Reinventing yourself in the digital age

Here's a case study of reinventing yourself in the digital age - and not from the 18-39 generation.

Charlie and Bill Benton have kicked around the Columbia radio market for years.

Late last year, it was curtains, as their show, "Good Morning Columbia," was yanked from the air in yet another radio reshuffle.

So what do you do in this digital age?

You take your talent and depth of market knowledge - and hopefully your audience - online.

The pair have resurfaced in a podcast in conjunction with a local digital publication MidlandsBiz.com.

 I don't know whether they'll be successful. The first podcast was not overly impressive, and I don't know whether in this age, when people seem to increasingly want quick bites of useful information more than a folksy conversation, the production will work.

The production values weren't all that great (cue the announcer from what sounds like a barrel), and there's no evidence of a social media or other infrastructure at the moment beyond what's on the MidlandsBiz page.

But it will be interesting to see how it develops and if they can create their own little narrowcast channel that brings in some revenue. And it's a way to show students what their future is likely to be - one where the only constant is reinvention.

At once perceptive and arrogant - Part 2

So yesterday I riffed on the arrogance in an otherwise perceptive look inside Tribune by an an editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Then, this morning, I'm reading a fanciful post on Mel Taylor Media of what Steve Jobs would do if he were running a newspaper, and embedded in the middle is this YouTube video of a woman - journalist apparently - wishing ads on the Internet would just go away. We'd all go to a donation system, etc. etc. (I have no idea who this person is or where this was said; it's not labeled.)

I put this under perceptive and arrogant because, again, I think it shows the inability, even after several years of the writing on the wall, to fully connect with reality. It's perceptive, with a streak of arrogance.

Wow. Is this contagious? Is there a vaccine I can get out there? Sure, every journalist has had sweet dreams of oodles of time, buckets of money and the autonomy of presiding over a fief.

But let's take some reality pills here, OK? Content is great. Content is NOT king.

At once perceptive and arrogant

That pretty much sums up my reading of Laurie Winer's part-memoir of her days at the L.A. Times and part-review of James O'Shea's book The Deal from Hell in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

True enough, Winer has me more often than not muttering and shaking my fist at her recounting of the cavalier and rapacious sacking that Sam Zell and his minions did to Tribune and the Times.

Hers and Dean Starkman's recent piece about the San Jose Mercury News should be must-reading, if for no other reason than to think with the wisdom of hindsight about what has happened.

But just as I am about to shake my fist in solidarity again, up pops that old journalistic arrogance in Winer's retelling:

All of FitzSimons’s ideas came from his knowledge of broadcast; he thought newspapers should focus on local news and that editors should rely on readership surveys to figure out what consumers want covered, and then cover those things. This is the antithesis of a good newsroom, where editors rely on reporters who are on the ground asking questions to help determine the importance and urgency of stories. Then, editors, most of whom are former reporters and have overarching expertise in their fields, confer over which stories should take precedence. The front-page editorial mix is based on their collective view of what a well-informed person needs to know about his neighborhood or country: not a distinction that the average citizen has the perspective to be able to make. When real journalism is being practiced, these decisions are not ever based on which stories will increase the stock portfolios of the editors or the newspaper.

Yes, basing your editorial decisions solely on readership surveys is the antithesis of good journalism. But actually paying attention and listening to your readers, and then using that to expand your frame of reference when making those vaulted journalistic decisions Winer praises? That's not the antithesis at all. It's using your head and putting the arrogance on a shelf.

"Real journalism" shouldn't be done for the aggrandizement of others, no. But it also needs to get real - if it doesn't generate the resources necessary to support it, it's dead. Winer seems to be living in that land of Oz that too many journalists have inhabited - where somehow the roads are paved with gold and we're all taken care of, and ignore that man behind the curtain who eventually has to be paid.

How condescending -- "not a decision that the average citizen has the perspective to be able to make." No, but the average Joe and Jane do have the perspective to make a decision and they're making it, and they're telling arrogant journalists "you're not that important anymore."

Maybe that's tough to handle, but a show of arrogance back doesn't do anyone any good. Yep, Zell was a schmuck when he told a photographer in Orlando that to survive, newsrooms have to figure out how to find enough resources to cover both "puppies and Iraq" and characteristically delivered the message with a "f*** y**" to the person who asked the question. It's unfortunate because it means Winer and others can easily dismiss it without getting off their pedestals.

Unfortunately, they're just as guilty of uttering the same epithet -- at their hoi polloi audience, which, newly empowered by technology, is giving them the finger back.

RSS? We don't need no stinkin' RSS

I love this photo that Brain Traffic has labeled "RSS in the olden days."

When did we get away from the idea that serving readers was a key job, even if it meant posting the news in the window?

I guess this might also be a metaphor for paywalls.