Showdown At Blog Corral

Alright, so it’s not actually a showdown, it’s more of a panel discussion with liquor.  I just needed a catchy title and “Journalism On The Brink” just isn’t cutting it for me.

Buffalo Spree Publishing, Inc. presents a special panel discussion “Journalism on the brink: When the daily paper becomes the daily blog, who wins and who loses?” at 7 p.m. in the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium at the Burchfield Penney Art Center (1300 Elmwood Avenue) on November 5.  The event is free and open to the public.

The evening will feature a rousing dialogue between some of Western New York’s most notable and important online news figures.

Confirmed panelists include:

Brian Connolly, web editor for the Buffalo News

Jim Heaney, blogger and columnist for the Buffalo News

Geoff Kelly, editor and blogger for Artvoice

Newell Nussbaumer, EStudent Network

Ben Siegel, editor for Block Club

Elena Buscarino, Buffalo Rising

Alan Bedenko, Marc Odien and Chris Smith of WNYMedia.net

The discussion ties in with an article in Buffalo Spree’s November 2009 issue titled “WNY’s churning urn of online news and comment: good, bad, or just confusing?” by Spree associate editor Christopher Schobert.  Unedited interviews with us can be found in the Buffalo Spree Web Extras Section.

The issues presented in the article and the panel reach far beyond Western New York. Should online content be free? Are news blogs “fair and balanced,” and is that even desirable? What do blogs and online news sites mean for both the reader, and the writer?  Can local news sites complement each other, or are they invariably opposed?

Newspapers may be on the brink, but journalism itself is not.  In fact, journalism itself may never have been healthier than it is today.  An influx of subject matter experts in online media now compete with  journalism school generalists working for print and broadcast media outlets.

For the second time, Warren Buffett, owner of The Buffalo News has publicly stated that the newspaper industry is dying.  The relevance of the print product and the accompanying business model are rapidly ceasing to be profitable.  He must have seen the latest numbers on daily newspaper circulation which paint a not so rosy picture for our friends at the local paper of record.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations says average daily circulation was down 4.6 percent in the April-September period, compared with last year. Last year’s drop was 2.6 percent among papers reporting comparable circulation totals.

The Buffalo News reported a circulation loss of 2.7 percent on Sunday, dropping to 255,369 from 262,509. Weekday circulation declined 3.3 percent to 175,984 from 181,805. Figures are for the period ended in September of this year and compared to a year ago.

This is a continuing trend and combined with rapidly declining advertising revenues, a moribund classified advertising section and a readership that is slowly dying off, the future is not bright for the newspaper.  Of course, Margaret Sullivan, Editor of The Buffalo News, greets this information with the Officer Barbrady treatment, “Move along, nothing to see here”

I’ve been writing off and on about the future of the daily newspaper for some time and I’ll probably cover some of that ground tonight at the event.  A few key terms about the future of journalism that I’ll explain on the panel are:  curation, experts, accuracy, collaboration, multi-platform, the ethic of the link, the sphere of deviance and community funded news.

As a reference point for people in attendance, I am a big believer that the future of journalism looks something like this:

You see, we are all empowered as reporters.  In the “new” news process, we would be using a shared online outlet as a distribution point for journalism that reflects the community, writ large.  We can create a product that is less about agenda and is richer in content than what is offered today.  And that is journalism in the new media ecosystem.

I hope to see you tonight