When everything changes, except the way journalists think lifelong learning

Continuing professional development has not been an issue in the journalism business. Keeping up with the latest trends have been journalist-individuals own matters and responsibility.

Now the news industry is facing its first paradigm shift. The industry is turning onto digital media surfaces, and the news business desperately needs new business models. This situation urgently calls for CPD for journalists. In the high-stress world of journalism – everyday needing to change – CPD is noticed as something important in the field. Still the newsrooms have problems finding good CPD solutions that would not drain the daily newsroom resources too much.

Journalism schools could play a leading role in creating good CPD platforms for journalists. TheTutka cross media education environment, at the Turku University of Applied Sciences, could function as a journalistic CPD milieu.

The journalism industry in the Western world is not only facing its biggest change since it was born. It is erupting into the digital world with its multichannel ways of distributing journalistic work and products. The change is driven by two groups of actors; the advertisers, who want to be where the potential customers are, i.e. online, mobile, in social media, and in any combination of these. The advertising barometer by the Association of Finnish Advertisers is predicting the biggestdrop in advertising volume ever for print media in Finland. The advertisers’ money seems to be going to digital media.

Secondly, the news consumers, who seem to be turning away from conventional print and broadcasting, and seem to be turning to mobile platforms and on-demand news consumption.

The journalism industry is facing a total rethinking of its business models. The American media thinker Jeff Jarvis puts it as: “Journalism is no longer in the communication business, but in the relationship business”.

Jarvis suggests a total reinvention of the news business. Journalism should start working like Google does, which would mean managing scarcity, not abundance; that news media would be joining the open source gift economy instead of thinking that it knows everything better than the consumer. Mass communication no longer exists; the mass market is dead, long live the mass of niches, Jarvis says.

Paolo Mancini puts in the role of journalism in the democratic society and states that there is no time for fatalism now, but for a renewed commitment to journalism and its role in democracy – from journalists themselves, and from media managers and policy-makers, all of whom can learn from professional, commercial, and policy developments beyond their own countries. (Mancini 2004).

Journalism schools and journalist educators have started asking themselves where their position is in the huge business transition. At the 3rd World Education Congress in July 2013 in Mechelen, Belgium, one track was dedicated to the theme if journalist educators should be steerers or followers in the industrial change. The outcome was weak. Anyway, it did not seem very important among the educators to start thinking how they, that is WE, should change in order to be able to more efficiently serve a totally changing industry. I participated in this track, and I felt the same confusion as many of my colleagues. Can educators steer an industrial change? If so, then how? News business is hard and clear business, i.e. maximizing the profit for its owners. How can the educators steer anything, while the owners are sketching the road map? Should not the business set up the road sign before we start to educate journalists for the new industry? These and many more questions were asked in the discussion. We did not come up with that many good answers.

Many colleagues also pointed out that we are now discussing the huge change in the journalism industry and asking us what we can do for them. What we journalist educators do not do ask ourselves is how WE should be changing in order to be able to serve the tomorrow’s journalist industry with good professionals.

In Mechelen we did not end up very far from what Jerome Aumenten already in 2007 stated in Nieman reports: The task faced by journalism and communication schools and departments in upgrading their curricula is akin to training pilots to fly experimental planes that are only partially operational for an aviation industry being totally transformed.

He claims that the journalist educators seem to be lost; some are headed toward wholesale revision of their course offerings; others are choosing to retrofit their existing courses to accommodate the interactive, multimedia world. A go-slower, gradual revision approach might work best for some programs, or it might simply be dictated by the lack of a budget to do much more. But all agree that new course work is required, so students have a comprehensive, hands-on experience working simultaneously in doing stories for print, broadcast and the Web. These skills - taught until recently as separate majors - must be converged in the curricula as they are now being used in newsrooms.

Let me conclude. The journalism industry is changing because both the money and the consumers are turning away from conventional media, and adapting to digital and mobile news platforms. Whether or not print media is dying, or the time for its death, is irrelevant here. The ongoing change, creating new journalist job today’s journalist are not educated to perform, is the issue. Every media business that wants to stay alive in the Western world, has already implemented myriads of developing projects. Many newspaper businesses have started to realize that they made a mistake in thinking that managing the New News Age is another day at the office, while it de facto is a whole new product with whole new business models and whole new consumer behavior. And of course; with whole new professionals.

