Get Specific Would Ya (Week 2)

As I was reading the article by Picard I couldn't help but agree with the point that he was trying to make. If I'm being honest with myself I have always been surprised that, as a journalist, I was getting paid to visit with people and then tell their stories for them. I know if they had the opportunity, and believed that people were genuinely interested, they would tell those stories on their own and with much more colorful detail and emotion. 

The concept of providing people with a voice is unnecessary these days. Everyone who wants to speak has a voice. The difference now is that there are so many voices that no one is listening. It's a question of supply and demand. There are so many suppliers of shallow and broad information, that, as Picard alludes, it is up to journalists to become experts in a specific area, or at least experts of a specific event or problem, and provide information that is in high demand with minimal suppliers. KXAN has decided that their expertise is investigative journalism. (see image)

Based on the writing of Patterson and the statistics that he presents in the introduction to his book, it is important that we provide more in-depth information for people to use in their daily decision making. Journalists are charged with highlighting the important information and providing context around it. 

Journalism, and the journalists that produce it, need to be less concerned with covering everything and demonstrate a better understanding of the information that is actually important and impactful to their audiences. People can get news anywhere, but they can only get journalism from journalists.

Journalists' wage is not low enough

The title is sad but true.  I want to talk about it in two ways. One is value, the other is supply and demand in labor market.

 

Let’s talk about value first. As Picard mentioned, the key to journalists’ wage is to see how much value they create. Picard listed the value journalists create, which is near zero.  “Accessing sources, determining significance of information, and conveying it effectively.”

 

Picard indicated that journalists deserved low pay due to the technology. Technology provides people the access of information which was exclusive before.  In a sense, the wage of journalists should be lower as a new information technology came out. Furthermore, citizen journalist should make journalists lower pay because citizen journalists substitute journalists. We can compare journalist’s wage in the past and now.  In Taiwan, journalists indeed got lower pay than before.

The reason to explain is that journalists are very easy to be substituted. The one who can get higher pay not only depends on the value one create but how irreplaceable the one is.

 

Picard mentioned it in the article.  Journalistic labor is commoditized. Every journalist repeats the same thing. It is not easy to have unique angle or story based on fact. There is only one truth about fact. The value of their labor is to have unique comments or insight other than just facts. That's why columnist or journalists with special expertise get higher pay.  Therefore, to be unique, or to be irreplaceable is the key to survive in media. To be a journalist is easy, anyone who can speak or anyone who can write can be a journalist but to be a good journalist or an irreplaceable journalist is very difficult.

 

In terms of uniqueness, Picard pointed out that “Every paper will have to be the undisputed leader in terms of their quality and quantity of local news”” The Des Moines Register could become the leader in agricultural news; and the Chicago Tribune in airline and aircraft coverage.” In my opinion, it is not easy to do. For readers, they still want to read a newspaper with general news, they wont purchase Chicago Tribune if there is no news from airline or air craft. So for newspapers, specialized coverage is probably not very helpful in selling daily news. The other value of labor is to speak out for some specific people, especially for those who have strong purchase power.

       When it comes to value, my question is how to judge the value of information, and the value of social impact?

 

 

Supply and demand explains journalists wage. Some factors influence labor supply: The quantity of workers, the amount of time each labor works, nonmonetary income and psychic income—prestige, power or the feeling of serving society (Picard, 1989). Demand for labor is to see that the value of the additional output achieved by adding a unit of labor. That is to say, the introduction of technology decreases the demand of labor.

     Journalists deserve low pay due to over supply of labor force and the introduction of new technology, which results in lower demand for labor force. The way to increase wage is to reduce supply of labor. Journalists are unlike lawyers or doctors who needs license. That means lower entry barrier of this job leads to over supply of the labor force. The other way to reduce over supply of labor is to give lower wage than it is now. When the wage is too low for people to be a journalist. The supply of labor force decreases, then there is a chance for more waged.  The conclusion is that journalists’ wage is not low enough. 

 

 

Reference:

Picard, R. (1989) Media Economics: Concept and Issues. CA: Sage

Why journalists don’t deserve low pay

One of the must disruptive characteristics of the new media environment is the presence of the "former audience" in the media space. Traditional journalism seems to have lost professional ground and authority as digital technology continues to give common people the ability to edit and publish their own content. Picard (2010) has insisted that these activities, which previously required money and professional skills, are now supported by open software, networks and new platforms, which revitalize the dissemination of digital content.

However, abundance does not necessarily mean that the economic value of information has decreased. Abundance sometimes makes it more difficult for costumers to obtain a refine product and take decisions. Users are willing to pay for convenience and quality. With partial success, traditional media companies are trying to innovate, adapt and survive in the new environment, adding value to their digital content and exploring new possibilities to reach unexplored markets and new distribution channels. Some media companies are even generating decent revenue from digital outlets. Those gains make us think twice about the future value of digital information(1).

It is true though that most news has been subsidized through history. Advertising offered that support for a while, but the pact between advertisers and publishers to convey information and ads at the same to large audiences has been broken (Anderson, 2010). Yet citizens continue to need accurate information in order to take right decisions in their daily life. Scholars have strongly warned about the quality of online information produced by amateurs. Despite its abundance, the amount of online in-depth reporting for example seems to be limited (Starr, 2009). It appears that the public itself is not going to provide with the high-quality-information societies need. So the big question here is not about journalists’ payment, but how to obtain more revenue for quality information.


