That newspapers we need a sturdy one restorative cure, there is little doubt. However, one must be careful with the cocktail of drugs. Newspapers are very organisms fragile, they are also of a certain age. They are made up of intellectuals, with their own vision of the world and with a view of their work at the top of the pyramid of professions. The shared belief, undoubtedly very romantic and exaggerated, that the press is one of the bulwarks of Western democracies, indeed one of their very constitutive characteristics, increases the sensation of journalists of being invested with some higher mission.
The attitude of an online French news masthead is emblematic, moreover well done thanks to the work of professional journalists from the best transalpine press. Finding herself short on cash, she appealed to readers to help keep her alive so that she could ensure journalists a salary of 90 euros a year. One can imagine the response of the network in a country with 10% unemployment. Journalists are sometimes a world apart.
It is clear how much it is difficult to reform structures such as i newspapers.
The vision of the disrupters
Move quickly and break stuff, which is the Mark Zuckerberg philosophy, the commander in chief of the army of the disrupterscan be a double-edged sword. A fellow adventurer of Mark's, the blond, verified it quite quickly Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook along with Zuckerberg and Harvard dormmates Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskovitz.
in 2012 Hughes, who was the only one of the original Facebook quartet to graduate, bought a progressive press institution like “The New Republic” of which he also became director. Of absolutely democratic faith, married to Sean Eldridge (the union is one of the most powerful gay couples in America), responsible for the digital activities of the Obama electoral campaign in 2008, Hughes seemed the person sent by destiny to bring the historic think-tank liberal towards economic security. Well, after less than two years of treatment Hughes, the managing director, the managing director and a dozen journalists of "The New Republic" have left, slamming the door and sending the powerful owner to hell.
Newspapers: a chiaroscuro scenario
Faced with the “The New Republic” case, the question arises whether the technological culture really can to help the industry ofinformation to recover from the depression into which she fell. The answer is it depends, because it really does.
The technological culture of its new owner, Jeff Bezos, could really get the Washington Post. The property of NYTimes, on the other hand, does not seem to be doing what is necessary to introduce digital culture at all levels of the organization of the big newspaper, as denounced by a scathing internal document that has knocked a few too many heads. An objective delay that prompted David Carr himself, the media columnist of the New York newspaper, to place it among the media at greatest risk in 2015.
Thanks to one technological culture executed to the millimeter, Vice Media has become the header of information most admired, most positively cited and above all most valued, in the order of billions of dollars, on the planet. The return of value in information is incredible: just a year and a half ago a journalism institution like the "Post" was purchased for just 250 million. The same amount that Facebook is willing to pay to buy, with a decision of a few minutes, a fledgling start-up with some promising but absolutely unverified businesses.
However, there is "The New Republic" to complicate the happy ending.
Hughes and the "New Republic"
Hughes' fault is that he set himself the difficult task of making the "New Republic" aprofitable business. In order for a news organization to hope to produce an income online, it must turn to journalistic models such as Buzzfeed o Vox. These models are very distant from the culture of the "New Republic" and also target a different audience of readers who are mainly reached thanks to viral content, gossip and articles of questionable quality that incorporate the native advertising.
Here is the accusation made against Hughes by the editors of the "New Republic" of having damaged the authoritative image of the newspaper in the name of profit. Left and profit, since the days of Marx, are a pair always on the verge of divorce, something that actually occurred in the "New Republic". Yet the problem of the "New Republic", like many other independent progressive newspapers, is precisely that of supporting itself financially.
Although the judgment of the main US newspapers regarding Hughes' conduct is generally negative, it is undeniable that the "New Republic" has faced many economic difficulties, today as in the past, so much so that in 2002 and 2007 Marty Peretz, owner and editor-in-chief from 1974 to 2012, he had been forced to sell large shares of the magazine to some lenders.
Bezos and the "Washington Post"
If the editorial staff of the "New Republic" weeps, that of Washington Post smiles. Jeff Bezos' idea to make the “Post” even one software house it is bearing the first fruits and the whole group likes it and has regained the lost trust. A series of agreements with local newspapers, to which the Washington newspaper already supplies content, ensure that the content management platform of the "Post" power the sites of these titles. Since the purchase of the newspaper, Bezos has continued to invest in both the editorial and technological areas, launching digital products and reinforcing all the automated management and control procedures.
There are now 225 developers and engineers working at the newspaper. The results are in: in one year, according to ComScore data, i Unique site visitors grew 62%. The basic idea, already sketched out by the previous owners (the Grahams), is to internalize all IT activities and put them on the market once they have been developed and fine-tuned. It is the transposition of the Amazon model, one of the most important factors of its success: the business is driven by technology.
The entire software area of the "Post" is moving to a technological park, full of start-ups and new professionals, in Virginia, not far from the historic headquarters of the newspaper.
Bezos' long-term strategy is to build around journalists, who continue to maintain near-complete autonomy of movement and content decision-making, a high-profile technological infrastructure to propel their work. The point of arrival must be to build an economically sustainable model for creating and selling quality journalism.
Is the "Amazon model" really the right cure for newspapers? The effective synergy between different groups of different cultures, operating at their maximum capacity, can really be the right cocktail of drugs for the cure of newspapers.
