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There was a post at either TechCrunch or ReadWriteWeb recently talking about how there’s a new breed of journalist – a hacker/coder journalist.

They bring up a really good point – the increasing importance of coding skills.

This post will quickly walk you through why tech and coding skills are essential for journalists.

The Various Efficient and Inefficient Models of Working

First, let’s look at 6 different models of working -

1. Working for someone else. This is conventional wisdom – find a stable job.
2. Working for yourself. This is supposed to be risky – Malcolm Gladwell thinks entrepreneurship is not really risky and he has a point.
3. Having people work for you. This is the model most newspapers (and book publishers) employ.
4. Aggregating content and/or services from other sites.
5. Having people work for you for free – This is what a lot of social networking sites are doing. You can spin it any way you like – it’s still getting people to work for you for zero pay (exceptions are the non-profits).
6. Building up a network and letting people and companies make money on it and taking a cut.

This list is by no means all-encompassing. However, it ought to highlight three key things -

1. You can gradually keep improving your situation – A company like Microsoft or Apple that has a platform to which hundreds of thousands of people and companies are adding value is doing a much, much better job than someone working for a start-up.
2. As you jump through models you need a better and better story.
3. Most of the best models i.e. aggregators, user-generated content sites, platforms need significant technical and coding skills.

The company model just can’t compete with the platform and user-generated content models.

You can’t avoid coding because your competitors are using it

Newspapers and journalists can stick their heads in the sand and pretend they can get by on the ‘company’ model.

However, their competitors are using coding and new ways of thinking to destroy existing models -

1. Craig Newmark coded a classifieds site that is 100 times easier than newspapers and free. 
2. News aggregators like TechMeme and Google News surface up news faster than a journalist can make a phone call back to his office. 
3. Real Estate Listing Sites like Zillow and Trulia turn the real estate advertising model on its head.
4. Social Networks get people to add content for free – it might not be high quality content at the moment but there’s a good chance someone figures that out eventually.
5. Sites like Seeking Alpha get experts to blog for free in return for followers and increased reputation.

Newspapers and Journalists have to figure out and embrace the newest technologies. There is no other option except learning coding and how the Internet and people on the Internet work.

Why coding might be the single most important element after content

There’s an obvious war going on where coders (and companies built by coders) are trying to push the notion that content is worth nothing.

That’s clearly untrue – you can create a structure that exploits content creators but the content is what people consume.

Coding becomes the single most important element after content for some surprisingly good reasons -

1. Coding expertise is the best way to keep the value of content intact. 
2. Coding expertise is one of the best way to increase the value of content – search, distribution, accessibility, and more.
3. A knowledge of coding means you don’t overvalue coders or let them take control of your product.  
4. You can use the very same principles that coders use to get users to work for free to enrich your site and your content.  
5. The biggest reason is that you can create a platform and get hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps even millions, to add value to your site.

If big brand newspapers had built up a platform for real estate or classifieds – something that allowed listings, valuations, connections, and more – they could have taken over a huge chunk of the business. They didn’t so they’re getting killed.

The Focus on your Core Competency Argument is invalid online

If you were to go to another country (where English isn’t the first language) you wouldn’t have interpreters run your local business and you wouldn’t pretend the culture and rules for success were the same as the US.

• Yet, companies go online and do exactly what they do in the real world.
• Even worse, they rely on external companies that have little to no interest in helping them and tremendous interest in exploiting them.

It’s time for journalists to behave as if their profits and their survival depend on succeeding online.

Because they do.

If your business is migrating online you need to take drastic measures -

1. Build up Internet and Coding Expertise in-house. 
2. Make sure the top levels of management (perhaps its just you) understand the Internet in-depth.
3. Understand the way people behave online and what they believe in and how they are influenced. You shouldn’t be manipulating people but you have to fight companies who do.
4. Figure out online monetization. This is exceedingly difficult because every single person wants to teach you what would benefit them.
5. Learn to code so that you can leverage people and companies – get them to work for you for a shared purpose or some other win-win scenario.

All of these are now part of your core competency.

• If you’re a one-person outfit you need to figure all of this out in addition to creating great content.
• If you’re company you need to have all this expertise in-house.

The Internet Creates Infinite Competition in every Field

Lots of newspapers and publishers are caught up in the status quo of 20 years ago -

1. You needed a lot of money or the backing of very rich people to start a venture.
2. Money could almost always buy out dangerous ideas and companies that were a threat.
3. You had to pay people money to get them to work for you.
4. Working for you was the best case scenario for nearly everyone.

The Internet not only creates infinite competition for authors and musicians and creators, it also creates infinite competition for companies -

1. A single person (like Craig Newmark) can build a site that destroys an entire industry. 
2. People working for you are constantly tempted to go off and start a competitor. 
3. There are no barriers to entry – $50 a month for a virtual server is literally all a company needs.
4. People will work for free – for things like reputation, to avoid boredom, because they believe in what you believe in.
5. You can create platforms and get entire companies to work for you (indirectly). Take Apple and it taking 30% off of every App Sale – in business terms its poetry.

Closing Thought – The Uncomfortable Reality

Whether you are one person (author, journalist, blogger) or a company -

1. If you’re online you have to understand both the Internet and Coding.
2. If you’re online you have infinite competition and they’re ruthless – if they can they’ll steal your content and work, if they can they’ll make you work for them for free.
3. There are ideas and manipulation that is far, far more powerful than what you’ve seen in the real world. 

You have to embrace the Internet, understand it, and figure out how to flourish in it. It’s not a skill you can outsource – even if companies looking to gut you sell you that notion.

Filed under: content Tagged: | internet profit, paid content