The Modern Journalist

On Innovation and Engagement

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what Mark Cuban told me a few months back. You’ll see it referenced in previous and upcoming posts because it was maybe the best piece of advice I’ve been given when it comes to my book.

The essence of what he said as he shot down my initial ideas: what have you done that is radically different and gives users something they’ve never had before.

That’s easy for him to say. Broadcast.com — his baby — let millions of people with Internet connections listen to streaming audio of their hometown sports teams. As a Cincinnatian in San Francisco, that meant a great deal to me.

So whenever I think about the news and technology, Cuban’s voice is in the back of my head pushing me to think above, below, around and beyond whatever my initial idea was. He and Michael Robertson (of MP3.com fame) have probably influenced my thinking more than any two folks I’ve met because as far as I know, they’ve never once been sold on my idea.

When that happens, I’ll know I’ve got something.

Which makes me wonder who are the mentors — for lack of a better word — that are watching over the shoulders of the newspaper folks hoping to change the way we do news.

As I look around at some of what passes for innovation, I can’t help but think Cuban and Robertson would smack their heads.

The thought first hit me while I was reading about Zinio, a company that makes digital replications of magazines for consumption online, complete with flipping pages and crisp pictures. I have written about the company previously in relation to the Kindle, Amazon’s e-reader. I can see how a Zinio magazine or newspaper might look okay on that reader, but as far as innovation, I’m flummoxed.

I had the same feeling when I came across Flowww, an iTunes-like interface for websites. I found this through the CyberJournalist website. I can only hope it’s a creuel joke or the act of a bored designer. If that’s the case, we can all feel a bit better.

Each of these companies offers readers only one thing: a new package. There’s nothing revolutionary about this. There isn’t anything that I can do here that I couldn’t do before, which makes this at best an iteration and at worst a complete waste of time.

Then I stumbled across this brief from the editor of BusinessWeek.com, who said that two reporters updated a previous story by asking readers for suggestions and then adding annotations to the Web story so that people could see what had changed.

He also discussed the reporter who wrote the first sentence of a graf and allowed Twitter users to fill in the rest.

This, he said, was audience-centric storytelling.

Except it’s not. It’s just a glorified way to interview people. There’s nothing that Business Week did in those examples that hasn’t been done before. Updating a story? My local weekly newspaper, Cincinnati CityBeat, has been doing that for several years. Real-time stories? Go to any technology conference and see if you can find a reporter live-blogging and using reader input on stories. Better yet, call Dan Gillmor.

None of these pass the smell test for me. These are digital iterations, not digital innovations.

True innovation unleashes the users and readers to do something that they haven’t been able to do before. Does that mean I’m not interested in the experiments? Absolutely not. We miss more than we hit. But I don’t think we should pat ourselves on the back because we created an interface that looks like a printed page, updated a story or invited readers to help up with a story.

As Cuban asked me: what can you do now that you couldn’t do before?

Answer that and you’re cooking with fire.