Eastman Kodak serves as a good case study and reminder for those of us in journalism:
- You can't sit on your laurels
- The innovation that could save your bacon might be right in your own shop - if you don't discount it
- "We needed to understand that we were not a family; we were a team."
All three can be found in a
look by Reuters today at Kodak and its spinoff,
Eastman Chemical. The venerable film and camera maker is struggling, now seventh in digital cameras and struggling against HP and other established players in the printer market. Spinoff Eastman Chemical, on the other hand, is thriving.
As to point one above, Kodak clearly stayed at the dance with film too long. Think about the difficulties, some tradition and some financial (large debt and capital investments to be paid down; sucking at the teat of the cash cow, etc.), that traditional news organizations have gone through.
Point two follows from point one - as the article notes, Kodak invented the digital camera. But there was no urgency to develop it - after all, why cannibalize the cash cow that was film (and chemicals).
Point three is from a former CEO of Eastman Chemical, Brian Ferguson, who talks about the difficulties Eastman had in adjusting to faster, more flexible times (and the need to lay people off) because of the "paternalism" of Kodak. You can scoff at it if you want; you can decry how the orientation of capital and labor has changed - or regressed, depending on your view. But I throw it in because it captures nicely the orientation I hope graduating students have and understand. Too many in my generation wanted to work for a "family," and the PR spin in many corporations still emphasizes that. But when push comes to shove, it's best to remember Ferguson's words because in the cold light of business, they ring more true.
I've used Kodak before as
a parable of our times. Kodak's story is worth reviewing periodically for any journalist.
As we approach another new year, I want to share with you that 6-year-old speech that's also linked to above. I think it still has some good points.
Keynote
Address
Florida Press Club Annual Meeting
Oct. 15, 2005, Orlando, Fla.
Doug Fisher, author Common Sense
Journalism
and instructor University of South
Carolina
It's been a tough year. Journalism has been
economically battered ... then legally battered in the Valerie Plame
case ... and finally – literally – physically battered by Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita.
Yet you have persevered, practiced and honed your
craft, true to the idea that people deserve to know what works – and
what doesn't – in this world. It is not easy. It is not a job everyone
can, or will, do, despite what some people would tell us.
But you did it. And you are being honored tonight
for excellence in that work, and you should all give yourselves a round
of applause.
I'm a nomad. I started in radio some 30 years ago
when all-news was becoming hot and got a break working for one of the
all-news pioneers – Westinghouse Broadcasting. I moved to a TV
assignment and anchor desk for a while, and then got hired at the paper
because an editor was willing to take a chance on me. It didn't hurt
that we kept beating them down at City Hall.
I ended up spending 18 years at the Associated
Press, the kind of journalism that is exhausting, maddening – and
thoroughly exhilarating: From covering presidents and what were then
the super-secret stealth fighters, to writing about the guy in western
Ohio who had a Titanic museum in his basement and watching thousands of
elderly people jam the Rhode Island Statehouse because their money was
frozen in decrepit credit unions.
So I figured when you all invited me to speak, the
press club decided, given the times, it might be good to see that it's
possible to be a nomad journalist and still maintain a 300-pound,
churlish figure.
When I was leaving the AP bureau in Columbus, Ohio,
to start my days as a correspondent, my boss put his arm around me and
gave me my – as he put it – "AP management training."
"Do good, don't do bad. And don't miss the big one."
That was it – short and sweet. So we'll try to stick to a few short
observations tonight about our current state of affairs in journalism
and what we might do about it.
My first piece of advice: Next time, instead of New
Orleans, send the hurricane entries to Boise.
[Eds note: The
press club lost about half of its entries, those that had been sent to
the Press Club of New Orleans for judging, as a result of Katrina.]
A "media" company threatened
Let's start with the tale of a media company, one
that's been an integral part of our business.
In recent years, this company saw technology change.
High-tech competitors from industries it hadn't had to think about
before invaded its turf.
The company is trying to reinvent itself – to pull
away from the medium to which it is so closely tied. Its stock price is
down almost a third in the past year, and large layoffs threaten to cut
to the core of its business.
I'm not going to tell you quite yet which media
company I'm talking about, but all of us could probably find something
in there that sounds a lot like where we work.
What is journalism worth?
The one thing this company does know is what its
product is worth, even if that worth is diminishing.
