The Media Development Loan Fund applies venture-capital principles to create a sustainable free press in developing nations and countries emerging from repressive regimes:

[via Buzzmachine]

I always nodded when people said to me that mobile was the next step for the web. I understood what they meant in theory, but I have now shifted up a gear after seeing this. It is, in many ways, a completely different dimension for data to exist in.

It has got me thinking about how news might fit into this new environment. My instant thought - although perhaps not useful as a product to make money - is that stories can now exist not just in a moment of time, but also in a defined space.

One way (or indeed my madcap way) to get to grips with the concept is to visualise stories as hanging from threads that touch you as you walk by them. Why that might be useful - apart for getting some background research on the local area you’re walking through - I’m not sure. It’s an interesting thought though that stories could now be ranked on “proximity to current location”, as well as by most recent.

The former struck a chord with me. I am a Radio 4 addict because I can listen to it while I’m doing other things (cleaning the house, commuting to work). I pick up the headlines whilst doing other things.

If time is becoming increasingly squeezed then I suspect the reasons behind someone dedicating half-an-hour of their time to reading a newspaper have to been even more compelling. Being on public transport and having a paper available for free is one of those reasons.

Even if the newspaper is a great product, with fantastic stories, it may not be something that fits into a person’s life easily.

So, when we look at how we can use technology to appeal to new audiences, perhaps we should be thinking media in terms of how much of a person’s time they consume.

Would the ideal be to make distribution ambient? This would mean stories would come to a person because they were part of their surroundings, rather than because they expressly decided to sit down and consume news.

I want to clear this up now. I think a free press is massively important as a tool to help preserve democracy and to keep people informed about issues that they feel are relevant to their lives. My concern is finding ways to fund journalists in the future.

The thing is the act of journalism and the business that sustains it are two different things.

The business aspect has occupied my thoughts because I may care about journalism, but that doesn’t mean the market does. It is this point that has been put across very eloquently by Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0:

The web is the most disruptive force in the history of media, by many orders of magnitude, destroying every assumption on which traditional media businesses are based.

But the market should care, you say. What would happen if we didn’t have the newspapers playing their Fourth Estate watch dog role?

Here’s the bitter truth — the feared loss of civic value is not the basis for a BUSINESS.

The problem with the newspaper industry, as with the music industry before it, is the sense of ENTITLEMENT. What we do is valuable. Therefore we have the right to make money.

Nobody has the right to a business model.

Ask not what the market can do for you, but what you can do for the market.

This is the best analysis and assessment of the disruptive nature of digital that I have seen yet.

I often find Roy’s blog makes depressing reading and, in the past, I have had to ban myself from reading it for a few weeks because it brought me down too much.

This post still has a “prophet of doom” element to it, with stark warnings about the future of the industry. But he also stresses the need to innovate and explore the opportunities that the digital age presents.

Unless journalists start thinking, debating and innovating in order to explore new methods, they will contribute not only to the collapse of their newspapers - and their own careers - but also to the failure of journalism itself.

Worth a read.

I think one of the things that seems to be misunderstood between commenters is the thorny issue of the importance of journalism.

I think there are two areas that need to be unwoven in this debate:

One is making sure we understand what we mean when we talk about journalism.

The second is making sure when we talk about journalism being essential, we understand what we think it is essential for.

OK, so trying to define journalism is an essay in itself and I know I’m going to fall far short with this attempt, but here goes:

Journalism seems to be a catch-all for many types of writing that is triggered by current or relevant events.

This includes:

- Information about events and occurances that are deemed to be significant (important, dramatic, entertaining or useful).

- Interviews with individuals of interest to ascertain their opinions and stances on topics deemed to be significant.

- Features and background information that place topics of significance into a wider context.

- Critical assessment on siginificant issues in the form of comment.

Some of this can be done by people who have not been trained as journalists.

