Aire Foxy Fun Time

Eastman Kodak serves as a good case study and reminder for those of us in journalism:

1. You can't sit on your laurels
2. The innovation that could save your bacon might be right in your own shop - if you don't discount it
3. "We needed to understand that we were not a family; we were a team."

All three can be found in a look by Reuters today at Kodak and its spinoff, Eastman Chemical. The venerable film and camera maker is struggling, now seventh in digital cameras and struggling against HP and other established players in the printer market. Spinoff Eastman Chemical, on the other hand, is thriving.

As to point one above, Kodak clearly stayed at the dance with film too long. Think about the difficulties, some tradition and some financial (large debt and capital investments to be paid down; sucking at the teat of the cash cow, etc.), that traditional news organizations have gone through.

Point two follows from point one - as the article notes, Kodak invented the digital camera. But there was no urgency to develop it - after all, why cannibalize the cash cow that was film (and chemicals).

Point three is from a former CEO of Eastman Chemical, Brian Ferguson, who talks about the difficulties Eastman had in adjusting to faster, more flexible times (and the need to lay people off) because of the "paternalism" of Kodak. You can scoff at it if you want; you can decry how the orientation of capital and labor has changed - or regressed, depending on your view. But I throw it in because it captures nicely the orientation I hope graduating students have and understand. Too many in my generation wanted to work for a "family," and the PR spin in many corporations still emphasizes that. But when push comes to shove, it's best to remember Ferguson's words because in the cold light of business, they ring more true.

I've used Kodak before as a parable of our times. Kodak's story is worth reviewing periodically for any journalist.

As we approach another new year, I want to share with you that 6-year-old speech that's also linked to above. I think it still has some good points.

---

    It's been a tough year. Journalism has beeneconomically battered ... then legally battered in the Valerie Plamecase ... and finally – literally – physically battered by HurricanesKatrina and Rita.
    Yet you have persevered, practiced and honed yourcraft, true to the idea that people deserve to know what works – andwhat doesn't – in this world. It is not easy. It is not a job everyonecan, or will, do, despite what some people would tell us.
    But you did it. And you are being honored tonightfor excellence in that work, and you should all give yourselves a roundof applause.
  
    I'm a nomad. I started in radio some 30 years agowhen all-news was becoming hot and got a break working for one of theall-news pioneers – Westinghouse Broadcasting. I moved to a TVassignment and anchor desk for a while, and then got hired at the paperbecause an editor was willing to take a chance on me. It didn't hurtthat we kept beating them down at City Hall.
    I ended up spending 18 years at the AssociatedPress, the kind of journalism that is exhausting, maddening – andthoroughly exhilarating: From covering presidents and what were thenthe super-secret stealth fighters, to writing about the guy in westernOhio who had a Titanic museum in his basement and watching thousands ofelderly people jam the Rhode Island Statehouse because their money wasfrozen in decrepit credit unions.
    So I figured when you all invited me to speak, thepress club decided, given the times, it might be good to see that it'spossible to be a nomad journalist and still maintain a 300-pound,churlish figure.
    When I was leaving the AP bureau in Columbus, Ohio,to start my days as a correspondent, my boss put his arm around me andgave me my – as he put it – "AP management training."
    "Do good, don't do bad. And don't miss the big one."That was it – short and sweet. So we'll try to stick to a few shortobservations tonight about our current state of affairs in journalismand what we might do about it.

    My first piece of advice: Next time, instead of NewOrleans, send the hurricane entries to Boise.
    [Eds note: Thepress club lost about half of its entries, those that had been sent tothe Press Club of New Orleans for judging, as a result of Katrina.]

A "media" company threatened
    Let's start with the tale of a media company, onethat's been an integral part of our business.
    In recent years, this company saw technology change.High-tech competitors from industries it hadn't had to think aboutbefore invaded its turf.
    The company is trying to reinvent itself – to pullaway from the medium to which it is so closely tied. Its stock price isdown almost a third in the past year, and large layoffs threaten to cutto the core of its business.
    I'm not going to tell you quite yet which mediacompany I'm talking about, but all of us could probably find somethingin there that sounds a lot like where we work.

