The Next Big Thing in Media

In the early 1960s, Tom Wolfe and other talented writers created the New Journalism. It cleverly deployed the techniques of great fiction to news and feature writing. Today's direct engagement with readers is the antithesis of Mr. Wolfe's self-centered narrative inventions. Call it the "New" New Journalism.

It fully embraces its readers, treats their opinions and beliefs with respect and dignity, and leverages the intelligence of the crowd to create a more valuable outcome for all. It recognizes that content is no longer king; Context is. In a world of commoditization, where too much news and opinion already chases too few eyeballs, this new loyalty-inducing journalism builds community and relationships.

Here's my essay on these thoughts published on the op-ed page of The Christian Science Monitor.

Suggest a Topic—And Content Flows to It

I learned about the death of the American newspaper early in my life. I was all of 16, a gawky office boy at The Morning Call in Paterson, New Jersey, when I was caught inside the obituary of an institution: The daily that I had carried on my back as a newspaper boy, the paper where my ambition to be a journalist was born, was being closed. I remember that day in December 1969 as if it were yesterday. Teary-eyed, I walked through the sea of wooden desks and metal filing cabinets and into the chilly night. It was an awakening to see the reporters openly crying and consoling each other.

Newspapers die hard—and the obituaries over the next few years are likely to make us think of massive casualties in a war. Strip out the classified business, and you’ll find that magazines face many of the same problems as newspapers: ever rising paper (and for us even worse postage) costs, the swift migration of advertising from print to Web, the inability of online revenues to offset the decline of print ads, and often declining readership. Yet as bad as the newspaper business has fared to date, some observers say magazines are even further behind the transition.

To read more of this essay in Nieman Reports, click here.

Why the Crumbling of Old Media Is An Incredible Opportunity

The most amusing blog post I’ve read this year came from Jeff Jarvis, the BuzzMachine blogger and CUNY J-school prof, who has a reputation as a rebel when it comes to digital journalism.

“Yes, print is a burden,” Jeff wrote recently. “It’s expensive to produce for it. It’s expensive to manufacture. It’s expensive to deliver. It limits your space. It limits your timing. It’s stale when it’s fresh. It is one-size-fits-all and can’t be adapted to the needs of each user. It comes with no ability to click for more. It has no search. It can’t be forwarded. It has no archive. It kills trees. It uses energy. It usually brings unions. And you really should recycle it. Wow, when you think about it, print sucks.”

I don’t have to completely agree with Jeff, but I can certainly appreciate his viewpoint. The media’s analog-to-digital transition has been a monumental struggle for newspapers and magazines. It’s created massive fear in our ranks and has caused a good number of highly talented colleagues to escape our profession. But it’s also been an incredible opportunity to rethink what we do and how we do it. I’m an old print guy, now on the Web side of the business. And I’ve been utterly transformed by the experience. I think of online as the most creative space in our field, where writers and viewers combine to create the new New Journalism.

You can read more of my essay at MediaWeek here.

Why I Gave Up My Print Job

Shortly after moving to the world of digital journalism nearly three years ago, I was interviewed by Talking Business. Here's a link to that interview and my thoughts at the time.

How My Love Affair With Journalism Began

I know the precise moment when the love affair began.

I was all of 15 years old, a gawky office boy at my city’s morning daily, sitting in a cramped, dusty room on a stack of brittle, yellowing newspapers. The place smelled of newspaper ink and mould. It was the back issue room, a place that I often surrendered to fulfill some odd order for a newspaper containing a wanted wedding announcement or obituary. But when I stepped into that space, it was as if I had entered a time capsule. I pulled off the wooden shelves the massive black-bound books and stepped into a different world. I scanned the 48-point headlines and consumed the accounts of Charles Lindbergh’s non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927, Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. And suddenly, I fell in love with journalism, just sitting in that room, reading the first draft of history by some unknown AP reporter.

It was long before my first byline in the campus weekly, or the first time I had to fetch a roast beef on a roll for a city editor, certainly long before my first dispatch as a foreign correspondent in London, or the first cover story I reported and wrote for a major magazine. Or the first time I walked into a bookstore to see one of my books on the shelf. Just sitting alone in that back issue room of The Morning Call in Paterson, N.J., my mind buried in old newsprint on my lap, I fell in love with journalism. It has been a passionate affair that has lasted some 50 years--from newspapers to magazines, from print to online.