Failure to Innovate Puts a Cloud Over Newspapers’ Future
By
Tania Valdemoro
Innovative reporter's notebook
|
The economist John Maynard Keynes was a bit absentminded. Once, he couldn’t find his train ticket to
show the conductor, who was collecting them. The conductor told him, “That’s OK, we’ll get it next time.” Keynes
was nonplussed. He replied, “You don’t understand. I’m not worried about the ticket. I’m worried about
where I’m
going.”
Like Keynes, online news professionals are wondering where their industry is going. That is, if it’s going at all, because
at least one expert suggests that it may not be going anywhere.
Jack Driscoll, editor-in-residence at the MIT Media Laboratory, says that an ongoing failure to innovate will ultimately mean
newspaper companies will become stagnant. “They’re not hungry. And, they don’t really see a threat to their
business, even though conglomerates are chewing up all these papers,” Driscoll told a group of journalists attending the
Western Knight Center seminar on the business of online journalism.
“Innovation is where you should be going. It flows from a willingness to take chances and make mistakes. It’s
about encouraging people in your workplace.”
One key indicator that newspapers aren’t interested in innovation is the industry-wide lack of investment in research
and development. “It’s mind-boggling,” said Driscoll.
As an example, he noted that MIT Media Laboratory has developed several products for online journalists that continue to sit
on the shelf, or have been developed outside journalism because media companies didn’t show any interest. These include:
- A reporter’s notebook that records and plays back quotes based on keystroke memory;
- “Z-Wrap,” which searches for information and aggregates relevant material;
- “Salient Stills, which extracts clear images from video clips so that there is no fuzziness in the image when it’s
transposed from video to newspapers.
Driscoll acknowledged that there are some newspapers that have welcomed innovation. He cited the Silver Stringers, a group
of 35 senior citizens in Melrose, Mass., who began an online magazine called “The Melrose Mirror” with a software
program developed by his MIT lab. The Web site offers features, travel, poetry, art, retirement advice, veterans’ information
and more.
When MIT first teamed up with the Silver Stringers, Melrose residents knew nothing about the Internet or computers and had
little writing experience, said Driscoll.
Then, in 1998, some children in Italy found out about the Silver Stringers and were able to get the same software to start
their own online publication called The Junior Journal. It is written, edited and photographed entirely by children aged 10 to
18. All Junior Summit participants can contribute stories. The children have tackled serious topics like AIDS, child soldiers,
the Iraq war and homosexuality, said Driscoll.
Take heart, he told journalists. If these groups can produce community journalism with the help of innovative new tools, online
news practitioners can find a way for innovation to filter through to their company.
“You have to get people to invest. You have to convince them it’s in their interest to invest. You have to pound on
doors.” |
