What "unbundling" means for news organizations

The New York Times story about Facebook News Feed that I wrote my previous blog post on also mentions the term "unbundling," which we have talked about in class this semester. It's a term used to describe changes occurring in the way a number of professions and industries serve their clients and customers.

As one non-communications example, some attorneys are — within the parameters of their codes of professional conduct — unbundling services in an effort to save clients money (and keep them from using products like LegalZoom). They may represent clients only through specific steps in a court proceeding, for example, or break up what once had been a package of services into smaller, less expensive alternatives.

The Times article cites the changes in the music industry that have occurred over time as comparable to the journalism profession. No longer do consumers have to buy an album or CD to get the one or two songs they like; now they can purchase individual songs online. Likewise, readers and viewers increasingly have less "brand loyalty," opting to go to single stories of interest that they find through their social media feeds or search engines rather than to a specific news source like the Times or NBC News.

As mentioned in the previous post, this puts pressure on both the editorial and business sides of news organizations to rethink how they present their content. The Times story also mentions a move by The Washington Post to look at ways it can deliver "different versions of [its] journalism to different people, based on information about how they have come to an article, which device they are on and even, if it is a phone, which way they are holding it."

The Post's digital editor says more than half of its mobile readers are millennials who get their news online and primarily through social media sites. “We’re asking if there’s a different kind of storytelling, not just an ideal presentation,” the editor said. People reading the paper on a mobile phone during the day may prefer a different kind of "reading experience" than those who are on a laptop at home in the evening, she said, adding that such a change is “ultimately about sustaining our business or growing our audience.” 

Kudos to big organizations like The Post for looking for every advantage in today's news market, but most smaller news operations don't have those kinds of resources. They must look for other opportunities to reach readers and viewers, such as by offering content — such as local news specific to their communities — that no one else has. That will be difficult in today's age of reduced newsroom staff and smaller news holes.

Solutions journalism

In chapter 4 of Searchlights and Sunglasses, Eric Newton discusses how critical it is for newspapers to engage, as well as to be engaged in, their communities:

In the digital age, we don’t just consume the media; we are the media. Friends, neighbors, co-workers, family — seemingly everyone is tweeting, posting, liking, commenting, creating and using news. 

But news by itself is not enough. Knight Foundation believes communities are at their best when informed and engaged. For news to matter, people must act on it. Solutions require people to engage with each other as well as the issues at hand. Impact requires community.

Newton and the Knight Foundation believe newspapers should not only identify problems in their communities, but solutions as well. A post last week on Columbia Journalism Review's "Behind the News" blog titled "Building a New Storytelling Movement" discusses a new fellowship program by Images and Voices of Hope, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to make media "agents of positive change." The five fellows in the program will spend six months exploring the potential of "restorative narratives" — stories that demonstrate how people can contribute positively to a problem in their town.

The story also quotes David Bornstein, a New York Times columnist and founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, who advocates the need for this type of reporting and writing:

[Bornstein] would like to see journalists take advantage of multiple angles when reporting any one story—solutions journalism and restorative narratives are just two prisms through which a story can be told. The more angles available, the more comprehensive stories can be, he says. The problems faced by society today are increasingly complex, Bornstein says, and it’s no longer adequate for journalists to point to problems without showing readers how people are trying to solve them.

This makes sense to me, and I think it can be a way for local newspapers to make themselves more relevant to their communities again. While a majority of people value local news, they don't always make the connection that if their local newspaper downsizes or even closes, news about their schools, their elected officials, their neighbors and their communities may become nearly impossible to find.