Why are you doing this?

OK, time for some brutal honesty from a journalist's point of view. For 15 years, I've been making my living as a salaried journalist. I like the comfort of getting a regular paycheck and health benefits for what I do.  So does my family.  But I and those who are like me (my fellow journalists) are facing a different world than we did 15 years ago.  Back then, big media companies were mostly charge of the information that audiences had access to.  Expensive infrastructure (broadcast equipment, printing presses, etc.) made it difficult if not impossible for fresh new voices to reach millions of people.  Those of us who've been fortunate enough to have caught a ride with a media company (as I did with Ziff-Davis in 1991) had those barriers taken care of for us.  Essentially, it was an exclusive club and as long as I didn't screw up too badly, I was allowed carte blanche access to millions of audience members.  

What does it mean to screw-up badly?  Media properties are like three-legged stools.  If you pull one leg of a three-legged stool out, the entire stool falls over.  The three legs under a media property are its content, its audience members, and its funding.  Like the restaurant business where the three most important success factors are location, location, and location, the stability of the three-legged media stool depends on trust, trust, and trust.  Trust is what makes up the cross-members that connect the legs of a three legged stool together.  The legs in turn support the seat which represents the brand, and the business.  Need proof?  Just look at how much of the messaging from your local television news stations is devoted to proving how trustworthy their anchorpeople, investigative teams, and weatherpeople are.   That trustworthiness is what a branded stool -- the brand being flag under which those journalists work -- and the business is built on.  

Royally screwing things up
Here's how a screw-up works.  A journalist for a media outfit egregiously, perhaps purposefully, marginalizes the trustworthiness of that media property's content.  It could be an issue of accuracy such as a presentation of fiction as though it were fact or an outright fabrication of truth. Or it could be a conflict of interest that calls into question the objectivity of the content such as a financial relationship between someone with control over the content (writer, editor, etc.) and the subject matter appearing in the content (companies, people, etc.).   After learning of the transgression, some previously loyal audience members lose faith in the trustworthiness of the brand and turn to the other sources (competing brands) they deem to be trustworthy.  Potential audience members that were considering a switch to the brand because of its perceived trustworthiness also lose interest.  Audienceship (viewership, readership, listenership, browsership, etc.) declines.  Audience members aren't the only people who are fickle about trust.  Worried that they might be misquoted or that their confidentiality may not be protected, the sources that are key to the quality and timeliness of the media property's content go AWOL too. One leg is weakened.  The stool is still upright.

But now, advertisers are sensitized to the shift.  Not only are their ads reaching fewer members of the targeted audience, but they question the value of having their brands associated with a media property that can't be trusted.  When an advertiser pays for a half-page ad in print, a banner on  a Web site, or 30 second television spot, the expected return on that investment, to a very large extent, involves the size of the target audience that will be exposed to that ad. They quantify this with a term called CPM which stands for cost per thousand of audience members reached ("M" is the roman numeral for 1000) and, often using third parties like Nielsen Media Research, comScore Media Metrix, or Audit Bureau of Circulations, media properties go to significant lengths to certifiably prove the size of their audience to advertisers. 

For any given instance of an advertisement on a TV broadcast, in a newspaper, or on a Web site, when the "M" goes down without a corresponding change in the cost of placing the ad (called the "rate"), the CPM goes up and the expected ROI to the advertiser goes down.  So, as a result of the transgression in trust which led to a drop in M, advertisers may demand a  realignment of the rate to maintain consistency in the CPM and expected ROI,  or, in a worst case scenario, pull their ads altogether.  Either way, as a direct result of the drop in M,  the funding leg of the three-legged stool (including any lost content sales revenue such as newstand sales or subscriptions) is significantly weakened.  The downward spiral is now officially underway. 

