The medium is the network

This post first appeared in the March 2007 edition of Newspapers & Technology.

As you get older, you learn to rely less on your equipment and more on your connections. In newspaper technology, as in everything else, the distributed power of the Internet has changed not only the way we do business, but our lives in general.

It is no longer about hardware and software but it’s the network that is important.

“The network is opening up some amazing possibilities for us to reinvent content, reinvent collaboration,” wrote Tim O’Reilly. Notoriously slow moving, our industry is starting to catch on and reinvent elements of our own businesses.

Enabling formats like Adobe’s PDF have, over time, allowed us to throw something out there on that network and have everyone see it the same way - no matter what hardware or software limitations we might face.

Workflow changes

Additionally, certain tools like Microsoft’s Office suite have become commonplace across platforms and almost as universal as a claw hammer.

These standardizations have changed newspaper workflows as a result.

It is no longer a requirement that every machine in the building (from the editor’s terminal, to the photographer’s, business manager’s, publisher’s, reporter’s and so on) be loaded with thousands of dollars worth of software (QuarkXPress, InDesign, Photoshop, eleventy-billion fonts, Illustrator, more, more, more) sporting processing power enough to edit movies. In fact, it is no longer necessary that any of us are in the building.

Back in fashion

Specialization is back in fashion.

Work on the project in you own little corner, with your own little tools, on your own little bench and then transfer it to a format that we can all read. And we can then mark it up and tell you what you missed, or even open it up and add to the file with our own little tools, in our own little corner.

But we still need to be able to move our work to a common area. That makes the network all-important.

In the old days, a community journalist went to a meeting, came back to the office that night, typed up the compelling account of a zoning change and transferred his photos into photo editing software for color correction.

He then jacked around with the photo software for an hour before writing a head and plopping the story and photo onto the page that was waiting for him

The page looks OK, considering the amount of training he has had in correcting photos and his writer’s-skewed design skills.

But something seems haywire when he sends the file to the RIP.

Blending together

Meanwhile, or perhaps a night or two later, a different community journalist with a different set of skills in the next town over, but working for the same cluster of papers, does the same thing. Eventually, the two of them figure out that one of them is better at getting photos color corrected and pages choked through the processor, while the other is more a wordsmith and government writer.

Now, one stays at the office, designs the pages, corrects the photos, etc., and the other goes to meetings, connects to the network and files a story. Now they are able to acquire and use more specialized tools for their specific functions.

They like what they are doing more and are better at it. Management is happier because the equipment mix is a little less expensive. Everyone is happier.

The specialization makes even more sense as you gather more diverse talent and a wider task range.

But what pulls it all together, of course, is the network.

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