What is journalism worth?
    The one thing this company does know is what itsproduct is worth, even if that worth is diminishing.
    Sadly, I'd suggest that's not the case withjournalists. We know what our newspapers are worth, and our radio or TVstations. You can put a value on those presses and transmitters, onthose cameras and subscription lists.
    But what is thejournalism itself worth?
    If we look at it with the cold, hard eye we bring toour stories, we might have to admit our journalism is worth nothing, atleast when it comes to money, which is the way business keeps score.
    Our journalism has gotten its value from beinglumped together into a package that attracts eyeballs and thus attractsadvertisers. We're like some giant 800-number dating service, only witha purpose we keep telling ourselves is nobler.
    For a journalist, advertisers exist for one reason –to turn time into money.
Our readers and viewers pay us in time. But if we want to be inbusiness, we have to keep score with money. But if our only value comesfrom aggregation, that's a problem at a time when corporate behemothslike Viacom are splitting and when we see a rise in free papers and wecontinue to struggle with whether we can charge for news on the Web.
    After all, if the "package" your journalism comes inis free, what does that say about the value of the actual content?
    Without knowing what our journalism is worth, we endup valuing the package, not the content. And that makes us dependent onany change that suddenly makes that package less relevant.
    In short, it cheapens our journalism.
    Yet I rarely hear journalists ask this basicquestion. And there's hardly been a peep from the major journalismorganizations. (True, they've been a little tied up lately trying tokeep journalists out of jail and to preserve some semblance of freedomof information after September 11.)
    Some researchers – Stephen Lacy and Phillip Meyerare the most prominent – have been trying to figure out this question –can quality sell? So far, the answer is a tentative yes.
    But too much of today's journalism is just acommodity, one nugget not much different from the next. And as welearned in beginning economics, in a commodity business, you get largeand you get cheap.
If you think about it, that sounds a lot like modern media.
    If we're going to argue that somehow qualityjournalism is too important to die – and if we expect anyone to payattention to that argument – we need a crash program that gets to thatcore question: What is journalism worth?
    I challenge you tonight to leave here and startasking what your journalism really is worth.
    Because if we don't do that, if we let others do itfor us, then we might as well admit journalism is nothing more than asocial good to be supported by foundations, donations and governmentfunding. In short (and with apologies to anyone from public radio or TVin the audience), the way we pay for most social goods in this country– by begging.

Rapid Relevance
    Part of modern business is understanding that yourcustomers likely will be gone tomorrow if you don't meet their needs.There are simply too many alternatives.
    Who is that customer? As Pogo said: "We have met theenemy and it is us."
    That media company I talked about? The medium isfilm, the company is Kodak, and we, journalists, were among its largestcustomers. At every sporting event, newspaper and magazinephotographers went through yards and yards of film.
And then things changed. The digital camera became relativelyaffordable. We didn't want to wait. We wanted those images now. And wecould do away with all those messy chemicals and cost.
    One day, in the late 1990s, the AP decreed that ifyou were a newspaper and you wanted photos, you'd better get a digitalreceiver. That was enough to move even recalcitrant publishers. Some ofKodak's largest customers were history.
    OK, so you're Kodak. You still have that massivebase of retail customers who not only have film cameras but have to getthat film developed, something that also was a big part of Kodak'sbusiness.
    Only now Kodak had to deal with cameras that hadnames like Sony. Or Hewlett-Packard: A computer company? Sellingcameras? (Does that sound familiar – Yahoo hiring war correspondents?)And that developing went to one-hour labs. (How many of us still sendfilm for two-day processing – assuming we still own film camera?)
    So now one of Kodak's biggest competitors isn'tanother camera company but a retailer – the world's largest – Wal-Mart.And Wal-Mart often is using another company's equipment – Fuji's.
    But we – as journalists or as amateur photographers– didn't care about some venerable name, did we? We wanted rapidrelevance  – when we wanted it, where we wanted it and how wewanted it.
    We're not the first. People are fond of saying therailroads suffered because they didn't realize they were in thetransportation business. But the smartest people in transportationrealized their business also was actually rapid relevance – getting itto the customer exactly when, where and how the customer wanted it.
    So if Kodak dies – and I really don't think it willbecause it is reinventing itself, but it's going to be gut-wrenchingfor many people – but if it does, we helped kill it. And if we don'tcare about a little $13 billion company, why should our readers careany more about a $3 billion Knight Ridder or New York Times or a $1billion McClatchy – or any other media company, if we don't give themwhat they want?
    Consider a few things about those customers wecovet, the 18- to 34-year-olds:

• Jupiter Research recently reported a third of them increasinglyrely on their portable media players for TV and instant news andinformation – and that was before the video iPod.
• M-metrics says full-time students with jobs are significantlymore likely to use mobile e-mail than anyone else.
• Another recent survey found that 85 percent of college studentssurveyed had cell phones – and most of those could send and receivetext messages or play games.
  