Sadly, I'd suggest that's not the case with
journalists. We know what our newspapers are worth, and our radio or TV
stations. You can put a value on those presses and transmitters, on
those cameras and subscription lists.
But what is the
journalism itself worth?
If we look at it with the cold, hard eye we bring to
our stories, we might have to admit our journalism is worth nothing, at
least when it comes to money, which is the way business keeps score.
Our journalism has gotten its value from being
lumped together into a package that attracts eyeballs and thus attracts
advertisers. We're like some giant 800-number dating service, only with
a purpose we keep telling ourselves is nobler.
For a journalist, advertisers exist for one reason –
to turn time into money.
Our readers and viewers pay us in time. But if we want to be in
business, we have to keep score with money. But if our only value comes
from aggregation, that's a problem at a time when corporate behemoths
like Viacom are splitting and when we see a rise in free papers and we
continue to struggle with whether we can charge for news on the Web.
After all, if the "package" your journalism comes in
is free, what does that say about the value of the actual content?
Without knowing what our journalism is worth, we end
up valuing the package, not the content. And that makes us dependent on
any change that suddenly makes that package less relevant.
In short, it cheapens our journalism.
Yet I rarely hear journalists ask this basic
question. And there's hardly been a peep from the major journalism
organizations. (True, they've been a little tied up lately trying to
keep journalists out of jail and to preserve some semblance of freedom
of information after September 11.)
Some researchers – Stephen Lacy and Phillip Meyer
are the most prominent – have been trying to figure out this question –
can quality sell? So far, the answer is a tentative yes.
But too much of today's journalism is just a
commodity, one nugget not much different from the next. And as we
learned in beginning economics, in a commodity business, you get large
and you get cheap.
If you think about it, that sounds a lot like modern media.
If we're going to argue that somehow quality
journalism is too important to die – and if we expect anyone to pay
attention to that argument – we need a crash program that gets to that
core question: What is journalism worth?
I challenge you tonight to leave here and start
asking what your journalism really is worth.
Because if we don't do that, if we let others do it
for us, then we might as well admit journalism is nothing more than a
social good to be supported by foundations, donations and government
funding. In short (and with apologies to anyone from public radio or TV
in the audience), the way we pay for most social goods in this country
– by begging.
Rapid Relevance
Part of modern business is understanding that your
customers likely will be gone tomorrow if you don't meet their needs.
There are simply too many alternatives.
Who is that customer? As Pogo said: "We have met the
enemy and it is us."
That media company I talked about? The medium is
film, the company is Kodak, and we, journalists, were among its largest
customers. At every sporting event, newspaper and magazine
photographers went through yards and yards of film.
And then things changed. The digital camera became relatively
affordable. We didn't want to wait. We wanted those images now. And we
could do away with all those messy chemicals and cost.
One day, in the late 1990s, the AP decreed that if
you were a newspaper and you wanted photos, you'd better get a digital
receiver. That was enough to move even recalcitrant publishers. Some of
Kodak's largest customers were history.
OK, so you're Kodak. You still have that massive
base of retail customers who not only have film cameras but have to get
that film developed, something that also was a big part of Kodak's
business.
Only now Kodak had to deal with cameras that had
names like Sony. Or Hewlett-Packard: A computer company? Selling
cameras? (Does that sound familiar – Yahoo hiring war correspondents?)
And that developing went to one-hour labs. (How many of us still send
film for two-day processing – assuming we still own film camera?)
So now one of Kodak's biggest competitors isn't
another camera company but a retailer – the world's largest – Wal-Mart.
And Wal-Mart often is using another company's equipment – Fuji's.
But we – as journalists or as amateur photographers
– didn't care about some venerable name, did we? We wanted rapid
relevance – when we wanted it, where we wanted it and how we
wanted it.
We're not the first. People are fond of saying the
railroads suffered because they didn't realize they were in the
transportation business. But the smartest people in transportation
realized their business also was actually rapid relevance – getting it
to the customer exactly when, where and how the customer wanted it.
So if Kodak dies – and I really don't think it will
because it is reinventing itself, but it's going to be gut-wrenching
for many people – but if it does, we helped kill it. And if we don't
care about a little $13 billion company, why should our readers care
any more about a $3 billion Knight Ridder or New York Times or a $1
billion McClatchy – or any other media company, if we don't give them
what they want?
