Comments on: The importance of Google’s Living Stories

By: Michael Andersen

Michael Andersen — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:37:30 +0000

Er, to clarify: legacy news organizations can change. But I don’t think they’ve got any incentive to drive change, and I don’t see why we should spend energy pushing them to do so. They’re not inherently noble companies, and there’s no reason to wish for their success in particular.

By: Michael Andersen

Michael Andersen — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:32:12 +0000

Yeah, I hear you. I’m probably biased on this — when I look at newspaper companies I tend to overemphasize the editorial stuff and editorial-controlled Web stuff.

I bet you’re right that their technical expertise is excellent in the field where they make all their money: print production.

You’re the software expert in this conversation, but I don’t see why we should look to newspapers as the companies that should do great software engineering. Don’t economies of scale mean that maintaining state-of-the-art software requires a national or global player, while maintaining a state-of-the-art printing press is an inherently local/regional investment?

I think the 90s concept behind Tribune, Knight-Ridder, and the other national chains was that newspapers could pool the cash from dozens of local gushers and form national/global enterprises that would build great software. But it seems at this point that the big corporations didn’t pull cash out of all their little fiefdoms fast enough to compete on software technology. And now they’re trapped in a debt spiral.

To state the obvious: I’ve given up on hoping that any legacy news organizations can lead innovations. I might be wrong, but that’s one of my guiding assumptions at the moment.

By: Daniel Bachhuber

Daniel Bachhuber — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:48:09 +0000

Fortunate for Google, I suppose, and fortunate for the news organizations involved if they’re able to negotiate a beneficial cut when there’s money involved.

A “company that specializes in filtering information” sounds awfully like a description for a news organization, however, and the schtick I’ve been on for the last year or so is all about increasing the technical capacity of news organizations. “Newspapers” seem to have forgotten the importance of this. They’ve always had designers and competitions for the most state of the art printing presses, right? The environment has shifted and they need to shift competency too to keep up.

Granted, there’s been a lot of good experiments coming out of The New York Times’ Interactive Group, but creativity like Living Stories is something I’d love to see on their domain, not Google’s.

By: Michael Andersen

Michael Andersen — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:20:39 +0000

I’m with you almost ’til the end, Daniel. Why is it unfortunate that Google is the innovator here? Isn’t it fortunate that a company that specializes in filtering information is helping develop software for contextual journalism?

Especially without securing a revenue model up front?

Also, haven’t the NYT and WaPo been working with Google on this for months? Just being smart enough to work with Google on this requires a few ounces of the innovative thinking that most newspapers seemed to lack five years ago, when they still thought they were monopolists.

Newspapers have definitely failed to appreciate the journalistic possibilities of software. But why should we expect them to? I doubt software will ever be their core competence. Better for the smartest papers to build partnerships like this one.