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

News Media & The Innovator's Dilemma

Volume 1:
CEOs, Coders, News Execs, Disrupters

When I started “Entertainment Weekly Magazine,” at Time Inc., back in ’90, we were seen as entrepreneurial because they moved us half a block away. That was the sum and total of the entrepreneurial spirit of the place, that we weren’t in the building.
It’s funny. I just listened to Christensen give a talk about another business. The theory of “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, is it’s so hard for the company because you have to lose money or eat into your own profitability.
If you look at what’s happening to the newspapers, Craigslist picks off a job to be done. “The Metro” picks off a job to be done. Realtor.com picks up, and every one of them is focused on a single job to be done, and they do it well. The newspaper is trying to do everything for everybody and they can’t complete.

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Career Entry Points

Volume 2:
Tech Journalists

“You do not want to be a professor. Don’t be a professor. This is talk about a dead-end career.”.
Brent Schlender
This was like 1979. I was broke and I worked as a temporary secretary in the summertime and this was a time when the senior editors were a little uncomfortable having male secretaries.
Philip Elmer-Dewitt
I got into journalism from a perspective that made me utterly cynical and suspicious of writers and writing.
Deborah Branscum

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