There’s an interesting issue that is getting attention on public radio and media circles, involving GateHouse Media (owner of the TAB) and other newspaper companies. Here’s the original report from “This American Life,” a followup from NPR and a local analysis from media critic Dan Kennedy (who notes that the company has not used Journatic in New England).
From the NPR story…
GateHouse media, which owns more than 350 smaller daily and weekly papers, subscribes to Journatic but is replacing it with its own center for processing such material. Ten new employees, based in Rockford, Ill., will serve 30 of its papers, beginning next month. David Arkin, GateHouse’s vice president for content and audience, says the company hopes to free up its reporters from more mundane tasks gathering data to do more challenging local reporting.
“It’s a major time suck to do that kind of content,” Arkin says of the hyperlocal listings. “As we look at what our content goals are in our organization, we need and want more enterprise storytelling. We want more ‘what it means’-type stories and packages.
I hope people are paying attention to this. I didn’t know about it until I read Greg’s post — had never heard of Journatic and had no idea that major newspapers were outsourcing stories to the Phillipines and then publishing them under false bylines. I also didn’t know that GateHouse used Journatic — although not in New England.
This is a huge story for journalism and, more specifically, for community journalism. GateHouse has changed its production operations to something more like the Journatic style, where newspaper production has been centralized to just two locations in the country. When I joined as the editor of the Newton TAB in 2006, I could stand at the computer with a designer and play around with the front page of the paper to get it to look how we wanted. Now, editors have little say in how the paper looks.
To be fair, me looking over the shoulder of a designer was not efficient. I don’t think the paper ever looked as good again after the designer was laid off, but I also don’t think readers really cared as long as they got a newspaper that met their various needs (and believe me, readers’ needs vary!).
But there’s a race going on to see whether newspaper companies can survive long enough to figure out how to make money off on-line content, and one way executives are trying to do so is to become as cost-efficient as possible. And, the biggest loser in the race is going to be all of us — the readers. Because we’re either going to get increasingly cheap content or we’re going to lose our community newspapers.
Remember this from a few years ago?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,271434,00.html
A Pasadena website was outsourcing reporting of city council meetings to India. I can’t tell if they went through with it, or have stuck with it. The PasadenaNow website looks pretty lively and informative. Although I notice the Government page has the same photo of Congressman Adam Schiff four times:
http://www.pasadenanow.com/main/category/communitysection/government
That’s pretty weird.
I feel rather lucky to be a newspaper photographer, since no one’s figured out how to send drones to take photos and get IDs!
I heard this story on TAL, which is must-listen radio, and it sort of gave my a sinking feeling. That quickly gave way to a queasy, nauseous feeling.
It’s destined to get worse – check this out.
Jerry – Whoah. I may be out of a job soon 🙁
I never heard of Journatic before this week. I certainly never used any of its content in the three Gatehouse papers I’ve edited over the past three years.
For the record, the kind of local content Journatic was producing for Gatehouse newspapers outside of New England– “calendar items and submitted education content such as honor rolls,” according to memos we’ve received–are created for the TAB right here in our Needham office by our own Maureen Sullivan.
Jerry – I assure you that Maureen Sullivan is far too unique an individual for any computer to impersonate!
What worries me about community journalism is where is it going as companies standardize their content in their attempts to become more efficient. For example, obituaries are paid-for content in the TAB. If production is done by someone familiar with Newton, s/he can notify the editor when someone noteworthy has died. Same goes for real estate transactions. If Jacoby Ellsbury buys a house in Newton, the editor should know before she reads it in the newspaper. The Journatics of the world are removing that kind of local knowledge from community newspapers.
Figuring out how to make money in the newspaper industry these days is a complex problem. I don’t presume to know the answer. I just hope that Journatic doesn’t have the answer either.
Emily – That’s good news …. unless “Maureen Sullivan” is your name for the PC in the corner of the office 🙂
The Chicago Tribune just suspended indefinitely its use of Journatic.