Friday, July 3rd, 2009...2:01 pm
What newspapers can learn from ice harvesters
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Ice harvesting. Photo courtesy of the Pewaukee (Wisconsin) Historical Society.
It almost seems you can’t read a journo blog these days without finding a metaphor or simile about the state of the news business. The news business has been compared to lemmings, railroads and, of course, the horse and buggy. (Read Nick Bergus’ post on the topic for an entertaining list of many such metaphorical comparisons.)
People, including me, seem to like these comparisons because they help us understand something new based on something we already get.
So I have two more to sling at you: ice harvesting and sewing machines.
The news business is like ice harvesting:
What is ice harvesting? In the old days before refrigeration was commonly in use, ice harvesters would cut huge blocks of ice from frozen lakes in cold regions and deliver the ice to residents’ homes, so they could keep perishables from spoiling. In Tully, N.Y., a community of roughly 800 people about 30 minutes from where I live, enthusiasts re-enact this old-time craft each winter as a way to remember the past.
So what? Well, in Alltop-founder Guy Kawasaki’s book “Reality Check,” he notes that ice harvesting essentially ended as a profession because other people with different skills brought electrical refrigeration to the home. Who would buy from the iceman after that? Kawasaki used ice harvesting as an example of what not to do. He was explaining how businesses need to reinvent themselves to serve the changing needs of their customers.
He wasn’t talking specifically about newspapers, but I think the comparison applies. Right now, newspapers are staffed with journalists who know how to write, edit, take picture, tell stories, just as the ice harvesting business employed people who knew how to cut ice, store it and deliver it all over and who had the equipment to do that.
Now, perhaps, ice harvesters could have forseen that their profession needed to change. Maybe they could have teamed up with those who applied the already invented concept of refrigeration and translated it into the modern fridge. But likely, they faced two problems:
- They couldn’t imagine a world different from the one that existed for them. So they couldn’t foresee a world without ice harvesters.
- They didn’t necessarily have the technical skills or education to apply refrigeration to home use.
The result: Most went out of business, and other people made lots of money keeping things cool inside people’s home.
What does this mean for newspapers? Essentially, the ice harvesting metaphor offers two lessons: To succeed reinventing your business, you must have vision for the future and skills to bring it about.
- Vision: I won’t beat this dead horse, but it’s pretty clear that the news business as a whole didn’t forsee or plan for the day when newspapers might not be the main way people got their news. Whether news executives didn’t see the Internet’s power coming or they ignored it or they didn’t understand it in a way doesn’t really mater. The fact is many in the news business were living in a reality where they couldn’t or wouldn’t imagine a world very different from the one at that time.
- Skills: Many newspapers don’t really have enough employees with the technical skills that are needed to transform the industry. For the news business to really reinvent itself, it needs workers who understand how to create online applications from scratch, how to take advantage of the benefits of open APIs, who understand how to write code and change programming on the fly. It’s understandable that news organizations employeed few people like this in the past. It didn’t need to. It needed people who knew how to cut ice, not invent home refrigerators.
The good news is: I think the news business can do this if it wants to. Journalists are generalists; much of the profession is built on writing about topics in which one is not necessarily an expert. It seems reasonable that journalists could learn more about the technical end of the computer than many of them they know now. Will they be Google engineers? Of course, not. Hopefully, as the news business adjusts to its new reality, it can both train its staff and hire people to supplement the technical understanding.
And, really, news organizations don’t have much of a choice if they want to survive. People don’t want the ice delivered to them in a horse-drawn truck anymore. They want it right in their kitchen, ready whenever they need it.
Coming next: What the news business can learn from sewing machines.
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I'm Gina Chen, a 20-year veteran newspaper journalist who is studying for a communications Ph.D. I want to see journalism survive. I believe news organizations need to embrace new media, change their thinking, improve their content and innovate. Read more about me 
20 Comments
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Key words are “not imagining” what will happen to an industry or profession in the future. Truth is, with technology changing so rapidly most of us couldn’t possibly imagine – but we sure had better try!
