Writers' Strike Further Resonates with Journalistic Woes

The Hollywood writer's strike moves into its 11th week, though there are signs of a potential agreement. A month ago,  I wrote about the parallels of the strike and the plight of newspaper people (we are a genus unto ourselves, right), and got great feedback on it.

As the news business winds downward, seemingly every day, we come to see more clearly that the future is about finding new ways to deliver journalism to readers. We see that that means a rethinking of all the accumulated apparatus between journalists and readers, little things like publishers, printing presses, delivery trucks and the forces of Madison Avenue.

Without revisiting all the issues and potentials here, let me call attention to a good news segment produced by Jeffrey Kaye of KCET, Los Angeles, and played today on PBS's News Hour (and thinking of media shifting, isn't it great to multi-task by listening to TV journalism on the computer). (Further note to PBS web jockeys: please make each segment of a program directly linkable.)

Kaye's eight-minute report should be played over loudspeakers in newsrooms. We hear echoes of independent voices, beginning to make new livings, and talking about "quitting their day jobs".

But most on-point to journalists  I thought were these quotables from the piece:

• "Some writers are developing an entrepreneurial streak. They don't need networks and studios as gatekeepers."
• "You can make an HD movie and you can put it up on the Internet.....Prior to that you needed multi-billion dollar corporations to put it in theaters, advertisers, a giant mechanism, an absolutely out-of-control mechanism...Now it's available to millions of people."

Sure, there's much hyperbole there. But sub "journalism" for "movie" and consider the broken "mechanisms" of newspaper publishing today, and we've got parallels worth pondering.

The producers look at iPods, iPhones, laptops, TV monitors as simple add-ons to the core business. That's why their initial offer was a $250 flat fee when programs are put online. A flat fee in the new rev share economy, a goodly share of that $20 billion spent on online advertising in 2007. That's laughable. All distribution matters and the more sophisticated content creators get about mastering the new distribution, the less they'll need gatekeepers.