    Consider the widely reported Washington Post focusgroups where people said they wanted the news – they just didn't wantthe newspaper. It was dirty, messy, a pain to deal with – in otherwords, just like all those photo chemicals we were so happy to banishfrom our newsrooms.
    And – even though Yahoo sponsored this study –consider a report from this week that should scare the heck out of youas a journalist: 81 percent of college students said search engineswere the "best" source of information. Friends and family came next at64 percent and then traditional media at 34 percent. (The numbers aremore than 100 because the study took the top two choices as "best.)
    In other words, if we continue to value ourjournalism by the package it comes in, we have no idea what the coreproduct – the thing our customers say they want – is worth, and we riskbecoming obsolete.

"Dead Money" and "Bad Competitors"
    If we just cut profits and put the money back intothe newsroom, all would be well. Right?
    It's become such a chorus that I'm reminded ofsomething Gen. George Patton once said: "If everyone is thinkingalike, then someone isn't thinking."
    Recently, some folks have pointed out it isn't thatsimple, not when most media companies now are creatures of the publicstock markets.
When you get stockholders used to a certain profit margin, you can'tjust wake up one morning and say, I think we'll cut the profits so wecan do better journalism – even if you wanted to.
    You'd be fired – the directors by law have toprotect shareholders' interests. And you'd probably be sued.
    So if you don't innovate and find new products – ornew ways of doing things – you basically must cut and cut to makemargin. Finally, the market decides you've cut too much and you're nolonger worth the price. It's called: "dead money."
    Eventually, your stock value falls enough that youcan afford to buy back the shares and go private, or you become cheapenough that a takeover company dismembers you.
    That does allow some new players – some who mightcare deeply about the journalism – into the game. But it's gutwrenching, and there's no guarantee you won't be bought up by afinancial blood-sucker. This is business survival of the fittest. Beready for it.
    We also face what business-strategy expert MichaelPorter calls the "bad competitor," one that doesn't play by "our"rules. It doesn't have to. Electronic news sites have much lower costsof entry. Even a new newspaper these days can buy press time or evennew presses more cheaply than those of the established media.
    "Citizen journalism" sites – one of which I'm in themiddle of trying to set up – are even doing it without "big-j"Journalists.

Bet on the jockey, not on the horse
    It sounds like a bleak picture. It doesn't need tobe.
    Yes, there are going to be rough times.
    But if we, as journalists, are to have a hope ofreclaiming the journalism we set out to do, we can't ignore – or worseyet, simply wring our hands and whine about – what's happening aroundus. We have to bet on the jockey, not the horse.
    Let me explain.
    I enjoy putting a few bucks down on the ponies. Butyou won't find me in most cases at thoroughbred tracks like Belmont orChurchill Downs. I'm more likely to be watching the harness races atYonkers or the old Louisville Downs – or maybe Pompano Park.
    I've learned that I'm lousy at betting on horses.They are like technology – big, sleek, powerful – and more likely tocome in out of the money. So while the payoff can be great, I'm notwilling to tie my paycheck to Big Elmer.
    But I have learned I can bet the jockey.
    The jockey straddling half a ton of horseflesh ispretty much along for the ride. But a harness jockey has more controlover that "technology," and you can find jockeys who tend to be moreconsistent winners. So I'm betting on the skill, the craft, not thetechnology.
    And that's what I'm hoping you'll do as journalists.
    You need to worry less about the technology and betmore on your craft. The medium does not matter as much as thejournalism.
If you're a good storyteller – and that you're here tonight shows youare, whether in words, pictures or graphics – you already are honingthe skills necessary in this multimedia, always-on world.
    A good storyteller already tries to create amultimedia event in the reader's mind. Sight, sound, smell – you'retrying to transmit all of them.
And the smart writer has always worked with photographers. That writerknew a so-so story could make 1-A with a great photo -- and thephotographer was another advocate for the story. And a goodphotographer always got a sense of the writer's story, knowing that ifthe pictures matched, they were likely to get the best play.
    That's what this multimedia world is all about –being aware of all the ways to tell a story and knowing enough to usethose other resources when needed – and when appropriate.
    If you're a writer who wants the reader to "hear" astory, why wouldn't you want to help those readers who come to thestory on the Web with a few short audio clips? If you want them to"see," why not video or a slide show?
    Fortunately, we rather quickly shrank from thisvision of the new-age multimedia reporter as "Edward Scissorhands" –outfitted with multiple tools, a veritable Swiss Army knife of ajournalist. Of course, as in the movie, things tended to turn out badlywhen it was tried, or even when we just thought about it much. We nowseem to realize this "one-person band" idea isn't the best and thisisn't going to be journalism on the cheap.
    But even if you're in a small newsroom without bigresources, you can still expand your storytelling. There are so manysimple, cheap tools out there that even if all you do is occasionallyadd sound to your print story shoveled onto the Web, you're givingpeople a reason to come to that Web site for your journalism.
    This isn't going to be painless. We're in the"Jell-O era" – the time when managers are tempted throw anything theycan against the wall to see what sticks. That's natural. It alsoproduces silly mandates, such as you have to get sound on every storyor every story has to have some other multimedia element.
    Of course, not every story lends itself to sound,and you certainly don't want to spook an interview by whipping out amicrophone at the wrong time. Just the same, I've seen too many "print"journalists and journalism students fall back on that excuse when itclearly wasn't likely. Do what we used to do in TV when we had to shootfilm – do the interview in pencil and paper first, and then pull outthe microphone and record. You'll probably get better, more thoughtfulanswers as a result.