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:18 pm
[...] Newspapers need to reinvent | Save the Media. [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Nicely done. Looking at newspapers’ evolution into what may be simply a boutique indulgence, I’ve often likened my 12 years in newspapers (I left on my own terms) to being a whaler in the waning years of that industry. I loved it, and sometimes I still get the “Sea-Fever,” but I’m not about to be that guy in a silly costume singing sea chanties on the wharf for tourists’ nickels. I’m updating my skills, but I may have to reinvent myself away from journalism entirely.
July 4th, 2009 at 9:43 am
@Jeff Korhan –
Good point. It’s hard to imagine the future because we live in the present. That concept always makes me think of the 1970s cartoon, “The Jetsons.” Their version of the future isn’t anything like the world today … why? Because it was based on fantasy; the creators couldn’t see the actual progression of technology, so they couldn’t guess what would work and what wouldn’t . And, of course, it’s a cartoon.
– Gina
July 4th, 2009 at 9:44 am
@Tom Prete –
Love, love, love the whaling example.
– Gina
July 4th, 2009 at 10:08 am
[...] Dave Hendricks 10:08 am on July 4, 2009 Permalink | Reply Tags: bloggers An interesting but too-short blog post comparing current newspaper company woes to the defunct ̵… [...]
July 4th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Will we consume artisanal news in the future?
http://permissiontechnology.com/2009/07/04/will-we-be-consuming-artisanal-news-in-the-future/
July 4th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Thank you, Gina — great post!
I’m also glad to see that you are continuing with s-t-m, and good luck with the endeavor.
-Scott
July 4th, 2009 at 11:57 am
[...] Contact me What newspapers can learn from ice harvesters [...]
July 5th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Nice article and comparison
July 6th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
@Dave Hendricks –
First — love that you thought my blog post was too short. Don’t often hear that.
See your point about comparing ice harvesters with bloggers. Good stuff there.
I like the idea of artisanal news. Very interesting idea if what you mean is sort of eschewing mass production and making more individualized but higher-quality product. (I’m thinking of artisanal cheese, for example, which cost more than the grocery store stuff but it much better and worth the price to a small, highly interested group, although not necessarily to a mass market.)
I’ll think about this idea more. I think there’s something to it. Thanks for planting the seed.
– Gina
July 6th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
@Scott Doty –
Thanks, Scott.
– Gina
July 6th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
@Daniel Dryzek –
Thanks, Daniel.
– Gina
July 6th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
@bloggingmom67 – @bloggingmom67 yes the idea of Artisanal News is focused on lower volume, higher quality. Right now there is a terminology disconnect between ‘news’ and ‘journalism’. Essentially journalism is ‘artisanal’, where news is ‘mass’. Newspapers mix those two things together in one curated source, with AP feeds, local stringers, syndicated columnists, and their own stuff. Bloggers often take whatever from wherever, ‘curate’ it, and add their spin.
My feeling is that we are entering into a two-tier ‘news’ world. Two-tier from the quality/quantity sense and two-tier from the monetization perspective. Artisanal production of ‘news’ is part of that emerging architecture, at least as i see it.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:40 am
Great blog. Wonderful analogy. A key point is that journalists need to think differently about what they do and how they do it, force themselves to learn, and learn to love, new technology and BE OPEN to monumental change.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
@Dave Hendricks –
Very interesting idea … I’m going to take your idea and mull it a bit.
– Gina
July 8th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
@Jeff Klein –
Yes — being open to “monumental” change really is the key. Well, said.
– Gina
July 8th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
[...] posts that show exactly how we must change the news business away from the old model or become extinct like Ice Harvesters, while the second post showed that we need to serve niche markets like Sewing [...]
August 11th, 2009 at 9:01 am
[...] at Attentionization, used it when he wrote about my post regarding what newspapers could learn from the decline in the ice harvesting business. (Read more about how he explains artisanal news in the comments on that [...]
August 11th, 2009 at 10:39 am
[...] used it when he wrote about my post regarding what newspapers could learn from the decline in the ice harvesting business. (Read more about how he explains artisanal news in the comments on that [...]
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