P.D. I agree with Picard when he says that the democratization of content production is one of the main reasons why knowledge is not enough for increasing journalists’ market value. Yet the ability to gather, evaluate, organize, synthesize and convey valuable information remains to be skills that very few people -- without proper training-- could have.

(1) Some media companies of course make good use of the current difficult media environment as an excuse to maintain low pay.

Week 2: differentiated contents on niche market

Patterson and Picard both showed the miserable status quo of Journalism, but they reasoned causes of such crisis of Journalism differently. Patterson argued that filtering raw information by journalists did not work well, in terms of fabricating fake information. Those lead to the corruption of information, threatening the credibility of Journalism in a long run. Patterson argued that such information corruption mostly originated from journalists. 

However, Picard implicitly advocated journalists, and emphasized that the demise of traditional Journalism is unavoidable due to the development of communication technology. Communication technology is taking over the role of journalists, by lowering the entrance barrier of creating information. On rapid changing communication technology, various peoples who have different preferences are existing. No need to say, service providers should consider the individual preferences together, not producing unified products at all. Picard gave some examples of providing unique news contents. Providing a differentiated service is almost mandatory for all service providers. 

As Patterson suggested, knowledge-based Journalism, the new form of a differentiated service in Journalism, can be an alternative to overcome the crisis of Journalism. This reminded me to introduce 'Texas Tribune' Data Journalism (http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/), which contains various sources to let readers know the exact information about Education and Congress systems. Texas Tribune Data is a knowledge-based, differentiated news service, compared to other news providers, focusing on niche audiences. 

Considering traditional demand and supply curves, the supply of news outlets is clearly being increased, while demands by consumers became diversified. Also, even the supply (quantity) has been increased, the quality of such increased news contents might not be guaranteed, as Patterson mentioned (the corruption of information). Mere simplified form of supply and demand curve could not explain the status quo. Unique platforms and services by news providers towards consumers will draw clearer blueprint of future Journalism. 

Picard, Patterson and the Value of Journalism

Picard and Patterson both address the crisis facing journalism, but from somewhat different angles. Picard focuses primarily on the declining economic value of journalism, while Patterson addresses the declining quality of reporting.

Regarding Picard’s argument, it’s not clear that the ability of users to “observe and report news, gather expert knowledge, determine significance, add audio, photography, and video components, and publish this content far and wide (or at least to their social network) with ease” (Picard, 2009) for free is a strict substitute for professional reporting. I think Gelson’s article in The Washington Post nicely complicates this notion. Yes, we have access to more information, often freely provided, but without a filter, context or analysis, this access has yielded more polarization, less fact-checking, and sometimes general confusion. Meanwhile, focus on economic outcomes, as Picard puts it, can easily be interpreted as guiding the punditry of Fox and MSNBC, which contributes to the problems Gelson enumerates.

Patterson argues, along similar lines to Gelson, that due to the increasing flow of data we need journalists to convert that data into useful, contextually-situated information. Even if we accept Picard’s claim that the value of their labor is decreasing, journalism has many positive externalities which are not so easily quantifiable. While Patterson’s reference to reporting on the lead-up to the Iraq War is definitely not an example of them, The Guardian’s reporting on the Snowden leaks is, contributing to a much needed and publicized debate on free speech, privacy and government surveillance. And, after all, Snowden went to an established newspaper rather than a local blogger (although I think that’s what Glenn Greenwald has kind of become, rather successfully).

That being said, demand for print news, whether of quality or not, has diminished. It’s wasteful and not nearly as immediate as getting news digitally. It also changes the playing field. Many of those who only got a local paper delivered can now access any newspaper they want online. Because digital reach is larger, competition between papers has also increased and smaller local newspapers are usually the first losers. Picard’s solution is greater newspaper specialization. While specialization, as in local news for instance, diminishes potential substitutes, it can also reduce potential market reach. If you’re interested in national or global news, you’d likely forego paid online access to the Austin American-Statesman online access when you can read The New York Times for free (for now). 

First week reading reflections

I really enjoyed this week's reading as many of the topics covered are often on my mind. Here are a few thoughts on the readings.

-I think Picard brings up an interesting point stating that newsrooms get a really low return on investment from most of their staffs. Thinking along those lines, the brass at Deseret News completely redesigned their business model, realizing the status quo was pulling them under. They created a two tiered business model which addressed how to survive now and how to survive in the future. They actually saw growth when many newspapers were closing shop. There is an excellent article about it in the Harvard Business Review (http://hbr.org/2012/12/two-routes-to-resilience/ar/1). 

-In addition Patterson and Picard reading, I think it's worth reading Warren Buffett's press release about why he purchased 28 newspapers for $344 million.  He essentially says that newspapers have a large amount of substitutes for the services they once offered such as Craigslist rendering classified ads useless. Additionally papers started giving away content for free and, "while charging meaningful sums for the physical specimen. How could this lead to anything other than a sharp and steady drop in sales of the printed product? Falling circulation, moreover, makes a paper less essential to advertisers." He states local newspapers offering in-depth coverage are value added to tightly knit communities throughout the US. They offer information that helps the lives of their readers, offering in-depth coverage on things larger papers gloss over, which helps maintain readerships. In a sense, he's saying they offer knowledge-based news and as a result maintain circulation, making them a good investment.