Nieman Journalism Lab |
| A Dutch crowdfunded news site has raised $1.3 million and hopes for a digital-native journalism Posted: 05 Apr 2013 07:45 AM PDT
On March 18, Wijnberg, former editor-in-chief of the young-adult-targeted newspaper nrc.next, proposed his idea for a new online journalism platform on Dutch national television. Within 24 hours, his team had raised half its goal, and after eight days, Wijnberg got an earlier than expected go-ahead: 15,000 had subscribed, and many had added donations on top of their subscription fee. In just over a week, in a small country, the Dutch crowdfunding project De Correspondent had raised over €1 million (about $1.3 million). De Correspondent’s record-breaking campaign is remarkable, not least because even those paying up aren’t clear on what the platform will look like when it launches in September. “That’s for a very good reason,” Wijnberg said — “we don’t really know yet.” “When you try to sell an idea, it’s very easy to refer to what people know — ‘the platform looks like this, and you can compare the writing style with that’,” he said. “We didn’t want to do that, because we really wanted to be able to create something new — start with a clean slate.” Here’s what we do know about De Correspondent: It promises to break away from the daily news cycle by focusing on context, not just what happened in the past 24 hours — new content that isn’t driven by “the news.” Individual correspondents, many of them famous or semi-famous in the Netherlands, will lead as “guides” — deciding the news agenda, and making their choices explicit. Take, for example, Jelle Brandt Corstius, one of the correspondents signed up. He’s known in the Netherlands for his television series on Russia and India. “My core business will be to study one place in the Netherlands every month,” he said. “This might be a place where the news circus has already left, but it could also be a place where something interesting is happening at too slow a pace to make it into the news — like the depopulation of a provincial village in Zeeland.” For an idea of what the new publication might look like, check out its 10-item manifesto (translated into English): Daily, but beyond the issues of the day. From news to new. No political ideology, but journalistic ideals. Themes and interconnections. Journalism over revenues. From readers to participants. No advertisers, but partners. No target groups, but kindred spirits. Ambitious in ideals, modest about wisdom. Fully digital. De Correspondent will be online only — at least for the foreseeable future. Joris Luyendijk, a banking blogger for The Guardian and advisor for De Correspondent, sees this as an opportunity to break free from the existing DNA of journalism. “The current genres of journalism have been shaped by the restrictions of print and broadcast: the idea of only making one version of the story, making every story stand alone and without a follow-up, and not really allowing stories to build on each other. Because today’s news is tomorrow’s fish wrap,” he said. “If other industries would be this slow with innovating, we as journalists would be very critical of that.” Luyendijk offers a thought experiment to illustrate his vision for De Correspondent: “Imagine paper would be invented today, and the Internet would have been around for 200 years. I think you’d throw away The New York Times, because you’d think, ‘Why on earth would I constantly read updates of a process that I don’t know anything about?” he said. “Online, you can say, ‘If you’re new, start here and we’ll explain it to you. If you’ve been here before, you’ll probably want to know more about the news.’” Creative agency Momkai is tasked with designing this user experience.
Wijnberg’s concept did not come out of thin air. In September, he unexpectedly left his position at nrc.next, a job he’d held for two years. Parent company NRC Media wanted nrc.next should become “newsier.” (The paper was known to focus more on backgrounds and analysis than hard news. A popular Wijnberg-era section was the fact check, which assessed the validity of one public statement every day.) Wijnberg disagreed with the change of direction and was forced to leave. He went home, wrote a book about the current state of the news media, and several months later launched De Correspondent. His book provides much of the philosophical backdrop for the project. “I don’t believe in ‘the news’ in the objective sense of the word,” he said. “You can describe the world in infinite ways, and ‘the news’ happens to be one of them.” Wijnberg adds: “I want the correspondents to make their choices explicit — what do they think is important, and why should readers care about it? You do that by making clear that you’re not following an objective news agenda, but a subjective journey through the world.” With such ambitious plans, Wijnberg is realistic about the reach of his newly acquired funding. “In terms of crowdfunding, this is spectacular of course. But for practicing good journalism, this is just a small beginning.” Two core strategies aim to make the platform financially sustainable. “One: Make something really good — that’s the most important thing,” Wijnberg said. “This sounds like stating the obvious, but whether you’re crowdfunded or not, your product must continue to be worth people’s money.” The second strategy is forming partnerships. This could be anything from joint production of journalistic content, to donations from foundations, to help with the technological side of the platform. Wijnberg’s main condition: “We want to be able to put the terms of the partnership online, so our readers can see our content is independent from the organizations that we work with.” De Correspondent has caused quite a stir in Dutch media, and attracted some criticism. Several spoofs were erected; De Verslaggevert (“The Reportert”) raised a total of €90 to spend a year thinking about a business plan and deliver a “completely unknown journalistic surprise.” One prankster made a duplicate of De Correspondent’s website (at decorrespondent.org instead of .nl) which claimed that Wijnberg’s project had been an April Fools’ joke — a social experiment to answer the question “How much money can you raise on empty promises?” One prevalent point of critique was that Wijnberg’s correspondents were an elitist club of celebrity journalists. They include a former leader of the Dutch GreenLeft party, a well-known novelist, and several journalists who make regular TV appearances. The reproach irritated Luyendijk. “If you say, ‘Hey, we’re seven people you don’t know, will you give us €60?’ — that won’t work,” he said. “Besides, the people who aren’t as far in their careers yet couldn’t publicly commit to the project before we knew we got the money.” At the time of writing, De Correspondent has 17,323 subscribers, and counting. “I always thought proof for the necessity of this project would be provided by the reactions to it,” Luyendijk said. “It’s hopeful to have 17,000 people say, ‘Here’s some money — now go figure something out.’” |
| This Week in Review: What Facebook Home will do to mobile, and retiring “illegal immigrant” Posted: 05 Apr 2013 07:39 AM PDT
Facebook Home, content, and messaging: Facebook has long been rumored to be developing a phone, and when it finally unveiled Facebook Home this week, it didn’t release a phone per se, but it may have as significant an impact on the mobile industry as if it had. As Engadget explained in its succinct walkthrough of Home’s features, it’s a suite of apps and a home-screen replacement for Android phones. It’s somewhere between app and operating system — an “apperating system,” as Wired’s Alexandra Chang put it. All Things D’s Mike Isaac described the Cover Feed — a nonstop, full-screen flow of Facebook photos and status updates — as Home’s key feature, as it puts its content constantly front and center for its users. (Later on, that will also include, crucially, ads.) Richard Nieva of PandoDaily, on the other hand, saw Chat Heads, an interface that allows users to message others continuously as they move into and out of apps, as the central element. As he argued, this puts the focus on messaging, a key component of a truly mobile-first strategy. Gregory Ferenstein of TechCrunch saw Chat Heads as crucial to Facebook’s efforts to “own the conversations of text-obsessed teens.” Many observers, such as Fortune’s Miguel Helft, saw Home as Facebook’s attempt to make a run at Google’s mobile market, as it displaces Google Search as the home screen for many Android phones. Tim Carmody of The Verge detailed Google and Facebook’s tension-filled, passive-aggressive relationship. Some surmised that Home would have a relatively small impact overall: GigaOM’s Eliza Kern said it wouldn’t go much beyond the Facebook app for many users, John Herrman of BuzzFeed pointed out that demand for a Facebook phone appears tepid, and Forbes’ Robert Hof noted a few other factors that will limit Home’s impact. Still, Mat Honan of Wired — in the sharpest analysis posted yesterday — said that Home’s mediocrity may be the key to its value for many users. “For many people, Facebook is the Internet, just as AOL was before it,” he wrote. For those people, “Facebook Home is going to be the best way for those people to experience the Internet on a phone.” Wired had the other indispensable piece on this announcement — Steven Levy’s lengthy interview with Mark Zuckerberg on the strategy and philosophy behind Home. The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal took a philosophical approach to Zuckerberg’s announcement, arguing that we can’t let him redefine “people” as “Facebook friends.” Another angle to take note of: As with any Facebook announcement, there are, of course, privacy concerns. The Next Web’s Ken Yeung said its biggest impact may be in its data collection abilities, and Om Malik of GigaOM warned that Home will erode whatever’s left of its users’ privacy. Dropping “illegal immigrant”: The Associated Press made what could be a landmark decision this week when it announced it would no longer use the term “illegal immigrant.” As it explained in its post on the move, the AP has looked at nixing this term before, but had held off on changing it until a decent alternative emerged. The AP still hasn’t found an alternative, but decided it’s time to abandon “illegal immigrant” anyway. New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan noted that The Times is also considering a formal change in their policy on that term, to be announced as soon as this week. She doubted it would be banned altogether, but expected the paper’s aversion to “undocumented immigrant” to soften. She also noted that she had changed her own stance to oppose “illegal immigrant.” Poynter’s Taylor Miller Thomas pointed out that the San Antonio Express-News dropped the term back in 2008 and dropped “immigrant” altogether in 2010. As The Maynard Institute’s Richard Prince reported, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists has talked about eliminating the term since the 1980s. The NAHJ and the National Association of Black Journalists both praised the decision, as did former Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas, who has been a leader in the push to drop the label. Vargas told Poynter’s Thomas and Andrew Beaujon he hopes The AP’s decision starts conversations in newsrooms across the U.S. Roy Peter Clark of Poynter also approved of the change, even with the AP’s rather clunky suggestions for alternatives. “To find and depict our common humanity requires more reporting, not less; more language, not less; more thinking, not less,” he wrote. Buried in the partisan political reaction were a few interesting points: Mark Krikorian of the National Review wondered whether the AP would drop the word “illegal” as a descriptor in other contexts, as well as nominalized adjectives for other groups of people. On the other hand, Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum saw some usefulness in labels, and lamented the fact that the AP hasn’t chosen an alternative.
