I was having a great conversation about evolution last week. Pretty standard fair actually: niche roles, adaptation, survival and speciation (wherein a subgroup chooses desirable traits that aren’t possessed by the larger population and once those traits are the focus interbreeding stops).
And then it hit me.
Journalism needs to evolve just like species do biologically. We need to create products that focus on a niche so that they serve the readers in a way that will both attract an audience and make money. Niches also force competition — which would necessitate innovation on a level of service and coverage.
Think about it, a local newspaper should work on providing the best local news and information services. If a group of tech-savvy people in the locality start to compete with the newspaper, the newspaper will have to adapt in order to fit the niche better better serve the readers.
Without that competition the newspaper isn’t risking anything. Now while my former economics professors would cringe at the thought of creating risk, I’m an advocate of it. I believe that journalism must risk it’s very existence (just like species do when trying to focus on new desirable traits) in order to provide a better product for the readers.
What exactly do I mean by risk? I mean that you have to do what philly.com did and redesign the site. You have to look at technologies like Twitter, Brightkite, blogs, plurk, Facebook and wikis not with a feeling of compulsion but with specific purposes. Every news organization does not need all of those services, but they need to be ready in case the “trait” becomes desirable.
Journalism needs to adapt. The world is changing at a faster pace than yesterday and the news media need to be ready to see the next big thing that will allow the news to evolve. Just like in biology, our survival depends on it.
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