Brendan R. Watson

The New York Times had this funny piece about naked hikers in the Swiss Alps on its homepage yesterday night. (And no, I am not linking to it again). What’s more disturbing? Naked hiking in the snow or the fact that naked hiking in the snow is news worthy enough not only to warrant coverage by the New York Times, but prime real estate on its website?

I would surmise the New York Times’ editors probably don’t think it that news worthy. But they know there’s people like me sitting in front of our computers watching mindless television and equally mindlessly perusing the web who will post these stories to our Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to humor our friends — and sure enough three friends quickly commented on the article on my Facebook profile. And in the era of hits as the end-all-be-all of defining value on the web, this is precisely how stories like this become “news,” and proliferate in various iterations of the news-of-the-weird (cute-puppy-dog, bikini-shot and stupid criminal stories).

I’ve gotten more invitations to join “Save Newspapers” Facebook groups. Forget it! I’m not joining. Save newspaper journalism? Sure. Where do I sign up. But these groups make no distinction between medium and message and newspapers in of themselves as a medium are not worth saving. Lets stop trying to save the dinosaurs and think about how we can influence this new medium, while preserving the message.

And could we not start by refusing to pass along worthless stories? Granted, they’re sometimes funny, but they have no value. The person counting the clicks as we pass along the stories on Twitter and Facebook — and not the intangibles (or at least the much more difficult to measure tangibles) of the impact of real, public-affairs news — doesn’t see that. Instead of joining meaningless “Save the Dinosaur!” groups on Facebook, it would be much more productive to concentrate on an area of social media where journalists could demonstrate an impact by only passing along news organizations’ serious, public affairs journalism, and encouraging their networks to join the group and do the same. This will actually help expand the market online for the serious newspaper journalism that we want to save.

The Chicago Tribune may declare bankruptcy. The Rocky Mountain News and the Miami Herald are up for sale. The Rocky may be down for the K.O., and the latter may end up being little more than a real estate deal for the paper’s water-front property. The Star-Tribune is going to cut another 25 newsroom jobs; Newsday 5% of its work force, while raising prices for a lesser product. The New York Times is struggling with cash flow problems and is having to borrow against its new headquarters . Are we seeing the beginning of the end? And like the fears over the auto supply chain, what will go down with the newspapers?

I ran into Christine Montgomery, managing editor for tampabay.com, my former employer, this past week at ONA, following Amy Web’s presentation. I joked with her that I don’t envy her position of having to make sense of all of the ideas Amy was throwing at us, especially since the common theme of the conference was that despite a lot of creative ideas, few if any have yet arrived at a long-term, sustainable business model. The Las Vegas Sun, who is doing some of the most creative web journalism I saw, describes itself as being in “start-up mode.” A former colleague of mine who now works at a news-related start-up said his employers business model was “TBD.”

A bright spot of the conference, though, were the discussions about “geobrowsing” and services like Where, which enables GPS-enabled searches to find people and places located near you. If I were a local news publisher or editor, this is where I would be focusing my attention. Success for publishing local news (and advertising) is delivering that content at the height of interest, which is heavily determined by one’s location. I want to know why there is police tape outside my house, or which bar near by has the best drink specials. Imagine if I told a publisher I was shopping for shoes, and they could deliver relevant advertising to me based on the mall I was shopping at. The potential is almost unlimited for delivering breaking news, advertising, using staff and user-driven reporting.

Geobrowsing is scary stuff. It looks and feels a little too much like big brother. But if such services were user initiated, where I chose to tell you where I was and what I was looking for, I think publishers could overcome users’ concerns.