At the Turku University of Applied Sciences we feel that the news businesses have been fairly unwilling to ask themselves how continuous professional development among their journalist could fire up the metamorphosis. The reason seems to be the everyday pace in the industry: somebody has to come up with tomorrow’s news, while the news companies are adapting to falling advertising income by sacking journalists. And then the money issue: Print papers are still good, although declining, business. You cannot jump head first from that into digital waters without being sure the advertisers’ money follows you.

And we, the journalist educators, should not be pointing finger towards anybody. We have not exactly been the fastest changers either. We are traditional academics. We are slow. We are thinking inside the curriculum box.

I suggest that the changing news business calls for changed ways of educating journalist professionals, and for a new attitude towards journalist CPD. The industrial change is accelerating, and it is trying to manage with the professionals it has got at the branch. I suggest that the best way of serving the changing news business is to introduce continuous professional development for journalists in the industry.

I build my suggestion on two arguments: First, the speed of the change in the news business calls for very fast educational solutions. The fastest educational solution is to coach pros in the business to better suited pros for the new news business. We have not got time to start from scratch, if we, the journalism educators, would like to be helpful to the journalism industry - which is our mandate - in its change.

Secondly, it might be possible to build a system of journalist CPD that would be based on continuous auditing, discussions, and benchmarking together with the industry. Simply: Let the journalist employer in in to the CPD chambers, let them tell us what they need, and we will give it to them, i.e. develop and educate their journalists with systematic CPD. By starting up a European network for journalism CPD we could be even faster and more efficient. In the era of communication sharing, we should be able to share best CPD practices through our European CPD network.

If we are successful here, the next step would be to spread our best practices into curricula at journalism schools.

At the Turku University of Applied Sciences the students spend a lot of time studying in the The Tutka newsroom. The Tutka (Tutka is Finnish for “radar”) is a multimedia journalistic news journal, and a journalistic learning environment based on innovation pedagogy. You will find The Tutka at here. The video poster for The Tutka is found here.

 The Tutka is:

·         an authentic newsroom in which the students can grow to cross media journalists by producing online multimedia journalism before a real audience of approximately 14000 consumers a month
·         offering a non-stop CPD milieu for professional journalists
·         an innovation driven think tank of critical an innovative thinking among teachers, students and CPD journalists.

In The Tutka newsroom the students learn everything from the basic skills of the journalistic production process to more advanced multimedia journalistic experimenting. The Tutka courses also coach the students’ journalistic way of thinking as well as teaches them how to handle video, audio, text and still pictures, and any combination theses in a multimedia journalistic context.

 When the students leave The Tutka learning environment for their internships or summer jobs, they are often asked to be consultants on how the media could develop its digital and multimedia content and news presentation.

 During The Tutka courses the students produce news, reports, documentaries, and columns before a real audience. They get feedback from the lecturers, the audience, and from professional journalists. From time to time we bring professionals to get to know the Tutka environment and to spur the students by giving them feedback.

 When The Tutka lecturers discuss current matters in the industry together with the visiting pros, the professionals almost always say that The Tutka environment would be an excellent milieu for their own organization for testing multimedia journalistic solutions or to learn, for example, how to handle videos in a multimedia journalistic way.

 We get exceptional good feedback from the Finnish news industry on the high standard of our trainees and graduates. The media companies are especially pleased with the fact that The Tutka learning environment teaches every student to handle all the ways of journalistic expression you need in a multimedia context, i.e. text, still pictures, video and audio, and any combination of these. We are being told by the professional over and over again that one reason why the digital journalistic product is more or less “print online” is that the professionals come from an age where the photographers produce still pictures and videos, the radio journalists the audio, and the print journalist the text, and the TV journalists the TV content.

 Since journalism is a process of refining information, multimedia journalism can be made only if all the journalistic ways of expression is molded together with the journalistic thinking in the same brains of the journalist.

So why does not the news industry in the Turku region grab the chance and throw in some of their pros into The Tutka and update them to multimedia journalists? Probably due to two reasons: The news industry is not familiar with further educating journalists and CPD, since keeping up to date with skills and knowledge for good stories has been the responsibility of the journalist individual. Secondly, as the business cut the number of journalists in the newsrooms, CPD loses the race to tomorrows’ news. Or as William Peter Hamilton, the fourth editor of the Wall Street Journal, once put it: ”A newspaper is a private enterprise owing nothing whatever to the public, which grants it no franchise. It is therefore affected with no public interest. It is emphatically the property of the owner, who is selling and manufacturing a product at his own risk”.

