Faster, cheaper, less nutritious

I've often wondered if the newsroom of the future would look more like a fast-food joint than the big newspaper newsrooms we see today.

Instead of delivering news to the doorstep like the erstwhile milk man did, news will be delivered through websites on the information superhighway. This means people will be looking for a convenient place to stop to get some news quick before getting back on the road. Whether on their office computer, their cell phone or their laptop at home, they will be looking for predictable markers to find the site, predictable menu items to peruse and a predictable time line for how long it takes to get and then consume what they came for.

People might even pay for this predictability.

If the virtual world shapes up like the real one has, this would probably mean more networked wire services churning out easily digestible stories packaged together by local crews but using fewer local ingredients.

This type of format for online news seems inevitable - it's how we consume things. The San Diego News Network seems to be headed in that direction, with its Starbucks business plan. So does MediaNews Group, which has individual newspapers that use similar online templates and route copy through centralized desks so it can be shared by the group. Other chains will either sell or follow suit.

It doesn't mean all higher-end offerings will be crowded out - SDNN isn't going to kill the New Yorker anymore than McDonalds killed Tavern on the Green*. There will still be readers who want to savor the news. Also, news content cannot be completely divorced from geography since people still care about local sports teams, local schools and local businesses. Still, I think we can expect more conformity than differentiation on the web in the coming decade. Conformity is easier to capitalize upon.

If the cookie-cutter approach goes too far it might invite a welcome backlash, just as industrial farming and fast-food restaurants brought us farmer's markets and the organic movement. Let's also hope quality alternative and local media find good real estate along the highway.

*Updated 10/1: An imperfect comparison at best, it turns out. As a reader pointed out, Tavern on the Green filed for bankruptcy in September. I doubt McDonalds was to blame and the point still holds up - hell, with the way bankruptcies have hit newspaper companies, maybe it's even closer to the truth.

Tolls roads on the information superhighway

That media providers will begin charging for online content seems inevitable - whether done through a subscription fee or pay-per click model or some unthoughtof system remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, newspaper companies, because of their steady and steep decline in profits, have been put on the spot to invent a solution for their own survival. But it always seemed to me that they were uniquely unsuited to the task - after all, they spent decades perfecting a system that walled off content from the nasty influences that accompany the chase for profits. The idea, which often gets lost in the monetizing debate, was that reporters and editors would follow the truth wherever it led - to the highest levels of power - something that's hard to do when the dollars head in another direction.

So it's somewhat bittersweet to read that execs at the popular online TV site Hulu are thinking of charging a subscription to view videos there. Bitter because I don't want the freeways of the Internet blocked by tolls; sweet because it's I'd rather see companies simply out for a profit come up with ways to turn online content profitable, and let journalists go back to journalism.

Breaking: Partisanship will survive the death of newspapers

Was someone worried Daily Kos would disappear if newspaper journalism dried up? Apparently, because founder Markos Moulitsas decided he should do a little research to determine just where the popular progressive blog gets the information it react to.

Moulitsas mined six days of material (April 6-12) and discovered a majority of posts used newspapers as a primary or secondary source (102 primary, 21 secondary), followed by blogs (83 primary, 19 secondary).

His conclusion: "In the unlikely and tragic event that every single newspaper went out of business today, we'd have little problem replacing them as a source of information."

My conclusion: So what?

The whole evaluation here is based on a flawed assumption. Information flows in torrents and anyone with a cup can fill theirs for free. Newspapers do not make information, they gather it from many streams and sources to make meaning. They pay people to return over and over to the same sources of information to look for nuance or inconsistencies. They take risks to get at streams that others don't want them to see or that originate in places most others dare not travel to. At their best, newspapers also hold back mighty flows of misinformation, opinionation, and sundry nonsense unleashed by powerful, the partisan and the self-interested.

Newspapers (as a concept, not as a printed object) attempt to be stewards of information for the good of the general public; Daily Kos, and publications like it, use information to push their agenda. One is not a substitute for the other, but in the hierarchy of democracy the former is by far the more precious commodity. So maybe the metric that matters is how often Daily Kos is a primary or secondary source for newspapers - and let's all just agree that opinion is in no danger of going extinct.