Dadblog

Jeff has a marvellous post about why newspapers should get out of technology and concentrate on what they’re really good at. It is, as I say, a marvellous post. And one with which I completely disagree.

My disagreement starts with Jeff’s question:

So why not hand over those segments of the business to Google and concentrate on what a newspaper should do: journalism?

My answer would be: well, it depends on how you define journalism. If you define it as the business of noticing events and describing them, then sure, give it all to Google. But for me, journalism is the practice of telling stories and, as such, technology is essential.

For example, start with the thing Google is obviously best at: search. My argument is that a newspaper is always capable of providing a better search experience of its own archive than Google is. It knows when it published things. It knows who its writers are. It knows (but doesn’t always demonstrate that it knows) what its narratives are. It can arrange its search results accordingly. Search can be an extension of telling a story. Google finds pages. It doesn’t knit those pages together into narratives.

Note, of course, that I’m not saying newspapers actually do this. Some do, some don’t. The point is that they could, and they couldn’t if they ceded tech to Google.

Second example: workflow. The best newspaper content management systems (and I can think of only one at the moment - can you guess which?) are built on top of the workflow of journalists, which in itself is an expression of narratives which the newspaper wishes to follow. Want to republish today’s newspaper online? Then you need Content Management System A. Want to then develop those stories online during the day? Then you need Plugin B. Want to start putting out breaking news fragments alongside your canonical newspaper journalism? Then add in Blogging Platform Plugin D. Ooh, and some video? Then add Video Player Plugin E.

Etc. etc. etc. The CMS grows out of what the editorial team wants to do. Over time, it develops organically into an extension of that editorial team. Without that organic development, the editorial team becomes a news story production line, chucking out story after story onto a shared platform. No narrative.

Of course, I realise I’m describing an ideal situation here. And Jeff’s absolutely right to point out the idiocies that have been perpetrated in the name of this ideal. But organisations have been making this stuff up as they went along and only now are they becoming able to equate technical sophistication with journalistic endeavour.

Don’t throw the narrative baby out with the technology bath water, is all I’m saying.