But at some point the journalism industry has to wake up to the fact that the New News World needs new journalists. Let us show them that we are god and ready to face that CPD challenge.

Let me look at only one CPD definition. The following commonly used definition of CPD was developed as far back as 1986 by the Construction Industry Council (UK). However, Friedman et al. (2000) found that it was still the most commonly cited definition of CPD among UK professional bodies in 1999.

The systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of knowledge and skills, and the development of personal qualities necessary for execution of professional and technical duties throughout the individual’s working life.

Within this definition, multiple purposes of CPD can be observed:

• CPD is concerned with maintaining knowledge and skills. More recently, this would be summarized as maintaining one’s competence or competencies; in other words, CPD is about keeping up-to-date.

• CPD improves and broadens knowledge and skills; that is, CPD is intended to support future professional development.

• CPD develops personal qualities necessary to execute professional and technical duties; such personal qualities as may be needed to achieve the above two purposes.

 

This could be a very good start for CPD for journalists. A journalistic CPD circle could, for example, look like this:

 

1.      Reflection: “Even though the basic way of journalistic thinking is the same in the New News Age, I don’t cope with the digital demands. I cannot produce good multimedia journalism. My superior wants me to join CPD.”

2.      Goals: “I need to learn some basic coding, and multimedia expression skills; audio, video, still pictures, graphics, and any combination of these.”

3.      Development Plan: “My plan for achieving these skills is to get good CPD education in any of the journalism Schools in the European CPD network for journalists. They all have good learning environments, and I might be able to contribute with something to the students, as well.”

4.      Implementation: “I educate myself. I reflect on what I’ve learnt, and how it may improve my professional work as a multimedia journalist.”

5.      Professional Development Record: “I keep record on what I’ve learnt, and its effects on my work performances. Pluses and minuses. And examples.”

6.      Reflection and Re-Starting: “I analyze the pluses and minuses together with my superior. What could be done better? How can I now find a new CPD path, and through that improve our multimedia journalistic products? How can my experience be used in order to shape our new business models? Time for a new CPD round from this perspective.”

 

The Tutka learning environment, described above, is only one of a number of qualitative journalistic learning environments in Europe. All good educational practices aiming for the New News Age are probably good CPD milieus for journalists. One of the first things every tomorrow’s journalist has to understand is the internet – both as a publishing medium, and as a source of news. The internet native generation is only beginning to enter the newsrooms, but being an internet native proves nothing. It is being a journalist mastering the internet, and all the journalistic skills needed in the multimedia world, that makes the difference. In this context some minor European cultural differences do not hinder a European cooperation around CPD for journalists. The journalist educators together with European CPD professionals have got a golden opportunity to contribute to the New News World. If we believe that the journalists’ skills will be the central component for the news industry of the future , we should start creating a CPD network for journalist right away. Thousands of journalists in Europe are in desperate need of learning the multiple skill handicrafts the business seems to be requiring today only.

What we need now is experience and data on journalist CPD making a difference for the news business in Europe. We need it fast in order to show the publishers that CPD is one of the key factor for future success in the industry.

I hope that we could start building a European CPD network for journalist.  This network needs CPS professionals as well as journalist educator professional. The network also needs to be in continuous contact with the news business in Europe.

We probably cannot change the fact that the journalism industry is very journalist individual driven, since you can be the best news journalist without any academic grades. But we can build a network, that can show the news business that we will speed up the change, and quality, in the multimedia journalistic business. This, again, must have a positive impact on any news organizations’ business performance.

 

This text is based on my articled presented at The 2^nd Carpe Conference, Manchester 2013 