Alternatives to the metered model: Virtually every week for the past year or so, we’ve seen a significant news org adopt an online pay plan. And most of those plans are remarkably similar — variations on the same “metered model” that allows readers a certain number of free views before prompting them to pay up. This week, though, the Orange County Register instituted a paywall (and yes, it’s definitely a wall) that differs drastically from that cookie-cutter approach, in some intriguing ways. The Lab’s Ken Doctor has the most thorough breakdown of the plan, which allows almost no unpaid access to any local news content less than two weeks old. It also charges the same amount for digital access as for print, and online access literally matches print access — if you have a Sunday print subscription, you can access the website only on Sundays. The paper is also giving its subscribers perks, like free tickets to the Los Angeles Angels. Doctor was intrigued but skeptical: “It doesn't matter how clever you are; readers don't like running into walls.” In a pair of posts, free-news advocate Mathew Ingram of paidContent took a similar view as he emphasized the Register’s plans to focus exclusively on creating content for subscribers, rather than online readers or advertisers. “Spitz and Kushner aren't trying a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and hoping that they can be both web-native and print-focused at the same time,” he said. “That deserves some respect.” A few other interesting data points from a variety of paywalls bubbled up this week: A yet-to-be-launched online Dutch publication has raised €1 million from subscribers, bypassing advertisers and focusing on in-depth “slow journalism.” Metered model pioneer The Financial Times talked with Mashable’s Lauren Indvik about the centrality of user data to their online subscription plan, and Business Insider had a lengthy interview with Andrew Sullivan about his attempt to charge for his blog and his aims to “reinvent the magazine online.” Felix Salmon of Reuters talked with influential paywall firms Mather Economics and MediaPass and found that even they aren’t sold on meters because of concern that it treats all readers equally, when all readers aren’t equally likely to pay. The Guardian’s Charles Arthur said the key isn’t necessarily the style of paywall, but determining what’s the unique, core offering worth charging for. And Michael Wolff argued that paywalls aren’t going to solve any of newspapers’ deeper existential problems, while Jeff Israely of the news startup Worldcrunch argued that charging readers for news isn’t simply another kind of subsidy, but an affirmation of the real value in news orgs’ core product. Reading roundup: The other stories to catch up on from a relatively quiet week: — Roger Ebert, the legendary film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, died yesterday of cancer at age 70. You can read the Sun-Times and New York Times obits, a brilliant 2010 Esquire profile, and some personal reflections on Ebert by Will Leitch from 2010, as well as Ebert’s own reflections on death from 2011. Ebert was also a pioneer in turning a personal brand into paid online content, as Poynter documented in 2011. Ebert’s 2010 blog post about Twitter also helps give a good idea of his approach to digital media, which paidContent’s Mathew Ingram also praised. — The Cleveland Plain Dealer announced it would cut home delivery down to three days a week (it’ll still print all seven days). It’s expected to cut at least a third of its newsroom staff, according to The New York Times. Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon has the requisite background, and the Columbia Journalism Review’s Dean Starkman criticized the print- and cost-cutting strategy of Advance Publications, the Plain Dealer’s publisher. — The online currency Bitcoin had a roller-coaster week this week, as its currency value rocketed to a record high before falling back down. As BetaBeat lamented, much of this was a result of Cyprus residents trying to put their money into something stable amid their country’s financial crisis, though the report that one of its biggest exchanges went down after a DDOS attack also exacerbated the problem. Reuters’ Felix Salmon gave the best analysis of the situation, comparing Bitcoin to offline and online currencies and the threats to its long-term health. The Financial Times’ Izabella Kaminska’s analysis is also insightful. — NPR announced that it’s cancelling Talk of the Nation, its 21-year-old public-affairs call-in show, this summer. As The New York Times reported, NPR’s replacing it with Here and Now as part of its effort to develop a midday newsmagazine show along the lines of Morning Edition and All Things Considered. NPR’s account of the move noted that TOTN has been a pioneer in the format of call-in shows. — Poynter’s Kelly McBride shed some light on BuzzFeed’s substantial efforts to do serious journalism, while Alex Kantrowitz of PBS MediaShift looked at its native ad network. Mathew Ingram of paidContent wondered why we’re so reluctant to take BuzzFeed seriously. — A couple of interesting pieces of Twitter data: The Awl’s Choire Sicha tallied the “work” tweets of staffers at Gawker, BuzzFeed, and Business Insider, and research consultant Nick Diakopoulos looked at the correlation between newspapers’ circulation and Twitter followers. — Finally, Evgeny Morozov’s Baffler critique of Tim O’Reilly is also a thoughtful analysis of the culture of Web 2.0. It’s quite long, but has been getting rave reviews. Photo of Angel Stadium by socaltimes used under a Creative Commons license. |
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