Why Does Bill Keller Hate The Internet? (And Himself)

In a recent address to a gathering of more than 250 college and university presidents and other top administrators during The Chronicle of Higher Education's two-day Executive Leadership Forum, New York Times head honcho Bill Keller had some choice words with regard to the Internet, blogosphere, and anything that isn't Times-run:

"For all the woes besetting our business, I believe in my heart that newspapers will be around for a long time," he said, even if they aren't always delivered "as that lovable old-fashioned bundle of ink and cellulose."

"Technology has lowered the barriers to entry in the news business," Keller said. "This is unsettling to the traditional news business, but it is also an opportunity."

Established newspapers can succeed by offering something the newcomers can't, he added: "Google News and Wikipedia don't have bureaus in Baghdad or anywhere else." Rather than creating content, the new Web-based news outlets aggregate it from various sources, including newspapers.

Bloggers, likewise, occasionally enlighten readers with original material, but "most of the blog world doesn't attempt to report. It recycles news," he said.

And this really bugs me. Why? Because Bill Keller is looking at the "newspaper situation" in a very, very partisan way.

In a way, that's what his job is all about. But hang on a second.

First off, a disclaimer: I was not at this conference. I do not know if these quotes, borrowed from the Chronicle's own report here, were taken out of context. I'm simply keeping the faith that those journalists respect their ethics as much as I do.

Bill Keller's given this speech a hundred times in the last several years. You know: the one where newspapers are dying. The one where staff layoffs have to happen. The one where "bite the bullet" and "bootstrap" and all of those choice phrases come into play.

Newspapers are the victim, he's saying. It's just not fair that the Internet gets all the traffic (and not NYTimes.com).

And I agree with him on one note: yes, the original source of much of the Internet's reporting are the mainstream media -- i.e. the salaried (or lately, temp'ed) professionals who get press passes to save the world from itself. And I'm certainly with Keller on the fact that the Internet news can't survive without them (especially those wire services), or at least that it would take a long, long time for new grassroots organizations to replace them (in some crazy apocalyptic way of hypothesizing).

However -- and this is a BIG however -- Bill Keller needs to quit the pity party. I'm not sad for him, I'm not sad for the Times, nor their shareholders. Why should I be? They peddle some of the finest American journalism out there from a venerated post in society, and they've adapted better than any other news organization to the Internet (ever see nytimes.com/multimedia? Fabulous!).

So why does Bill Keller find it necessary to continue complaining about the best marketing structure to ever hit world commerce: the Internet? With its advent -- and the Times' cooperation, no doubt -- Times stories run far wider than the five boroughs or tri-state region. Every hour of every day, the minor successes in progress on NYTimes.com are repeated and exaggerated as its stories are reproduced around the world. Even if readers don't click all the way back to NYTimes.com (where the ad revenue is!), they know they're getting reliable journalism. And that's one marketing and branding strategy that wins far more in the long run than the simple advertisements that the Times puts elsewhere.
In other words: The Times is getting more bang for buck as a successful Internet entity than as a brick-and-mortar paper, especially with marketing and advertising taken into consideration (the great journalistic stories ARE the ads).

So what's to complain about? Probably because the bean counters haven't figured out a way to collect data on it. It's an intangible -- how can you monetize the intangible?

Often, advertising and marketing budgets are black holes: you can't really calculate how well you're doing. You just pour money in and hope/expect that it's making an impact. I think this is how the Times should start looking at its journalism.

"Google News and Wikipedia don't have bureaus in Baghdad or anywhere else."

Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. Why should they? Bill Keller, why are you taking pot shots at an automated news aggregator and an open encyclopedia? Just because it's easier to find relevant (local, ahem) stories on Google News and relevant subjects on Wikipedia rather than the U.S. section of NYTimes.com and Times Topics?

Fight a bigger battle, please.

If the Times shut down for a week, all of those news aggregator sites would suddenly be without serious, breaking, reliable, informative, educated, thoroughly-reported journalism. And it'd be instantly noticeable (until the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal stepped in). And the Internet would be worse for it, without a doubt.

So I ask again: what's there to complain about?

I urge journalism's leaders -- those at the top of newspapers, magazines, and any other business deemed "dying" by their own writers -- to quit the whining and realize their own value. To take a page from a trend story they like to run often enough, they sound like a bunch of whiny 'Millenials' who think they're not smart because their 4.0 GPA is now a 3.97.

Yes, you're smart. You're a valuable commodity. So enough with the low self-esteem.

Man up, Keller.

Wanna Be A Journalist? Prepare For The Online Sweatshop.

The New York Times recently published an article about what new, young, 'Net-savvy journalists face in the industry today: complete web exploitation.

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

A young friend of mine is featured as one of these new digital sweatshop employees, so this wasn't news to me. But I (and the Times, apparently) find it to be a growing trend among up-and-coming journalists who know their way around a computer.