With less funding, and depending on how much is socked away for such an "emergency," the media property may have no choice but to downsize.  Finanicially healthy media properties with strong brand names like CBSNews or the New York Times may be able to avoid such downsizing after enduring a RatherGate or Jayson Blair affair, but rest assured that there's a cost that will be borne across such organizations as they look to stabilize the weakened legs of the stool by campaigning for and rebuilding the trust of their audiences and advertisers.   But for media organizations that are more sensitive to a weakened funding leg and that downsize as a result, the first department to get hit with the shit rolling down hill is the content department.  Obviously, the first to go will be the journalist(s) and their overseers that jeopardized the brand and the business in the first place. But letting a few bad eggs go is never enough.  The hunt for fat begins and it isn't long before the beancounters start cutting into bone -- the third leg of the three legged stool (the content).  

Cutbacks to the content production department can impact the final product in many ways. For example, such a cutback could result in a reduction of content quantity.   Or, the media property may look to sustain its quantity but with fewer people (a "do more with less" approach).  With fewer people doing more work, the quality of the remaining content may suffer.  Either way -- less quantity or quality -- the content's value may diminish.

The virus that's spreading from from stool leg to stool  leg is near the completion of its round trip.  So far, a transgression in trust led to less audience members which led to a reduction in funding which led to a compromise in the content's value.  What happens when the content becomes less valuable to the targeted audience?  Well, that's exaclty what happened in the first place when the faith in the content's trustworthiness was lost.  The content's value which has already suffered one hit, now takes another.  The first round trip is complete and the chain reaction has no choice but to repeat itself.

Transparency, Survival of the Fittest, and the EBM
So, what does any of this have to do with media transparency? At a personal (journalist level), just the same way that the brand equity and existing audience relationships maintained by smart media properties like CBSNews or the New York Times is what gets them through the worst of times, it is exactly those same assets that allows the journalists on their payrolls to survive the bone cutting when it starts.   While the trust that a media brand stands for may be built over tens if not hundreds of years on the back of hundreds if not thousands of hard working journalists, the ability of a media property to survive the aforementioned vicious cycle, regardless of which leg was weakened first  (ie: a transgression in trust, an economic downturn, etc.) is very much dependent on the bond that its journalists share with its audience.  This is why smart media properties advertise the trustworthiness of their journalists.  Their journalists are not only brands in and of themselves, they're an integral part of the media property's brand.   They're looking to build the bond and the brand in a way that other media properties and journalists can't interfere with it (steal what I call "EBMs" or eyeball minutes).

Any decent journalist knows these principles.   After being the field for 15 years, you discover that, like all businesses, the media business is cyclical.  It has its ups and downs and the stool's legs are constantly being hacked at.  So, when it comes time for the bone cutting, which it so often does for most media properties, the last bylines that a media property is going to eliminate from its masthead are the ones that have the strongest bonds with its audience.   By cutting a popular journalist from its roster, a media property knows it will perpetuate the vicious cycle instead of reverse its fortunes. 

So, as a journalist, when I step back and  look at this ecosystem, if for no other reason but self-preservation, I can't help but wonder what it is I can do to improve that bond.   How about proving the trustworthiness of my work by offering transparency into the raw materials?  Imagine if media properties provided the tools and institutionalized the maintenance of transparency channels by all of their journalists.  The trickle-up effect of such a culture could have profound results on a media property's credibility and bond with its audience.  Imagine a collection transparency channels, each of which is associated with one of its journalists, organized to look like one big massive transparency channel for a given media property.  Not only would such an uber-transparency channel would put a significant amount of pressure on competitors to do the same, but in true wag-the-dog style, the integrity of the entire media community vastly improves as a result of journalists who, knowing transparency is in effect, are dotting every "i," crossing every "t," and covering all the bases before allowing their work to be published. 

(As a side note, imagine if transparency channels were institutionalized at the New York Times when Jayson Blair was employed  there.  The Blair affair might never have come to be, the Times' credibility might never have been called into question, and former Times' executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd, both of whom resigned,  might still have their jobs today.  My interest in transparency channels is not entirely unselfish, nor should the same interest be on behalf of anyone who exercises any degree of control over published content.)

