Post-Gazette shareholders introduce "flipped newspaper"
Underlying the closure of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is a deeper issue than the strike itself: news just isn't profitable anymore. It's a fundamental problem with the whole industry, one gnawing away at the foundations of the most credible institutions of yesteryear. With the rise of digital platforms that put the power to share information into the hands of everyday citizens, the bottleneck of a select few journalists to uncover and distribute truth is no longer a profitable point at which to rent-seek.
So what comes next? The board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has some ideas. On Tuesday, they'll be voting on the most radical of the concepts proposed: turning the Gazette into a so called "flipped newspaper." With this model, instead of the newspaper's staff curating news for the public to consume, the public itself will produce news, which the staff will consume.
"It cleanly solves the labor crisis underlying our business model," the paper's director of operations stated. "When our writers have to go out into the field, they're no longer under our direct supervision. When they go to political functions with notebooks and microphones, they create inconvenient conflicts between our profits and our accuracy, which is directly upstream of our coveted prestige. By shifting the role of the journalist from producing to consuming, from owning content to borrowing it, we take back control."
With this change would come a complete renovation of the Post-Gazette's offices. The facilities coordinator for the organization has a lot to say on the subject. "In a conventional newsroom, the staff sits facing inward, faces toward monitors and books. Their backs sit to the windows, almost as if they are projecting the knowledge of the outside world onto the page in front of them, on which their most direct focus lies. The product, the printed newspaper for outside consumption, is the root cause from which all impetus is derived. But when print news is outdated, and our flipped structure is introduced, this must be reversed."
"Instead, the staff will sit facing outward. We plan to combine adjacent floors to double their ceiling heights, and to convert the facade of our building to almost 100% glass, interrupted only by grand columns and curtains to frame the view of the outside world, reminding the viewers, our journalists, that it is from a higher place that they are observing, that they are in a sense, separated." The coordinator gave a faint smile.
"In the center of the rooms will be grand fountains and tables of books brought in from outside, anything to fill the inner space, such that lines of chairs and upholstery may line the bay windows. Consumption, of the outside, of what it produces, of what it is to the naked eye, will be not only passive, but unavoidable. This is the future of our industry; will you join us?"