"Let 'em blog on the website," a young intern hopes to hear at the Anytown Daily News or National Monthly Magazine. And why not? It's a great way to get clips, and the publication's less-than-Web-savvy staff get to avoid learning anything more about the mysterious Internet, thus keeping their jobs secure. But then the abuse begins.

"Can we put an original picture up with that?" the editor asks. "Can we move that text over here?" "Can't we add a video to that? How about some of that flashy Flash stuff? The big boss really loves that online magic stuff, and will really like this at the meeting today," the editor says, thinking of that raise for "managing the Website." But without any familiarity of how long it takes to do such things -- such as create interactives, log and capture video, and make sure it's all perfect before posting to the Web -- the editor has made our lowly, new, tech-savvy journalist an overworked, underpaid, stressed-out multimedia producer.

And that's where the industry model is right now -- take a look at your favorite blogs. Do a little Google search on the ones that update at a rapid clip. Guess who's manning the keyboard? (Here's a hint: It's not Malcolm Gladwell.)

So when the Times pointed this phenomenon out, it hit the Web by storm. But anyone who knows anyone at Nick Denton's Gawker Media or any competing online-only startup knows that the digital sweatshop has been around for years.

"Well, when I was a young journalist, I had to pay my dues too!" the old editor would say. And that's true -- but something tells me that wasn't on a 24/7/365 publishing cycle.

Tech-savvy readers: Have you been taken advantage of? Let us know anonymously (or not!) in the comments.

Reinventing The Newsroom: Is It Necessary?

The New Yorker's architecture critic Paul Goldberger says the New York Times' new newsroom feels enormous and corporate-cool -- with an interior that "fails to emulate either the unusual quality of the building's exterior or the amiable rambunctiousness of an old-style newsroom," adding that "if the Times newsroom is an unadventurous space hidden within an architecturally important building, Bloomberg is the opposite: a dazzling work environment tucked inside a refined but conventional skyscraper." Goldberger goes on to set these new incarnations within the frame of the traditional newsroom:

The tradition of having reporters and editors in one big space, called a newsroom or city room, arose largely because it was the easiest way to put out a newspaper on deadline. The fastest communication was face to face, and in a newsroom everybody could watch the same clocks, use the same news tickers, and keep an eye on one another. Everything depended on the flow of paper; in the old Times building, the Linotype machines were right above the newsroom, so that copyboys would only have to run up a single flight of stairs to deliver copy to the typesetters. Stories moved through the building in physical form, from paper to type to print, like an assembly line. Now, of course, stories are electronic blips, and page images are transferred in an instant to printing plants around the country. Almost none of the conditions that led to the creation of newsrooms still prevail.

"The workers are in much closer quarters than those at the Times, and you might expect the atmosphere to be one of a sweatshop, but sweatshops don’t usually have rotating displays of contemporary sculpture."

All of this, of course, begs the question -- what is the newsroom of the 21st century supposed to look like? A glam'd-out glitzfest of technological prowess or something totally different?

But allow me to ask this: Does it really need to change?

Must a new newsroom format follow new technology, in the form of computers and instant communication?

The old newsroom, documented by thousands of photographs by bored photographers in newsrooms nationwide, show reporters lined up side-by-side, in parallel rows, at typewriters and phones. As Goldberger writes above, it was all about efficiency, like an assembly line.

But has all this really changed? Does the IM or the e-mail really take a shorter time than making a phone call? Surely reporters could have used the telephone to call each other, but they don't. It's human nature -- it's just easier to give a shout when your intended target is in eyesight.

So in a world where citizens can create journalism from their basements, has the true trade and process of journalism really changed on the ground level? Does plugging in really make a difference? After thinking about it, I really don't think so.

Which leads me to ask: Must the newsroom be changed at all?

Goldberger puts it into context:

The interior was designed by the architectural firm Gensler, and it fails to emulate either the unusual quality of the building’s exterior or the amiable rambunctiousness of an old-style newsroom. With its sea of cubicles partitioned by wood-veneer cabinets, it is vastly more sophisticated than any workplace the Times has ever had, but sleekness has brought a certain chill (though the effect will be pleasanter when the birch trees go into the still unfinished courtyard). You also don’t get much sense that anyone has really rethought the idea of the newsroom in the electronic age. Ultimately, it’s hard not to sense that the Times, so determined to have a building that makes a mark on the sky line, had a failure of nerve when it came to the interior.

So is the newsroom of the 21st century a failure? If success is measured by change, probably. But if success is measured by function, I'm not so sure.

Sure, I don't like the uniform feel of each individual desk -- something my former colleagues in another new Manhattan glass tower complained about -- and I am uneasy, in principle, about executive editor Bill Keller's decision to use frosted glass inside his office. But when it comes to the newsroom, there's no measure of technology that can trump a good shout.