E-Media Tidbits

Amy Gahran James Brady, executive editor, washingtonpost.com -- and the most progressive and positive panelist at a recent Columbia j-school event.

Here's the lineup:

• Robert Kuttner, founding co-editor of The American Prospect and author of an 8000-word treatise on the session's topic, The Race, published in the latest Columbia Journalism Review.
• Steven Rattner, former New York Times reporter and author of the controversial Feb. 15 Wall Street Journal op-ed Red All Over. He's now managing principal of Quadrangle Group LLC
• Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times
• Amanda Bennett, executive editor/enterprise, Bloomberg News
• Jim Brady, executive editor, washingtonpost.com
• Nicholas Lemann, dean of the journalism school, moderated the session

Although the panelists offered plenty of useful information and observations, I must say that overall I was disappointed by the event. My impression was that this discussion took place in an echo chamber where the assumption of print journalism's inherent superiority generally overshadowed other considerations.

Worse, I felt like there was no "there" there, both in Kuttner's CJR piece and the ensuing live discussion. Ultimately no coherent solutions were offered -- just a litany of examples of various newspapers' online experiments, and scattered discussion of business considerations. Despite the setup, the assumption that print news orgs will survive because of their perceived superiority made serious consideration of their possible demise seem almost irrelevant to the discussion.

Rattner played the much-needed contrarian: "As much as people want information, it's not completely obvious to me that they still want the same old-fashioned journalism. ...At the moment, the newspaper business is a negative-sum game: the loss of revenue and readership on the print side is not being made up online."

And, referring to family-owned newspaper giants, Rattner said: "To have the fate of quasi-public trusts dependent on the gene pool of families is kind of spooky."

I asked the panel what value, if any, they thought fostering and engaged online community brought to news organizations' bottom line. Brady responded with the obvious (but true and valid) observation that an engaged online community strengthens loyalty to, and awareness of, the news org's brand. "When someone is visiting our site multiple times, that's more valuable to us and to advertisers." Brady also suggested that eventually news organizations might be able to charge for special content available to communities on hyperlocal sites.

After a bit of silence, Lemann then offered this: "This might not be what you want to hear, but I guess getting more content from the community could 'help' a newspaper's bottom line by allowing them to get rid of news staff."

That floored me. While I respect Lemann and Columbia, I was appalled at that remark and its implication that online community mainly represents a threat to journalism. Even worse, none of the other panelists countered Lemann or suggested anything more constructive or creative regarding the value and role of online community. Nor did the audience challenge the panelists further on this.

Welcome to the print-über-alles echo chamber.

Frankly, in my opinion news organizations and journalism schools that display such an utter lack of vision -- even disdain and fear -- regarding online community seem to be begging for their own obsolescence.

Fortunately, my spirits were buoyed by a discussion I had yesterday at the BlogHer Business Summit with Caroline Little, CEO and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. (More about that in my next Tidbit.)

(UPDATE MAR. 28: I've summarized one possible direction for newspapers that I discussed with Vin Crosbie after the Columbia event.)