#jameskynge

by Shelby Dattilo

October 16, 2014

In one of the final panels of the 15th Annual World Knowledge Forum, three prominent speakers in the areas of media and journalism gathered to discuss the burgeoning digital media era. James Kynge, the Emerging Markets Editor at the Financial Times, Jeff Jarvis, Professor at City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, and Reiner Mittelbach, CEO of the Geopolitical Information Service AG, agreed that the outlook is looking bleak for traditional journalism.

The panelists pointed out that the general public now uses search engines, such as Google, to get brief news snippets, as opposed to picking up newspapers. Mr. Kynge, therefore, expressed little hope for the survival of traditional journalism.

“I think that the word ‘journalist’ will be extinct in five years,” he said.

Mr. Mittelbach noted that this extinction of traditional journalism is due in large part to digital media nearly eliminating the time that journalists usually needed to acquire facts, and then deliver that information to the public.

“In many cases, the journalist is some sort of a middle man. In the digital era, I don’t need a middleman,” he said.

The panelists made it clear that the digital era is the key force which is turning the journalism world upside down. Mr. Kynge compared the effects of the digital era on journalism to the digitization of the music industry.

“[Digitization] can wipe out whole industries. All of the value that you create today in music can be wiped out by the fact that digital music can be shared and copied virtually free of charge,” he said.

The main issue the music industry faced during the digital revolution was product distribution. In contrast, the panelists explained that news media had a long standing business model based on a clear distribution network. Businesses put advertisements in papers, papers went out to shops, readers received the papers, and the businesses received the advertisement they paid for.

Mr. Kynge said, “Now this type of distribution can be achieved at almost no cost.”

Whereas the music industry was vexed solely by distribution issues, the field of journalistic media is plagued by issues of content management as well. The lack of barriers to the distribution network has made content so much more important.

“We are facing another digital revolution and this time it isn’t about distribution, it’s about content. What I’m talking about here, in particular, is big data,” Mr. Kynge said.

Big data, according to the panelists, is the ability for internet companies to compile data on each consumer to create a greater picture of customer needs.

“This info is more powerful than anything we've ever seen in the world at this moment,” Mr. Kynge said.

Mr. Jarvis, on the other hand, was optimistic about small data being used as a means to radically increase the value of what newspapers serve people. He used examples such as Google’s traffic application, which uses personal location data and computes it into valuable and relevant information for each individual user.

Mr. Jarvis noted that the more effort that is put into personalizing each user experience, the greater engagement and attention newspapers can receive in return. He pointed out that the push towards user personalization creates a need for journalism to specialize more content so that readers can search for specific subjects more easily.

As Jarvis put it, “Do what you do best and link to the rest.”

The idea of specialization was a point of contention amongst the panelists, but Mr. Mittelbach stressed that nobody should have to pay for general interest news.

“Why should they, there are plenty of places to get it for free,” he added.