What's the Value of Truth?

Jeff Zucker, CEO and President of NBC Universal, in a Media Post interview said that while the blogosphere gives everyone a chance to contribute, “it is dangerous because there is no context, and there is no value put on the truth. Someone recently said - and I agree with this - that it is easy to be first and expensive.”

When 80% of revenue for a print news operation comes from advertising, calling print journalism a broken business model is more than stating the obvious. What replaces this model is still anyone’s guess. People still care about the news. Online readership continues to increase. The problem is online readership doesn’t pay the bills for good journalism.

The Wall Street Journal decided to charge for online content and remains the only legacy publication doing it. Peter R. Kann, a Pultizer-prize winner report and former chairman of the Dow Jones &Co. which publishes the Journal, connected all the dots in his piece, Quality Reporting Doesn’t Come Cheap (you can link to it for free).

Kann’s worried about the future of news – “informative, relevant, reliable news of the wider world around us.”

Interesting that in the latest review of the blogosphere by Technorati, one-third of bloggers surveyed have a journalism background. Perhaps that’s why only 35% get their own information from blogs and only 31% believe newspapers won’t be around in the next ten years. A hopeful bunch.

In a new study by the Boston Consulting Group, seems like readers will pay for online content, but not much – just a few bucks. While certainly not what readers pay for print versions, and certainly not enough to replace the ad revenue of a bygone era, some of us took from this a glimmer of hope that citizens see the value of news as something worth paying for.

Lots of models are being tried - - spot.us for example has journalists pitching their stories to get the money needed to go get the story. Mother Jones magazine has its Investigative Fund.

InvestigateWest is an inspiring new nonprofit that is committed to conducting “our journalism for the public trust.” The Investigative News Network was hatched this past summer when a group of 27 nonprofit news organizations came together to develop new models for “watchdog journalism.” It’s a work-in-progress. Huffington Post launched an Investigative Fund with nearly $2 million from a private donor. AOL has PoliticsDaily.com. Talking Points Memo is the first blog to win a major journalism award (check that out Mr. Zucker). The Investigative Reporting Workshop, headed up by Charles Lewis (who also started the Center for Public Integrity), is a project of the School of Communication at American University. The Center for Independent Media is a nonpartisan, nonprofit “blending the blog technology with the standards of professional journalism.” Citizen journalism sites such a voicesofsandiego.com are sprouting up to cover local and regional news.

And then there’s the Rocky Mountain Independent, a gallant effort by journalists from the former Rocky Mountain News who attempted to provide online news coverage of Denver and the Rocky Mountains.

Anybody involved in nonprofit advocacy work these days worries about the impact of fewer journalists to cover the stories the public needs to hear. When I was at National Wildlife Federation we struggled with this question of how to get in-depth coverage of conservation news (certainly low on the priority list for investigative reporting when there’s less and less of it). While newspapers still get read and will for some time to come –posting and sharing via social media tools your own news that is “informative, relevant and reliable” has to be part of any media outreach plan. Good content is still king, and with more independent news sources available, nonprofits need to collaborate with them and other freelance reporters to get stories written and shared. Goodness knows there’s a lot of freelance reporters out there who could use the work. So in that next program grant proposal you write, add a budget line for a freelance reporter.

Note: after posting this I find an email about 90 people getting layed off at AP. What's the value of the truth?