The Nieman Journalism Lab is an attempt to help journalism figure out its future in an Internet age. The Internet has brought forth an unprecedented flowering of news and information. But it has also destabilized the old business models that have supported quality journalism for decades. Good journalists across the country are losing their jobs or adjusting to a radically new news environment online. We want to highlight attempts at innovation and figure out what makes them succeed or fail. We want to find good ideas for others to steal. We want to help reporters and editors adjust to their online labors; we want to help traditional news organizations find a way to survive; we want to help the new crop of startups that will complement — or supplant — them. We are fundamentally optimistic. We don’t pretend to have even five percent of all the answers, but we do know a lot of smart people. Primary among them are our readers; we hope your contributions will make the Lab a collaborative exchange of ideas. Tell us what’s happening around you, or what should be. We hope you enjoy the work we do, and that you’ll join the conversation as it evolves.
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Nieman Journalism Lab reposted this
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, home to the world-class fellowship program (and Nieman Journalism Lab!), is looking for its next curator. Please send to the "visionary leader with significant journalistic accomplishments and a demonstrated commitment to the field" in your life. https://lnkd.in/euHyqSV8
Ads are coming to ChatGPT. News publishers with OpenAI deals won’t see a dime. https://lnkd.in/eNcZwKma
Nieman Journalism Lab reposted this
1M subscribers. 384M views. Six-figure income. And yet J.J. McCullough is asking: "Does this channel have more juice in it?" McCullough started on YouTube in 2015 after losing his job at Sun News Network in Canada. He brought his journalism training with him: library visits, paid subscriptions to OED and Newspapers.com, Discord fact-checking before publishing. Quality over speed. A decade later, he's facing the same problems newsrooms know too well, like churn. Gaining and losing subscribers in near-equal measure. Growth stagnant despite doing everything "right." Here's the telling quote from his Nieman Lab interview: "The key challenge for news creators is distinguishing between audiences consuming political content for information versus entertainment." YouTube's algorithm doesn't make that distinction. Sensationalism and speed get rewarded. Research intensity doesn't. McCullough respects mainstream journalism ("No one has really risen to dethrone them in terms of news-gathering") but can't find sustainable growth on a platform optimized for entertainment-seekers, not info-seekers. This is the distribution ceiling problem for quality creators. They invest in research infrastructure. They fact-check. They cite sources (NYT, WaPo, not Wikipedia). They maintain editorial integrity even when it costs subscribers. And they hit platform limits because the algorithm wasn't built for them. The question isn't whether these creators can make "middle-class" income - McCullough does. It's whether quality research can find an audience that actually wants it. What distribution channels could better serve research-intensive creators? h/t Hanaa' T.' for the excellent interview: https://lnkd.in/ethhVk6B
Nieman Journalism Lab reposted this
There’s a lot to love in Nieman Journalism Lab's interview with YouTuber J.J. McCullough on building a sustainable life as a news creator after being laid off by legacy media, but one detail really stuck with me. Before publishing any video, he posts it to a private Discord and asks a few trusted community members to sanity-check it for errors. Typos, numbers, clarity, context. A lightweight, human QA layer powered by people who actually care about getting it right: "Before any video goes live, I post the video to my Discord server and try to get at least three viewers to check it… It’s useful to have multiple eyes looking on whatever you make." I found myself wondering what would happen if major newsrooms tried anything like it -- small, accountable communities invested in accuracy before the work goes public. Having run plenty of mainstream newsroom social accounts, the relationship with readers often felt adversarial: mostly contempt instead of collaboration, but smoothed over with a click. That dynamic makes trust tough to nail down, so it might be tricky. The big newsrooms have their own internal versions of this thing. We called it "The Row" at CNN, and while an incredible resource to keep the editors out of trouble, it's a black hole to most. Might be neat if there was a community-led version of that, too. McCullough doesn’t call himself a journalist and says he largely synthesizes other people’s reporting or research. But if you’re explaining the world to an audience that trusts you, and that audience is actively helping you make the work more accurate… that feels pretty close to journalism to me. We'll always need to support and protect the ones who dig deep. But we need the ones like J.J. too. The full Q&A by Hanaa' T.: https://lnkd.in/etrMnWJk
“Does this channel have more juice in it?” YouTuber J.J. McCullough on a “sustainable” life as a news creator https://lnkd.in/eUmZj7bk
"Do the organizations have real plans to grow their audiences outside of their most faithful followers?" https://lnkd.in/eSF6qHC8
Craig Newmark explains why he’s pulling back on funding journalism https://lnkd.in/eSF6qHC8
It’s not a news site. But there’s a lot to learn from how Wikipedia constructs shared knowledge about what’s happening in the world. https://lnkd.in/eJTJXDE8
A new nonprofit newsroom will launch as a weekly Substack and “focus on what makes Los Angeles livable, or not." https://lnkd.in/ejkqHYRz
After years of chasing social media engagement and being burned in the process, publishers have realized that commenting has a tangible value — to the broader public, yes, but also in terms of advertising and subscription revenue. https://lnkd.in/e7QkW2AX