If you don’t believe me then go ask:

- Ahmed Bilal, founder of Soccerlens.com
- Andy Baio, founder of waxy.org (which helped dig out the Miss Alaska video of Sarah Palin)
- Pat Phelan of patphelan.net who looks at the telecommunications industry whilst operating a business in it.
And more locally in Birmingham:
- Pete Ashton, founder of the creative industry news blog createdinbirmingham.com.
- Steve Gerrard, founder of gig review blog brumlive.com.
- Nicky Getgood, who is keeping Digbeth residents in the know about local issues at “Digbeth is Good“.

This is news. They do not cover EVERYTHING that newspaper journalists cover, but what they produce is certainly not all opinion and conjecture.

Therefore, I think its important that we are clear what we are saying trained journalists can produce that these people can not.

This is important because that defines, in part, the value of journalists in the future.

We also have to be honest. What proportion of this value do we currently utilise in our products?

Personally, I think journalists are valuable when they have the time and the training to work with the community they serve, identify and then investigate issues that do not seem to add up. They can then convey what they have discovered in a clear way (and that’s not just by story writing).

I might be wrong about this though, I’m still questioning.

But, once we have decided what we mean when we talk about trained journalists, then we have to understand what we mean when we say their work is essential.

I think as part of this we need to ask two questions:

1. Is this “essential” journalism necessary for a healthy, successful and sustainable society?

2. Is this “essential” journalism necessary for a healthy, successful and sustainable news business? (I.e it has strong appeal to a market , makes the business profitable and - if a plc - delivers shareholder value).

I honestly don’t think these two questions are as connected as people like to pretend they are.

If newspaper journalists were given time to “‘create’ real stories,” would that really make more people buy newspapers? Would it really make more people advertise with them?

If it was the quality of the investigative journalism that drove the market would the UK newspapers landscape look like it does?

I think we need to understand what we’re arguing here.

I don’t think anyone is saying that the skills of journalists are worthless, unimportant or unnecessary.

But, I think we seriously need to get past the emotional attachments we have to our industry and ask what skills we offer that are unique and valuable (both in business and societal terms) and then what is the best vehicle for us to undertake them in.

There are many people that feel uncomfortable operating in the public sphere of the web, yet it can reap such fantastic benefits.

It has prompted a very considered and interesting comment from Steve Dyson - editor of the Birmingham Mail and the Sunday Mercury.

An extract:

Local newspaper brands have great reputations for reporting trusted facts. Let’s not dilute this too quickly without knowing what we’re diluting it with. Yes, add interaction, online and in print, but let’s clearly label what is what.

There is more, including comments disagreeing with his stance.

A debate also broke out on Twitter between myself and Bobbie “I probably have one of the coolest jobs in the world and get to live in San Fransciso” Johnson of The Guardian.

He was arguing that having investigative journalism was, in a way, a form of marketing for a news brand - a way to identify the product as being better than its competition.

An interesting point that got me thinking.

Russell Brand & Jonanathan Ross, the US elections, the Congo, Gordon Brown shaking hands with Al Qaida suspects - all of these are news stories and all of them have been covered by the UK’s media outlets in one form or another over the last week.

So, what are the things that make you choose to get your news from one organisation rather than another? I tried to make a list:

• political stance/worldview
• specialist subject areas (FT for info on the financial crisis, The Sun for bikini pics of the latest Bond girl, The Birmingham Post for W.Mids news)
• platform and convenience (R4 gets my vote when cleaning the kitchen or driving to work, lots of people read The Metro on the train)
• personalities (Charlie Brooker springs to mind)

That can’t be it, surely?

Most of the news that comes out of media organisations on a daily basis is information that others either WANT people to know or HAVE to admit to. It is just re-written or re-presented in a format that fits that platform.

So, instead of journos, the world needs the generators of this information to communicate it better and to allow for redress to what they say.

So is there somewhere the paid journalist can fit into all this then? Well, I guess journalists should be doing what they’re supposed to do - find out the information that organisations don’t want people to know.

But they can’t do that until they are freed up from the current information processing that they have to do, and that means those that provide information start doing so in formats that are usuable and on a platform that allows redress.