Watch the people, not the rats
    Two final points: First, listen to the rat poisonexpert.
    On NPR the other day there was a fascinatinginterview with an author who recounted dinner with the rat poisonspecialist of Europe. Asked about his success, the poison specialistsaid: "I watch the people, not the rats."
    Rats eat the food people leave. So in France, hemixes in a little butterfat with the poison. In Germany, it's some porkfat. In Venice, I guess it's olive oil. As journalists, we also need towatch the people – not the rats.
    Part of the reason we're in this mess is because wehaven't paid attention to changing desires, lifestyles and needs.
    We wrote too much for those we were covering – therats. We expected people to read it the way we wanted them to. Weheard, but we didn't really pay attention, when someone questionedwhether we were really in "mass media" anymore.
    And too often we forgot that it doesn't hurt to mixa little butter – or some occasional sugar – into our stories.

In the 21st century, large is not incharge
    My final point comes from, Sumner Redstone, thepower behind Viacom. When Redstone said this year that he was splittingthe $23 billion colossus so that it could more nimbly respond tochanges in the media world, he said this: "In the 21st century, largeis no longer in charge."
    Those should be sweet words to journalists because,at its essence, journalism is small. We too often confuse journalismwith the practice of putting out a newspaper or putting on a newscast.Those are team efforts.
    But the process of gathering news, of discoveringand uncovering, of going places where the average person can't go –that, my friends, remains a one-on-one relationship between source andjournalist. And that's not likely to change anytime soon.
    Small means opportunity. Yes, it was sad when theBaltimore Sun said it was closing its London and Beijing bureaus. Butperhaps now jobs open for two, three or more freelancers.
    If we don't like the way things are going and thinkwe can do it better ourselves, there's no better time. The costs toentry are low – you can put up a community news Web site for a fewhundred dollars and a few hours' work. Remember, unlike at Kodak, we are the raw material.
    Will such "citizen journalism" make money? I don'tknow. That's what we're trying to find out in a South Carolina project.
    But don't make the same kind of arrogant mistakeswe've made before in dismissing things out of hand, like this kind ofthinking from a former SPJ president:
    "There is a difference between 'citizen journalism'and 'professional journalism,'" he wrote. "A professional journalist'sNo. 1 obligation is to be accurate. A citizen journalist's No. 1obligation is to be interesting."
    He missed the point. The challenge for both thesedays is to be accurate andinteresting.
    If we can do both – and be quick ... if we canfigure out what we do is worth ... if we can bet on the jockey and notthe horse ... and watch the people not the rats ... and if we rememberthat large is not in charge ...  I believe we as journalists canreclaim journalism's soul, no matter what the medium.
    There is no better time than now. There is no oneelse but us!
    And if you don't believe me on that, well at leasttrust me on this: Next year the hurricane entries go to Boise.