FLASH: Breaking News Is Commoditized
It’s time to embrace a new era of original journalism
This week, The New York Times (disclosure below) published a list of its most-visited articles of 2014. Soon thereafter, several commentators observed a notable omission from the list — hard news. For those counting at home, the tally of the top 10 went something like this:
- Personal Essays (3)
- Interactives (3)
- Obituaries (2)
- Photo Essay (1)
- Travel Feature (1)
This should come as no surprise to anyone who works in news media. The proliferation of new digital media outlets and the democratization of distribution models have changed the way audiences consume news and media.
Previously, online users were required to visit a homepage or portal to get the daily report. The rise of social and search broke down the barriers of exclusivity, and put countless sources covering the same topic at users’ fingertips.
In my view, this disruption has left publishers with only a handful of options for sustained differentiation. The three best candidates are: optimization, paid distribution, and exclusivity. Optimizing your website for social and search is routine by now. The same can be said about paid distribution (although it’s a struggle for many publishers to make the margins work). That leaves doubling down on original content as the best option.
A number of new media publishers have already come to this conclusion. The Huffington Post recently announced that it plans to end its relationship with Associated Press, and instead expand its original reporting team. BuzzFeed has been reinforcing its investigative reporting staff for years. Even Upworthy, once (and probably still) known for its viral, human-interest content, surprised many in the journalism world by hiring New York Times deputy international editor Amy O’Leary to become its Editorial Director. This hire has largely been seen as a move to enhance the start up’s original reporting chops.
So, what does this mean for readers? Will publishers stop covering breaking news? Of course not. There are still thousands of readers who seek out trusted sources for accurate, nuanced reporting. Breaking news — typically less resource-intensive for newsrooms to produce — will also continue to be a major traffic driver in aggregate. But, getting caught up in the tradition of what news was may be futile. Like it or not, we’re entering a new era of original journalism.
This shift may create a new standard for publishers — on both sides of the spectrum — where original stories that meaningfully contribute to the conversation outperform pieces that simply report what has already been covered ad nauseam. Importantly, this may also be the middle ground where news value and reader traffic converge. Of course, this will require (among many other things) an investment in our best assets — our writers. Not just reporters of events, but imaginative storytellers, original thinkers, and content creators who understand what readers want.
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