her part-
ing piece for Nieman, finished up with a
manifesto of sorts: “I believe that, in the
future, journalism is going to be okay.
I believe in a better CMS. I believe in
wildly absorbing interactive news apps
and games. I believe in beautiful stories
told in VR. I believe in drone-assisted
investigations, in nonprofit report-
age, in small magazines, in speedy and
secure communication between journal-
ists and sources, in data big and small.
And I believe, as ever, in great content”.
That American optimism stands
in contrast with the attitudes of Irish
journalists, revealed in a survey by the
Insight Centre for Data Analytics at NUI
Galway, which showed that while per-
cent of journalists use social media, they
distrust it deeply. Journalists in short
have a love/hate relationship with the
internet, at once appreciating its value
as a timesaver and connection to their
audience, yet believing it is degrading
the quality of their work.
For the native publishers, that leaves
a limited number of eyeballs to fight
over, and the knowledge that the rest of
the world is only a click away. Print isn’t
dead, and print revenues can provide
a base for a while, but there’s a limited
time to pivot into a viable online busi-
ness model. Legacy titles moving online
have to compete not just with each other,
but with overseas news outlets, and not
just other print news going online world-
wide but radio broadcasters moving to
podcast and television to online video.
Mobile journalism – MoJo – is the newest
buzzword, and as technologies merge,
newspapers are scrambling to train up
print journalists to work generating
reports using audio-video techniques.
In that context, the Irish government’s
recent draft paper on media mergers,
and its distinctions between print and
broadcast, is already looking quaintly
old-fashioned. Internet radio, podcasts,
an internet video live in a regulatory
limbo beyond the reach of the Broad-
casting Authority of Ireland, and not
quite within the jurisdiction of the Irish
Press Council. Online radio, the next log-
ical step from podcasting, is being hailed
as a saviour in many American newspa-
per markets, allowing live coverage of
everything from sporting events and
political press conferences to debates
and breaking news. The Irish Times is
already experimenting with the format,
in both audio and video, and other titles
cannot be very far behind. Once the
habit of regular podcasting is ingrained,
in audiences and newsrooms, then the
next logical step is a streaming service,
broadcast without broadcasting.
That is the source of Caroline
O’Donovan’s American optimism. News-
rooms will survive, but only if they stop
thinking of themselves as places that
produce newspapers, or radio broad-
casts, or television programmes.
Newsrooms succeed when they con-
centrate on producing the news, not on
the platform they use to spread it. •
Once the habit
of regular
podcasting is
ingrained, in
audiences and
newsrooms,
then the next
logical step is
a streaming
service,
broadcast
without
broadcasting
“
