Paul Carr of the Guardian formulates a simple, compelling strategy for saving quality journalism as the newspapers all die. The newspapers should transform themselves into magazines.
Excerpt:
What you should do is realise that your strengths are no longer speed, but rather skill, craft and accuracy. Having realised that, you should stop updating minute-ly, hourly or even daily. Instead you should follow the lead of the likes of Newsweek and the Economist and publish weekly.
Yes, weekly -- and not as an online free-for-all either, but as one single, self-contained, tangible, paid for issue, possibly in print but preferably published electronically on devices like the Kindle or behind a subscription wall on the web. The medium doesn't really matter, what matters is that the daily pressure is off, and that you're producing a complete paid for product. By leaving hourly "breaking news" and showbiz bullshit to cable and the bloggers, you can plough all of your resources into reporting the whole story, properly, professionally and fact-checked to the hilt. The blogs have speed, you have quality -- and, given what they've had to put up with all week, that's something your readers will be more than willing to pay for. There's a reason why the Economist's circulation keeps rising, while daily newspapers keep on falling.
In related news, Techcrunch thinks that web companies like YouTube might be abandoning attempts to make money from user generated content:
Across the Web 2.0 world, we're seeing a quiet-but-knee-jerk shift away from UGC in favor of professional content.... Last week, news leaked that YouTube was close to locking Disney up in an exclusive deal for long-form content, and now, we hear of a potential deal with Sony Pictures.
With so much stuff on the web now, a lot of people seem primed to pay money to skip past all the shallowness and mediocrity and make a bee-line for the best nectar.