Craig Newmark On The Future Of News: Trust Is The New Black
Oct 19th, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: Citizen Media, Internet TV, New Media Organizations, Video 
Craigslist’s Craig Newmark has penned an interesting article at the Huffington Post, suggesting that the source of mainstream news media’s troubles isn’t Craigslist, but the fact that mainstream news media has betrayed the public’s trust:
Trust is the new black, as I like to say. The great opportunity for news organizations is to constructively demonstrate trustworthy reporting, and to visibly do so.News curation, that is, selecting what’s news and should be visible, that’s an equally big deal.
Here’s the deal…
An increasingly media savvy online public sees that recent major problems involved some really good journalism, particularly the current financial crisis, and also that “weapons of mass destruction” thing. Good reporters told us that something was amiss in both situations, and we did see some really good journalism in both cases.
However, the really good journalism was buried, not curated into the front pages, and then, infrequently if at all repeated. As news consumers, if big news is not prominently displayed, and then repeated, it’s a tree falling in the forest.
So, these major news organizations reported on matters of great importance to the world, but the curation model failed to really warn the public about those issues, in any way that genuinely delivered the message.
Corporate media has dropped the ball on some of the biggest stories of the last few years, and that’s one reason people are turning to alternatives.
While corporate media is focusing on the lowest-common denominator, people turning to podcasts, video podcasts, microblogging and other new media – where, like Newmark notes, trust is the new black.
How is your news organization supported?
By ads?
Buy them some lilies to put on their tombs.
If I own a company, I have to do the math.
If I buy an ad, I get to yell into a stream and pray the message got through. And that's ALL!
If I own a website, I get to advertise my product in an unhurried manner to someone who choose to come to the site, collect some customer data, maybe process an order, track a shipment, handle a customer complaint before it gets out of hand.
Tell me again why I want to advertise with some mass media outlet, like radio, television, newspapers, magazines, in a theater where I will be forgotten as soon as the content resumes.
Forget ad supported media. Businesses are.
The web isn't perfect but it better than the dying way.
If you want to get paid, find a way to bring real value to your content, publish teasers, and make people pay for the real information.
If they don't want to pay, then your information wasn't worth gathering.
[…] Trust is the new black. With important stories about the oncoming financial crisis having been buried, the newspapers have lost public trust. I get my news from professional outlets (NYT, New York Observer) and from friends I trust on Twitter. This idea of curating news is changing things and newspapers need to figure out how to work together with the public to restore trust. […]