Minding relationship or relationshit

Jeff Jarvis is a great artist. He is a great thinker, too. He is right when he says that the news industry has been too focused on producing content for masses. Now, Jarvis argues, it is time to skip a) the content neurosis, and b) the mass of people.
The news industry, i.e. the journalists, should now understand that they are in the relationship business, where "The Mass" is an insult. Now is the time to serve the "individual" - the way Google does.
Says the man Jarvis, who tries to turn Google in to a religion.
No offence Jeff. But you ARE preaching sometimes...
The method is to start with small data. If Google knows where you live and where you work, though you never told Google that, the new news business should do the same. That way newsmedia should create a realtionship to the consumer.
The rest seems to be easy. When the individual interacts with the news medium, the individual gets rewarded, for example by having a lower pay wall.
This is how I understand Jeff Jarvis.
The news is not dead. It lives a better life now than ever before. We consume fast news more than ever - more often than ever, and more, like a hell of a lot more - on mobile gadgets. This also kills the argument that the form of news, the news triangle, would be gone. The triangle has presented edgy news for a couple of hundred years. And now, more than ever, we are in need of news that hits the consumer's target fast, very fast indeed. We are probably in need of an even sharper news triangle than before.
You see, I don't believe in slow journalism, when it comes to news anymore. Sorry all you people believing in narratives. It is the NEWS that will be the map and the compass for the change in our industry.
So?
You can not (Jarvis does...) state that the conventional way of thinking in terms of content production has not been acting in a relationship manner, too. "It could have been me" is the strongest news criteria. That is taking care of relationship business. Many of these news come from people witnessing something dramatic. That is taking care of relationship business.
Do these sources get any reward from the media?
No.
That is giving a shit about the relationship.
I guess this is why people still wait for the media to surprise them, rather than helping the media surprise the helping individual.
We must stop giving a shit about those who live in the world we are reporting on/from/about/trying to change. Let's for once be humble. IF we journalists still are on the small individual's side.

Jarvis is right when he says that media does not engage anymore. Media does not engage like for example Facebook. It never has, and it never will. Before Facebook, news media was not able to engage even the way a rockfestival did. Still news media set the agenda almost every day, in almost every family, and on almost every work place.
(And I don't think FB will last, and you are not really the one you are on FB. If you are, stop photoing the spaghetti you just cooked...)

Maybe it is time to either stop fuzzing about the journalism being in a paradigm shift, or alternatively fuzz and fuck it all up totally.

If we think that we want to be served personalised news and entertainment, in some kind of relationship with the news industry, we in the industry are supposed to give something back. If we do this, and take the audience into the production line at a very much earlier stage than now - then we truly are heading for a new world, where the journalist - having a monthly salary at a media brand, or being his/hers own brand - is taking care of both the Business.

News media disruption - yes, but the bread and butter is quality of information.

I like much of Timo Ketonen’s thinking in his last blog for the year 2012 EDGE & The Social Web: 'MEDIANOMICS' - will 2013 be a year of disruption? 

There is a tremendous disruption going on in the news industry, but conventional newspapers are still doing ok. They are not doing good, as in good in the good old times. But they are doing al right, in terms of surviving a recession on top of the disruption.

I have said it before, and I say it again: The newspaper business in Finland is not stupid. It is still the number one medium in selling pair of eyes to advertisers. Yes, the numbers are not looking THAT good anymore, but I guess the Finnish newspapers will have over 20 percent of the market even this year. They are not going to be the winner in terms of growth. But they will be doing fairly good.

And this is the paradox of the disruption.

The news industry finds itself in a situation where the old stuff is still selling pretty good, and when there seems to be a growing audience wanting something else on digital surfaces - and nobody can be vey sure about what should be done, and how that is going to sell.

If we take a conventional look at the new industry, we would need to incorporate the retailers and their money into the development of a new news industry. If I were an advertiser, I would respond to this proposal: ”Well, ok. To a certain extent. I like your news stream, but I have my own business, too. So, as long as we can find cheaper solutions for me - cause, I’ve got my own figures, and I know exactly when it’s time for me to leave the news stream, because I can create my own attention magnets on digital surfaces - then I’m in!”.

The new world - probably rising from the digital ecosystem, is probably the new way. When  print media - veeeeery slowlyyyyy - gets rid of costs for printing and distribution, there might be good business up ahead. This New World is of course The Place for everybody wanting to come up with any sci-fi idea as possible.  

I have heard tens of times how the news - that is the piece of news - is going to change so dramatically that we cannot even talk about news anymore. Everything will change. Strong news brands will collapse, because people get their information from the digital sources, not to speak about social media. Journalists are not needed anymore, because on the web everybody is a journalist...

Yeah, right. 

All of a sudden the most evolutional part of the human being has vanished?! Curiosity. Curiosity and confirmation. Knowing what your enemies, allies and business competitors are up to. And all this in a world that is delivering faster info than ever before? Like: ”Hell, yeah. I only want my info fast and free and funny. I don’t care about if it is true or not!!!”

God, give me strength.

