An oral history of the epic collision between journalism and digital technology, 1980 to the present

A project of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy

An oral history of the epic collision between journalism and digital technology, from 1980 to the present

Too Few Engineers in Sr Leadership?

Volume 1:
CEOs, Coders, News Execs, Disrupters

Yeah, the interesting thing is in the media business if you look historically back like if you read the Hearst biography and a lot of, actually CNN and those things technology played a huge role in the start of those businesses. They scaled tremendously, but over a long period of time, the engineering focus at those companies went down and the content focus went way up.
Plus he had the idea that, since markets were nine to five Monday to Friday but they owned this bandwidth 24 hours a day and seven days a week and they weren’t using it nights and weekends, he would look for some kind of information that could transmit on nights and weekends. That’s when he came to me and he said, “Could sports be that?” I said, “Perfect.
I did feel relatively alone, partially because of a technological point of view. There wasn’t that much going on.

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Journalism Stars vs News Brands

Volume 2:
Tech Journalists

I never was all that happy about that because I always feel that you have a certain amount of capital with these people there. I prefer to use my capital to get stories, rather than conference appearances.
Steven Levy
There always were stars. I think what makes it a brand is the web. That is what makes it a brand.
Walt Mossberg
In certain cases if you do your homework, you should be declarative. That’s why I want to create stars. I want Peter Kafka, when Comcast or someone does some deal thing, [to write] “Look, this is bullshit.”.
Kara Swisher

Explore more topics Vol. 2 

The Big Picture

For most of the 20th century, any list of America’s wealthiest families would include quite a few publishers generally considered to be in the “news business”: the Hearsts, the Pulitzers, the Sulzbergers, the Grahams, the Chandlers, the Coxes, the Knights, the Ridders, the Luces, the Bancrofts — a tribute to the fabulous business model that once delivered the country its news. While many of those families remain wealthy today, their historic core businesses are in steep decline (or worse), and their position at the top of the wealth builders has long since been eclipsed by people with other names: Gates, Page and Brin and Schmidt, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Case, and Jobs — builders of digital platforms that, while not specifically targeted at the “news business,” have nonetheless severely disrupted it.

Keep reading Vol 1. 

The Tech Journalists

A transformative wave washed over the world economy this past quarter-century and technology journalists were its chroniclers and front-row witnesses. Many, among the twenty interviewed, say a catastrophic disruption of the news business was to be expected. But they feel their warnings went largely unheard within their workplaces, a contributing factor to the industry’s late and ineffectual counter-efforts. In contrast to pessimism about the future financial underpinnings of their business, they’re optimistic about the outlook for journalism as new tools, audiences and approaches emerge and evolve.

Keep reading Vol 2. 

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Volume
Vol 1: CEOs, Coders, News Execs, Disrupters
Vol 2: Tech Journalists

Four veterans of digital journalism and media — John Huey, Martin Nisenholtz, Paul Sagan, and later John Geddes — interviewed dozens of people who played important roles in the intersection of media and technology — from CEOs to coders, journalists to disruptors.

Riptide is the result: more than 50 hours of video interviews and two narrative essays that trace the evolution of digital news from early experiments to today. It’s what really happened to the news business.

Read Vol. 1  
See interviews