Happy News Year!

When I started this blog about a year ago, I wanted to provide advice to all the businesses who found themselves in the odd position of being a news source. I say odd position, because most businesses aside from the media, don't consider themselves as such. They are retailers, consultants, researchers, financiers, professionals, teachers, etc. But more and more, all of these groups are finding that their secondary position is as online publisher, publishing news or maybe more appropriately, publishing information that people find valuable.

I got away from my original mission as more and more traditional publishers, aka news organizations, were hitting the wall. On the last day of 2009, Editor & Publisher, the 125-year old, self-acclaimed "bible for the newspaper industry," stopped its presses for good. The reality was, there just were not enough newspaper (or vendors who served the industry) left to make it economically feasible to survive. And while there is tremendous hand-wringing at the realization that the industry is periled, there is still good reason to be optimistic.

Steve Outing, who was a columnist for E&P, as well as with the venerable Poynter Institute, wrote his look forward in his final adieu. He foresees a world where pulp is saved and news is transmitted electronically to handhelds. One of Outings most prescient hopes is that surviving organizations  embrace making sense of the commentary of the crowds.

I have become a huge fan of reading what the populace thinks. Oh, to be sure the cacophony isn't always pretty. The unwashed mob rears its ugly head time and again. But if you weed through the inane and boorish, you can find reasonable discourse. It would be nice if the inane and boorish might be toned down or even eliminated. One of the best ideas I have ever heard was from Jeremy Gilbert, Associate Professor at Medill School of Journalism, who suggests that sites adopt the authentication api from Facebook. Gilbert explains that with a preponderance of the public on Facebook (and growing everyday), "the Facebook authentication may yield a better behaving audience if they know that their aunt or grandmother may view the comment too." (I could see a lot of nervous businesses who are opening their sites to user comments benefiting greatly from this.)

You see the difference between old media and the new media is that news is in the eye of the beholder. Old media decided what was news. New media leaves it up to the crowds. That doesn't mean there is not need for aggregators, pundits, journalists and paid commentators. It just means that at the end of the day, it is the individual who decides what type of news is most valuable. Non-traditional news businesses need to learn this too. If I am trying to install a new Plasma TV, the site that provides my answer is a valuable news source -- and has a chance to influence me on another topic as well.

So while the 2000s will be viewed as the end of the road for the pulp-based news industry, news itself is enjoying a rebirth. As a new decade dawns, Happy News Year -- from whatever that source may be!