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Like most self-important members of the media I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of journalism and the role of the journalist. Now, let’s imagine that Apple’s iFixeveryindustry slate doesn’t cure all the media’s ills and realise that some thinking needs to be done.

After a recent meeting with news aggregator Daylife I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how being a good curator of experts is possibly the best weapon a journalist has to use. As more information becomes publicly available we don’t need Woodwards and Bernsteins to unearth smoking guns, we need more people to process and explain the relevance of all that data.

As Malcolm Gladwell points out, the delay in exposing Enron’s financial mess wasn’t due to malpractice, deceit or lack of information. The important numbers were all out there for public consumption, but nobody had connected the dots. You don’t need to be a wood expert to complete a jigsaw any more than Jonathan Weil needed to be an accounting whizz to break the Enron story in the Wall Street Journal – you just need to know who to speak to.

And as Nick Davies says in Flat Earth News, the reason journalists miss out on so many interesting stories isn’t always because the government witholds information. On the contrary, it’s often because governments release too much information to be properly processed.

But with a motivated and mobilized group of experts, the information can be crunched. And for once, I won’t use Wikipedia as an example of crowdsourcing done good. Just look at the Guardian’s work in outsourcing the processing of the MPs’ expenses data to its readers to consume and hunt out irregularities. This task would have taken their journalists months to sort through and find the story, but not any more.

Imagine next time a mass of data becomes available and it is put in a Google Wave. What if Weil could have done that with Enron’s accounts, inviting tax experts and students to help sort through it, editing, highlighting and adding any useful information? Or, to use a more banal example, what if a motoring correspondent covering a motor show shared his article with expert bloggers from all the relevant subject areas before it was put in the page?

No one journalist can know everything about their beat or subject, they need – and should seek – help. And this goes beyond gathering quotes. A hatchback loving blogger could chip in and correct any mistakes about his subject area. Likewise, a motorbike expert could speak up, making the piece more rounded, accurate and appealing to readers.

There is a big difference between a puzzle and a mystery and how they’re solved. Puzzles have bits of information missing that need to be found. Mysteries are usually more complex, needing an improvement in the exchange  and understanding of existing information rather than more facts and figures that could actually cloud matters. If Wave’s technology can help the flow of information and let journalists focus on the puzzles, then we can focus on what journalism is actually good at. Have I missed anything out of this blog post? Of course I have.

By @jamesseddon

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A few weeks ago my boss asked me to start sending out an email with links to the week’s biggest tech stories to encourage those who aren’t so geeky to keep up-to-date with industry news. Thought I may as well post in here too. It’s pretty mainstream tech stuff, but as a journalist I’ve got pretty handy at cutting and pasting so thought I may as well share here too…

Here’s the five tech stories no nerd should be without from the last week.

Sun launches multiplayer quizzes
So what? Well firstly, it’s making quizzes social (1pt in buzzword bingo) and secondly it’s another trial of paid-for-content. This is using micropayments, although that term traditionally meant fractions of a pound (0.14p) and this is actually small payments (15p).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/05/sun-web-multiplayer-quiz

Times launches Times +
So what? So this is Murdoch playing with subscription models and paywalls. This isn’t a world first and isn’t around content. It’s more like an members’ club where people can get exclusive deals and tickets. Leveraging Times’ reputation as a premium content provider it’s more wine deals and theatre tickets than gig tickets. And all for £50 a year.
http://www.timesplus.co.uk/

Amazon to launch Kindle in UK
So what? They’ve finally managed to sort out a way around Europe’s arcane copyright laws, so you’ll be able to buy digital books here and read them on the beach in Spain. Also touted as the 169th way to save newspapers this year. Number 170 is printing them on things people actually want, like sandwiches.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/07/amazon-ebooks

Foursquare hits the UK
So what? If you use Twitter and follow Americans you’ll have seen people declaring themselves as ‘Mayor of XXXXX’. The location-based, social, real-time app not only uses a huge four buzzwords when being described, but is actually quite addictive. Come and add me if you decide to play. I’m currently Mayor of Virgin Media – no joke.
http://foursquare.com/user/jamesseddon

Google defending book deal
So what? So Google has agreed a £125m deal with American publishers so it can digitise millions of out-of-print books and offer them for free online. More data = better targeted ads = more money for Google.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/09/google-books-brin

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“For the British publishing industry, the computer revolution began in 1986, when we at News Corp. moved our operations out of Fleet Street to a new high-tech plant at Wapping in London’s Docklands.” – Rupert Murdoch, 1989

“Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?” – Rupert Murdoch, 2009

“I used to be with it. But then they changed what it was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems scary and weird. It’ll happen to you.” – Abe Simpson

Unlike News International’s move to Wapping (a move to the Docklands which had been aped by every other national newspaper by 1988), the current major sea change in the media has been open and a long time coming.

In preparation for their move to Wapping, the huge publishing company had discreetly built and installed a new printing plant. In preparation for obliterating the newspaper industry as we know it, a bunch of geeks have been gradually developing apps, platforms and distribution models with absolutely no discretion.

“Wapping is a microcosm of the changes taking place in many other industries, as outmoded social institutions attempt to suppress new technology.”

I’m not going to attempt to debate the rights and wrongs of how things were done back in 1986, though it is clear that there were some terrible human experiences. I don’t know enough about the industrial action, I don’t remember it firsthand (I was six) and I’m a child of the 80s: Riots and strikes punctuate my TV memories but didn’t directly touch me, and I wasn’t raised under the expectation of a job for life or a union to represent me, and I like moving around. The old media, Fleet Street as was, is a dim and distant land.

