4 ms·

As an-ex journalist who recently left the industry to become a programmer, I'd say one of the issues is the short-sightedness of senior management. When I start

As an-ex journalist who recently left the industry to become a programmer, I'd say one of the issues is the short-sightedness of senior management. When I started teaching myself to code last year, I told my editor as well as a couple of other senior staff members (including the chief exec) about my ambitions to combine coding and journalism. My editor was all for it but there was little she could do besides telling her boss about what I was doing and hoping that would lead to meetings for me with our in-house dev team based in London (I was at a regional paper owned by one of the biggest regional newspaper owners in the UK). In the end I left because nothing happened. I appreciate senior staff members are busy with other stuff but I'd have thought somebody would have taken more of an active interest in what I was trying to do. One of the issues is that developers working for news firms are creating tools based on briefs from people who do not use those systems on a daily basis, so you end up with products with a poor UX for both readers and journalists. I was a journalist for only 4 years (I was fortunate to get a job straight out of uni) but my sense is that we are spending too much time thinking about the content and not thinking deeply enough about the platforms serving that content. By that I don't mean building the next Facebook etc but starting creating platforms which will be one of the places we serve our content and possibly bring other sources of revenue. I imagine this would work better on a local/regional level because you could be more specific with your audience. It's probably too late to do that now but I think the journalists who will be more successful in the future will be those building media firms which serve niche audiences but don't rely on content being their #1 source of income.

7952 10y ago
Yes I agree with your last point. You could package up apps, community, meetups, tutorials, shopping and content around a particular niche. People are much more used to paying to support their hobbies and interests. It would be a premium product that people actually want to buy. I think the magazine and tv industry are much closer to this than newspapers. Just look at some of the BBC titles that have TV, web, magazines and even live shows.
- carlmungz 10y ago
  Another thing media companies are failing to do is providing an API for their content. I think the Guardian, NYTimes and USA Today are the only big international papers with a decent API system. Journalists have so many skills in the area of research, investigation, storytelling etc which I feel we are not exploiting enough. I think the BBC is not the best example to use in the sense that they are not competing commercially. However, I agree they have created products which would work well if packaged up separately.
tomcam 10y ago
A fascinating story, and I hope you have a blog somewhere. Please post its URL if you do. As an aside you mentioned that you hoped a boss would recognize what you were doing and take an active interest in it. One thing I learned too late in my professional life is that you must actively sell yourself. People have so many things to do these days that even a good boss may not notice you. Have you noticed how there are people in your company who succeeded who are not as smart as you? It's because they put in the shoe leather selling themselves. I started my own successful company and no longer have that problem, but I cringe when I think about the things I could have got done at places like Microsoft had I been a better self-promoter.
- carlmungz 10y ago
  Funnily enough, I'm not much of a blogger. I enjoy writing but am not the stage were I want to blog. My coding journey so far definitely taught me a lot about self-starting and selling yourself. I did not stay and try to sell myself because I was not enjoying the working conditions. We were expected to do more with fewer resources and the only reason we produced a good product is because we went beyond what the job description stipulated. What kind of company do you run? I'd like to start something in the future so I'm learning as much as I can about everything now.
tcbawo 10y ago
I had high hopes for Everyblock, the hyper-local social network (almost a geographic form of Facebook). Besides user-generated content, it aggregated much public information (permit applications, police reports, etc.). It was initially developed through a grant as open source software. I was convinced that newspapers would latch onto the platform. But, that never really seemed to happen. NBC News bought it and shut it down in 2008. They attempted a re-launch, but I haven't followed it since then.
- carlmungz 10y ago
  In the UK we had a company which started out as an investigative journalism agency and then pivoted to selling data on company insolvency (http://www.exaronews.com/insolvency-index http://www.exaronews.com/insolvency-index). Sadly, they could not make it work but I think more journalists need to be exploring models like that. ProPublica seem to be doing a good job of it at https://www.propublica.org/datastore https://www.propublica.org/datastore

7952 10y ago

Yes I agree with your last point. You could package up apps, community, meetups, tutorials, shopping and content around a particular niche. People are much more used to paying to support their hobbies and interests. It would be a premium product that people actually want to buy. I think the magazine and tv industry are much closer to this than newspapers. Just look at some of the BBC titles that have TV, web, magazines and even live shows.

carlmungz 10y ago
Another thing media companies are failing to do is providing an API for their content. I think the Guardian, NYTimes and USA Today are the only big international papers with a decent API system. Journalists have so many skills in the area of research, investigation, storytelling etc which I feel we are not exploiting enough. I think the BBC is not the best example to use in the sense that they are not competing commercially. However, I agree they have created products which would work well if packaged up separately.

tomcam 10y ago

A fascinating story, and I hope you have a blog somewhere. Please post its URL if you do. As an aside you mentioned that you hoped a boss would recognize what you were doing and take an active interest in it. One thing I learned too late in my professional life is that you must actively sell yourself. People have so many things to do these days that even a good boss may not notice you. Have you noticed how there are people in your company who succeeded who are not as smart as you? It's because they put in the shoe leather selling themselves. I started my own successful company and no longer have that problem, but I cringe when I think about the things I could have got done at places like Microsoft had I been a better self-promoter.

carlmungz 10y ago
Funnily enough, I'm not much of a blogger. I enjoy writing but am not the stage were I want to blog. My coding journey so far definitely taught me a lot about self-starting and selling yourself. I did not stay and try to sell myself because I was not enjoying the working conditions. We were expected to do more with fewer resources and the only reason we produced a good product is because we went beyond what the job description stipulated. What kind of company do you run? I'd like to start something in the future so I'm learning as much as I can about everything now.

tcbawo 10y ago

I had high hopes for Everyblock, the hyper-local social network (almost a geographic form of Facebook). Besides user-generated content, it aggregated much public information (permit applications, police reports, etc.). It was initially developed through a grant as open source software. I was convinced that newspapers would latch onto the platform. But, that never really seemed to happen. NBC News bought it and shut it down in 2008. They attempted a re-launch, but I haven't followed it since then.

carlmungz 10y ago
In the UK we had a company which started out as an investigative journalism agency and then pivoted to selling data on company insolvency (http://www.exaronews.com/insolvency-index http://www.exaronews.com/insolvency-index). Sadly, they could not make it work but I think more journalists need to be exploring models like that. ProPublica seem to be doing a good job of it at https://www.propublica.org/datastore https://www.propublica.org/datastore