Why transparency now?
My belief is that a grassroots transparency movement is exactly what the media industry needs to bolster its integrity and that we there isn't a moment too soon to start such a movement.   When big media companies controlled all the EBM's, the media establishment as a whole could survive a credibility hit without sustaining too much damage.   EBMs would just shift from one big media property to another in just a small handful of such properties.   Eventually, the original transgressor and the establishment as a whole would recover and their transgression would be forgotten.  How many people, for example, continue to penalize the media establishment, Dateline NBC, or its anchor Stone Phillips for a GM pick-up truck that was rigged to explode in a report thas televised by the TV news magazine in 1992?  In 1992, there weren't many alternatives to turn to.  All of the affected entitities survived.

But today, there are alternatives. Thanks to the Internet, the barriers to one journalist reaching millions of people have been fully eliminated and now that millions of new channels of content are being built, audience members are coming.  Or, if you're a media outfit losing the EBMs, maybe that should be going.  I may still be one of the lucky few that gets a regular paycheck and benefits from a media company. But I'm also painfully aware of the fact that, collectively, the media companies who were previously able to guarantee me a certain number of EBMs no longer have that degree of control over who sees what.   The stakes the media establishment have been significantly raised. 

By starting Web sites, and now blogs, it is quite clear that big media is recognizing the new world to which it must adapt.  But, by simply adapting (running Web sites, blogs, or publishing podcasts) big media is doing nothing more than accepting a level playing field --- a losing proposition at best since there's plenty of  evidence to suggest that people are consuming individually produced content.  There are a fixed number of EBMs and every EBM spent on that blog over there is one less EBM spent with me, you, my media property, or yours.   Time is fixed.  Until someone figures out how to put more hours into the day or travel through time, lost EBMs are lost forever.  

My sense from attending Harvard's conference on Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility  is that big media believes that the power of their brands and dominance of the channels is what will sustain them.  Assuming the latter is simply fiction.  EBMs are beign lost left and right to a medium they have no control over.  Regarding the former, a media property's brand stands for trust and nothing more.   The last four years have been disastrous for the media establishment.  Between the Blair Affair, RatherGate, and more recently, the Armstrong Williams-Department of Education fiasco, much to the detriment of all media properties, content consumers are becoming increasingly disenchanted with entire media establishment.  To some extent, it's almost as if the media establishment is pushing the EBMs out the door.  It couldn't be doing a better job shooting itself in the foot than it is doing.  

It doesn't matter whether you're an individual journalist or a big media outfuit.  Given these trends, simply going along with the crowd isn't enough.  If the media establishment believes that brand (trust) is truly a gating factor, then it has no choice but to just gear up to defend the reputation and credibility of their brands. Not only that, but to broadcast it as well.  Stop saying your anchorman is trustworthy.  Prove it.  One way to do that is with transparency channels.  The group of journalists and/or media outfits that takes the lead on establishing transparency channels could raise the bar for all journalism. And any raising of that bar can only help journalists fulfill their promise to their audiences:  the truth.

So, why am I doing this?  I think it needs to be done and like all things worth doing, we have to start somewhere.  So, I thought I'd start by trying to build a transparency channel for my own work. Maybe others will do the same.   For CNET Networks or any media outfit, such transparency channels can only improve the value of their brands.  For my own selfish reasons, my thinking is that this will not only build my credibility, but it will also make my journalism better, it will improve my value to my employer (job security!), and it will make my sources more comfortable working with me in knowing that they won't get misquoted or taken out of context (hey all you sources out there that worry about this idea.... this sort of credibility protection works in your favor too!).  Longer term, regardless of who I work for, that reputation is what will allow me to continue making a career out of journalism.  And at the age of 43 with kids that need food and who will want to go to college, I'd really rather not contemplate a post-disintermediated world.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated.