Your Local Paperboy Circa 2020

Did you ever notice that some of the worst bike riders have some of the most expensive gear? With the weather finally picking up here, there are a lot of out-of-practice riders on the road – but they sure do make it look fun. Maybe it’s just Jason Calacanis’ fatblogging project that has me inspired, but it’s definitely time to get back on my bike. While I’m not the fastest (or the best-outfitted) biker in my neighborhood, I do love waking up early Sunday morning, before church, and taking a long ride. I love seeing other dads driving kids my son’s age in old mini-vans delivering stacked-high Sunday Times and Washington Posts in our neighborhood.

I guess we all have a little Norman Rockwell in us. Such moments of neighborhood nostalgia are being replaced and the era of the paper boy is on its way out in favor of virally distributed news. Much like the paperboy bringing the news to your door step, news distribution in the future will reach readers where they are, rather than waiting for the reader to come to the news. It’s the difference between subscribing and walking down to the local news agent or 7/11 to pick up your paper.

Mark Glaser has laid out his vision for the newsroom of the future where multi-media journalists reign and the doors are open to the community. But news is not created without first figuring out the means of distribution. I think it’s safe to say Glaser’s on target when he says the newsroom of the future “will deliver the news in whatever way the community craves and is economically feasible, including online video, audio, print, online, mobile, TV or radio.” What I think he misses from this assessment is the where and the how.

The model for news distribution today is based on the Town Crier. Someone would stand in the center square and call out the news of the day to anyone in range. If you were down at the river washing your clothes, you’d need to get your news from someone else who heard it and trust they got the message right. Sure, there might be gossip down by the river, but there were no trusted, third-party endorsed sources like the Town Crier down there rattling off the King’s latest proclamation.

Today’s news is more fluid. We catch it at the Department of Motor Vehicles on a news ticker, we hear it on the radio in our cars, we see it on a TV in the hotel lobby, or we get it via email or a portal. While distribution has been diffused throughout culture, the channels of distribution are still owned by corporations. With the newsroom of 2020, distribution, like content creation, will be shifted –at least in part – to the citizenry as the role of editor and paperboy are mashed-up into a hybrid hierarchy-less job description. These distributors of the news will select the news that is of most interest to their readers – be it 10 or 10 million of them – creating customized news lenses. 

Although you may not see the paperboy of 2020 trailing his dad’s minivan, tossing newspapers onto porches, you can bet I’ll still be bumping into him on my early morning bike rides.

Comments

[gzino]

Jeff - great paperboy and Town Crier analogies. Can you expand on your vision of the 2020 versions - e.g. how functions such as editing, aggregation, and channels come together to form the customized lenses that you refer to?