Consider a few things about those customers we
covet, the 18- to 34-year-olds:
- Jupiter Research recently reported a third of them increasingly
rely on their portable media players for TV and instant news and
information – and that was before the video iPod.
- M-metrics says full-time students with jobs are significantly
more likely to use mobile e-mail than anyone else.
- Another recent survey found that 85 percent of college students
surveyed had cell phones – and most of those could send and receive
text messages or play games.
Consider the widely reported Washington Post focus
groups where people said they wanted the news – they just didn't want
the newspaper. It was dirty, messy, a pain to deal with – in other
words, just like all those photo chemicals we were so happy to banish
from our newsrooms.
And – even though Yahoo sponsored this study –
consider a report from this week that should scare the heck out of you
as a journalist: 81 percent of college students said search engines
were the "best" source of information. Friends and family came next at
64 percent and then traditional media at 34 percent. (The numbers are
more than 100 because the study took the top two choices as "best.)
In other words, if we continue to value our
journalism by the package it comes in, we have no idea what the core
product – the thing our customers say they want – is worth, and we risk
becoming obsolete.
"Dead Money" and "Bad Competitors"
If we just cut profits and put the money back into
the newsroom, all would be well. Right?
It's become such a chorus that I'm reminded of
something Gen. George Patton once said: "If everyone is thinking
alike, then someone isn't thinking."
Recently, some folks have pointed out it isn't that
simple, not when most media companies now are creatures of the public
stock markets.
When you get stockholders used to a certain profit margin, you can't
just wake up one morning and say, I think we'll cut the profits so we
can do better journalism – even if you wanted to.
You'd be fired – the directors by law have to
protect shareholders' interests. And you'd probably be sued.
So if you don't innovate and find new products – or
new ways of doing things – you basically must cut and cut to make
margin. Finally, the market decides you've cut too much and you're no
longer worth the price. It's called: "dead money."
Eventually, your stock value falls enough that you
can afford to buy back the shares and go private, or you become cheap
enough that a takeover company dismembers you.
That does allow some new players – some who might
care deeply about the journalism – into the game. But it's gut
wrenching, and there's no guarantee you won't be bought up by a
financial blood-sucker. This is business survival of the fittest. Be
ready for it.
We also face what business-strategy expert Michael
Porter calls the "bad competitor," one that doesn't play by "our"
rules. It doesn't have to. Electronic news sites have much lower costs
of entry. Even a new newspaper these days can buy press time or even
new presses more cheaply than those of the established media.
"Citizen journalism" sites – one of which I'm in the
middle of trying to set up – are even doing it without "big-j"
Journalists.
Bet on the jockey, not on the horse
It sounds like a bleak picture. It doesn't need to
be.
Yes, there are going to be rough times.
But if we, as journalists, are to have a hope of
reclaiming the journalism we set out to do, we can't ignore – or worse
yet, simply wring our hands and whine about – what's happening around
us. We have to bet on the jockey, not the horse.
Let me explain.
I enjoy putting a few bucks down on the ponies. But
you won't find me in most cases at thoroughbred tracks like Belmont or
Churchill Downs. I'm more likely to be watching the harness races at
Yonkers or the old Louisville Downs – or maybe Pompano Park.
I've learned that I'm lousy at betting on horses.
They are like technology – big, sleek, powerful – and more likely to
come in out of the money. So while the payoff can be great, I'm not
willing to tie my paycheck to Big Elmer.
But I have learned I can bet the jockey.
The jockey straddling half a ton of horseflesh is
pretty much along for the ride. But a harness jockey has more control
over that "technology," and you can find jockeys who tend to be more
consistent winners. So I'm betting on the skill, the craft, not the
technology.
And that's what I'm hoping you'll do as journalists.
You need to worry less about the technology and bet
more on your craft. The medium does not matter as much as the
journalism.
If you're a good storyteller – and that you're here tonight shows you
are, whether in words, pictures or graphics – you already are honing
the skills necessary in this multimedia, always-on world.
A good storyteller already tries to create a
multimedia event in the reader's mind. Sight, sound, smell – you're
trying to transmit all of them.
And the smart writer has always worked with photographers. That writer
knew a so-so story could make 1-A with a great photo -- and the
photographer was another advocate for the story. And a good
photographer always got a sense of the writer's story, knowing that if
the pictures matched, they were likely to get the best play.