First of all; we are not a species that changes rapidly. Even The Mobile Revolution has been quite slow. People have still got old fashioned telephones at the end of telephone lines at home, etc. We will probably see a start of a real mobile change during the coming years, because of tablets and better smart phones. The network operators will probably try to do their best to slow this development down with ridiculously high rates, but there must be a way around that, too.

Secondly; we all need somebody to trust. Here is where the news brands will have their new coming. We can listen to any guy on the gas station, but when it comes to confirmed news, well, then we need to be certain. This trust comes from the profession of the journalist. If you do not know what makes a journalist, please have a look at the Finnish guidelines for journalists, guidelines 1-7 (http://www.jsn.fi/en/journalists_instructions/). 

You don’t let anybody serve your car - you get it to a garage or a guy you trust. And you pay for it. You don’t let anybody give you a haircut. You go to somebody you trust. And you pay for the haircut, too.

There is a connection between trusting and paying, you see.

Producing news is about the same thing. You need good professional journalists to create quality content that people will trust and pay for. By the end of the day, every non-profit, non-salary-paying web journal will either be bought by a big media company (because it was good and trustworthy, or a competitor), or it will die, because being a journalist is fun, but fun does not feed your children.

If you would like to read more about trust in news brands, take a look at what Oscar Westlund is doing at the University of Gothenburg.

Disruption is a thrill, but it will not make things easier. I have done some research about quality of information. See for instance: Pär Landor: Understanding the Foundation of Mobile Content Quality A Presentation of a New Research Field. HICSS 2003: 88 or Pär Landor: On Wireless Internet Content Quality. ICWI 2002: 345-354 - at http://www.odysci.com/author/1010112985097447/par-landor. 

I am still convinced of that the quality aspect is THE thing you pay for when downloading your news app and paying for the daily news.

But quality is  a tricky one. Quality of information usually comes with the package. That means new form of presenting news on tablets, smart phones, and any surfaces we have not even seen yet. 

And that, again, is a whole new ball game, since someone is going to have to build the new fancy representations. That somebody is hopefully a journalist, because I think journalist should manufacture his stories from A to Z. And, as we know, journalists are not cheap.

I will be having a look at the disruption of the news industry from the quality of information point of view in my coming blogs.

Only Professionals Are Journalists

Let’s face it. We journalist are lousy marketing people.

If you stumble into a discussion about whether blogging is journalism or not, or what is the future of journalism since everybody can be a publisher on the web…  you could start yelling about how good journalist are on writing stories. You will suggest that ordinary writing people are not that good at storytelling..

Let’s be frank about journalism. Journalism is nothing more than a process for refining information. This process includes ethic elements, focus groups, timing and al lot more aspects that constantly are present in a news room.

Journalism is journalism when it contains this element of profession. Period.

The news business is in is biggest change in its history. The news business is changing paradigm, and nobody seems to understand where it is heading. This huge change gives the stage to all kinds of thinkers. How often have we not heard that journalism is dead or that the form off news is dead or a whole lot more of that kind.

The more information you are facing, the more you are asking yourself “What piece of information can I trust?”.

Quality journalism is never true. No journalism is ever true. It is at its best plausible.

The journalistic process tires to make sense of things and processes in a complex world. The better the elements of professionalism is in the journalistic process, the more plausible the outcome is.

Journalism is still not only about what you want to know. It is still – as it has always been – about what you need to know.

This will stay the same regardless if you consume journalism on paper, pads, mobiles or on television.

Only professionals are journalists.

But we are lousy at letting people know this fact.

The tablet is a good thing for the newspaper

First I believed that after all the laptops would be the new template for electronic newspapers.

Then I believed in the e-paper. I guess I thought that the electronic newspaper should be more mobile.

Then came the smartphones. I used my smarphone as a newspaper template one summer. I got used to it.

Then came the tablets. Then came The Daily on the iPad.

The tablets might work as a medium for the electronic newspaper. Some people think that the iPad is too heavy for keeping in one hand, where as the Kindle tablet is lighter. I do not know – I have not been testing either of them.

The tablet – or the XL smartphone – is anyway a breakthrough for the electronic newspaper. Now the papers do not have to teach people to use the new device. People will have the device (soon, soon…) and will be more comfortable with reading the paper on the tablet.

I have talked about quality of journalism recently in my blog. Quality is also a question of usability. It is very interesting, and nice, to see that newspapers are really working on creating versions especially for the tablet. This, I think, is going to create the electronic newspaper much faster than I ever would have expected. It is a good way to do quality work at once.