And besides all of this, I’ve worked very happily at Wapping, I’ve worked as a staffer and freelancer for the Murdoch empire so I’d feel rather disingenuous throwing a historical hissyfit but I find the similarities and seemingly diminished sense of entrepreneurial zeal interesting.

When the proprietors were in control of the tough moves, the emerging technology that displaced jobs and tightened up the bottom line, when they were owning and steering the sea change, they saw the good, the positives for them. They no longer lead the charge.

The generation in charge isn’t even mine and yours, it’s the one snapping at our heels already – that’s the generation that will drive the final nail into the Way Things Were, with a new platform or format we can’t conceive yet.

Now if the big bosses hadn’t got their collective knickers in such a twist about the syntax of the debate (‘Google stole our stuff’) and joining forces to collectively tattle tell, they’d be able to see the benefits and opportunities of this current shift.

And that, I guess is the point, there IS a huge shift, the whole industry has been shaken and stirred and all the moaning and mothers’ meetings in the world won’t turn back time, stop the internet existing and put the blockers on progress. And nor should it.

“On the one hand, new technology opens up new possibilities, not only for business but for labor. Technological progress raises wages, and makes the workplace safer, cleaner, and more humane. On the other hand, the framework of social institutions… [latterly the old media framework - HS]… resists the change.”

I’m not going to list a finite list of opportunities for panicked media giants that will make gadgillions. If I could summon that at will, I’d be far richer than I am now. But I’m going to attempt to jot some ideas in follow up posts, and I’d love any comments on this.

Here is a quote that sums up the new world order, Google and entrepreneurs of all sizes have seized control through innovation and modernization; the newspapers, the old guard, in their panic are screaming for new forms of old regulation:

“The decision to rely on market forces is the essence of modernization. Yet technological change often provokes atavistic, authoritarian responses. The real danger of the present technological revolution is that we may be panicked by future shock into regressive schemes of regulation.”

This perfect quote, and the others threaded through this blog, are from Rupert Murdoch, speaking in 1989 at the Manhattan Institute’s third annual Walter B. Wriston Lecture in Public Policy.

I’ll finish with another quote from the same speech:

“Technological change and social institutions interact continually, and the technology does not necessarily win. Society can soar, or it can stall.”

The king is dead, long live the king.

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Bastardising the often mocked moral mantra of middle America to pose the question ‘What would Google Do?‘ was a masterstroke of simplicity by blogger and author Jeff Jarvis, but when it comes to news, features, galleries, videos, audio and any other editorial content there’s surely a better question to ask when considering how to improve your digital offering: What would Amazon Do?

Helping visitors find interesting content online should be no different to helping shoppers find attractive products on Amazon. Yet where media companies have clearly learned from Amazon and other e-tailers in the past – think Most Read, Most Watched, Most Commented widgets – old media’s digital offerings have fallen way behind in terms of innovation.

Launched in 1995, Amazon has not just revolutionised where we shop (web v high-street), but also how we’re sold what we want, and what we didn’t know we want. Newspapers have merely swapped paper for screens, sections for channels and page numbers for links. Nowhere yet has any media company realised we want to consume our news in a new way. And no, I don’t mean bloody video, another old-media hangover caused by number-loving advertisers who fear change because it’s hard to sell on something you don’t understand.

Whether it’s music, movies, websites or articles, people are now used to – and want – recommendations and the ability to use customer feedback to inform their choices.

Click through to a product page on Amazon and you won’t be left stranded there with no option but to go back to the previous page, buy the product, start to search for a new item or just go to a new site.

No, Amazon are cleverer than that, because of one simple understanding: why sell you one thing when they can sell you two, three, or more? Visit Amazon’s page for The Wire season one DVD boxset and you’re told…

• Which other items customers often buy with The Wire season one, plus the option to buy them all together
• What customers ultimately buy after visiting The Wire season one page
• How popular The Wire season one is in the meta and less specific categories (number one in all, obviously)
• What customers also bought when purchasing the boxset
• Customer suggestions from other categories
• The ability to search other products customers have given the same tags they’ve given The Wire, and
• How other customers rate the product.

Quite a comprehensive number of ways for Amazon to encourage you to buy many other related products.

Now compare those options to the ones available on a popular newspaper site and it’s staggering how little editorial producers seem to care about moving you around their site to other content. And, considering that an average of 60% of visitors to newspaper website come directly to article pages from referrals (generally from Google, not that you’d know it right now given the moaning coming from Murdoch et al) it’s essential that newspaper websites get their article pages right before their perfectly packaged homepages.

What if a newspaper site realised Amazon’s techniques can apply to them? What if content was treated like a product that was tagged? What if subject matter was treated like product lines? What if, when I read an article about the new Star Trek movie on a newspaper website it told me that other visitors had gone on to read a review of The Watchmen? I for one would like to know that. What then, if through the tagging system and a decent recommendation engine, a LoveFilm ad could suggest I rent a Star Trek movie, or even all of them together for a discounted price? Or Futurama because there was a Star Trek parody episode and Leonard Nimoy is a regular guest?

Sure, targetted ads aren’t anything new, yet the idea of targetted content based on user behaviour – which would genuinely be useful for visitors, not to mention improving the targetability of ads – is nowhere to be seen.

And how else can you drive readers down the long tail of content?

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