That's what this multimedia world is all about –
being aware of all the ways to tell a story and knowing enough to use
those other resources when needed – and when appropriate.
If you're a writer who wants the reader to "hear" a
story, why wouldn't you want to help those readers who come to the
story on the Web with a few short audio clips? If you want them to
"see," why not video or a slide show?
Fortunately, we rather quickly shrank from this
vision of the new-age multimedia reporter as "Edward Scissorhands" –
outfitted with multiple tools, a veritable Swiss Army knife of a
journalist. Of course, as in the movie, things tended to turn out badly
when it was tried, or even when we just thought about it much. We now
seem to realize this "one-person band" idea isn't the best and this
isn't going to be journalism on the cheap.
But even if you're in a small newsroom without big
resources, you can still expand your storytelling. There are so many
simple, cheap tools out there that even if all you do is occasionally
add sound to your print story shoveled onto the Web, you're giving
people a reason to come to that Web site for your journalism.
This isn't going to be painless. We're in the
"Jell-O era" – the time when managers are tempted throw anything they
can against the wall to see what sticks. That's natural. It also
produces silly mandates, such as you have to get sound on every story
or every story has to have some other multimedia element.
Of course, not every story lends itself to sound,
and you certainly don't want to spook an interview by whipping out a
microphone at the wrong time. Just the same, I've seen too many "print"
journalists and journalism students fall back on that excuse when it
clearly wasn't likely. Do what we used to do in TV when we had to shoot
film – do the interview in pencil and paper first, and then pull out
the microphone and record. You'll probably get better, more thoughtful
answers as a result.
Watch the people, not the rats
Two final points: First, listen to the rat poison
expert.
On NPR the other day there was a fascinating
interview with an author who recounted dinner with the rat poison
specialist of Europe. Asked about his success, the poison specialist
said: "I watch the people, not the rats."
Rats eat the food people leave. So in France, he
mixes in a little butterfat with the poison. In Germany, it's some pork
fat. In Venice, I guess it's olive oil. As journalists, we also need to
watch the people – not the rats.
Part of the reason we're in this mess is because we
haven't paid attention to changing desires, lifestyles and needs.
We wrote too much for those we were covering – the
rats. We expected people to read it the way we wanted them to. We
heard, but we didn't really pay attention, when someone questioned
whether we were really in "mass media" anymore.
And too often we forgot that it doesn't hurt to mix
a little butter – or some occasional sugar – into our stories.
In the 21st century, large is not in
charge
My final point comes from, Sumner Redstone, the
power behind Viacom. When Redstone said this year that he was splitting
the $23 billion colossus so that it could more nimbly respond to
changes in the media world, he said this: "In the 21st century, large
is no longer in charge."
Those should be sweet words to journalists because,
at its essence, journalism is small. We too often confuse journalism
with the practice of putting out a newspaper or putting on a newscast.
Those are team efforts.
But the process of gathering news, of discovering
and uncovering, of going places where the average person can't go –
that, my friends, remains a one-on-one relationship between source and
journalist. And that's not likely to change anytime soon.
Small means opportunity. Yes, it was sad when the
Baltimore Sun said it was closing its London and Beijing bureaus. But
perhaps now jobs open for two, three or more freelancers.
If we don't like the way things are going and think
we can do it better ourselves, there's no better time. The costs to
entry are low – you can put up a community news Web site for a few
hundred dollars and a few hours' work. Remember, unlike at Kodak, we
are the raw material.
Will such "citizen journalism" make money? I don't
know. That's what we're trying to find out in a South Carolina project.
But don't make the same kind of arrogant mistakes
we've made before in dismissing things out of hand, like this kind of
thinking from a former SPJ president:
"There is a difference between 'citizen journalism'
and 'professional journalism,'" he wrote. "A professional journalist's
No. 1 obligation is to be accurate. A citizen journalist's No. 1
obligation is to be interesting."
He missed the point. The challenge for both these
days is to be
accurate and
interesting.
If we can do both – and be quick ... if we can
figure out what we do is worth ... if we can bet on the jockey and not
the horse ... and watch the people not the rats ... and if we remember
that large is not in charge ... I believe we as journalists can
reclaim journalism's soul, no matter what the medium.
There is no better time than now. There is no one
else but us!
And if you don't believe me on that, well at least
trust me on this: Next year the hurricane entries go to Boise.
Labels: business, journalism, journalism future