To me this is good news. To people stuck in the “People are used to the newspaper printed on paper” mantra will never agree with me.

We need the electronic newspaper for many reasons – for the business, for ecology, for usability, and for getting youngsters to subscribe to newspapers again.

When I moved out to my own apartment, my parents paid for a subscription to the newspaper for me. So did almost all parents. They do not do it very much anymore. Their youngsters, and the parents, get their news free.

Well, get The Daily going, and you might have a new wave coming!

Quality of journalism is already defined

Journalism is a peculiar industry. It is a mass industry, where - like in all mass industries - there are lots of quality talk. When you buy a car or a pair of jeans, you the customer judge the quality. In journalism the quality is judged by the producer. 

No way, you say. We can tell quality by sold copies or reader figures or amounts of tweets!

Oh, really? So, well-selling tabloids are quality because they sell well? Well, then quality means profit, and only profit.

I have been working as an editor-in-chief and I too have been very clear on (without anything more than the intuition of an editor-in-chief) what is good quality journalism and what is not. Still, I was the producer, not the consumer.

I now think that quality will matter, and matter a lot, in web journalism. But then ”quality” has to be defined and processed in the same way it is defined and processed in other industries.

Yes, a great deal of research has been done on quality of information. The quality guru Joseph Juran defines quality of information in the same way he defines “quality” in general: High- quality data is data that is fit for use in its intended, operational, decision-making, planning, and strategic roles. Fitness implies both freedom from defects and possession of desired features. 

Another guru, Philip B. Crosby, presents a rather similar view of information quality - but Crosby can be implemented directly on journalism: “Communication is getting the message to the areas that need it in a way that will be accepted and implemented. That requires both credibility of presentation and integrity of content useful”, and “When we can communicate with others in a way that helps them make the choice that is best for them, we are being useful. When we aim it at something that is best for us, and not for them, we are not being useful. The whole purpose of communication is to be useful.”

Paul Lillrank gives too something to the journalism industry. He defines “quality of information” as its ability to generate action. 

Well, there you go. The definitions and the theories have been there long enough. The whole purpose of communication is to be useful. Thus, we need to define ”useful” in terms of useful to the reader or the consumer on the web. And we need to start measuring.

On the web the critical measurement right now seems to be amounts of clicks. Ok, but does it mean that an article clicked 1000 times is more useful and has generated more action than one clicked 100 times? Of course not. Amounts of clicks measure only amounts of clicks.

Look at journalism as a method for refining information. That is all there is. After that we will be dealing with the effects of journalism. That is usefulness and action generation. I don’t have the answer, but journalism with effects tends to be more important than journalism with no effects or with only brain draining effects.

If readers are returning to, and paying for, Murdoch’s web news, it might have something to do with quality of journalism. After all, some people, who did not want to pay for web journalism, have turned to paying customers.

Everything, all over the place

No longer is the newspaper The Newspaper – the main source of information for anybody. Today, every person gets his or her daily information from a myriad of sources – and in a personal way.

There is no “we have it all” anymore. There is only “everything, all over the place”.

Ok, that’s nothing new.

Let’s talk ecology. Give me a more non-ecological way of producing daily news than to print them on paper and transport them hundreds of miles. There is none.

So you see, I am a man of multimedia journalism.

The ecological aspect is easy to understand. The ecological break-even for a web publication vs. a newspaper is tied to minutes of use. It is also tied to the way electricity is produced. 


There is no carbon dioxide free way of producing electricity, so using the web will increase the carbon footprint. Finnish studies suggest that the break-even is somewhere around 40 minutes of newspaper consumption on the web. If you read longer, the paper version is more ecological.

I have a hard time believing this, but I don’t have any evidence.

Then a word about attitude. If somebody in 1983 had put an ad about bingo, poker or – God heavens Girls! -  beside a high quality journalistic article in a high quality paper, there would have been a crisis beyond belief in the newsroom. Girls, games and gambling is nothing you wrap around quality journalism.

Well, now you have to.

Papers are making money on the web, but not enough. And they will not make enough money before they realize that “enough” is a smaller amount than they are used to. And they still not make enough money on the web before they realize that ads on the web are not ads on paper. Girls, games and gambling – in some form – is going to be advertisers funding quality journalism.

You either take it, or leave the web. Until you find something more suitable.