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1. Everything is fragmenting

The work

On the Web, a story is always evolving. It can be reported, edited and reassembled an infinite number of times as long as the work is of benefit to somebody. The labor will spread across organizations, individuals and time to whoever has the most interest, capability or availability. See “The coming bust-up of news outlets…” at The Future of News.

The topics

Beats will get more precise and specialists will dominate. Those who can offer remarkable depth, expertise and analysis will excel. At the same time, those who can synthesize information across topics will increase in value.

Geography

Information will be classified into, but not created for, smaller geographic areas.

The cost of producing hyper-local information relative to the audience size will make consistent, intentional coverage of precise geographic areas (does anyone know what’s happening in my living room?) unlikely.

However, most stories are told by authors from specific places or are about people and problems from specific places. Thus, there will be an increase in hyper-local classification (which may pass for hyper-local coverage) created by services such as outside.in.

The business

It will be harder and harder to consistently assemble mass audiences. Some individual pieces of content will temporarily or over time command a mass audience, but one channel or general information source holding an audience over time will become less likely as more and more information floods the Web along with services to organize the information.

The distribution

On the Web, everyone is an information distributor and people go to the service that gives them what they want, when they want it. Businesses built around information control will no longer work. The quality, usability and shareability of information will become more important.

The attention

Customers’ attention will continue to fragment and spread as more and better information services populate the Web.

Modularity of information — its ability to be broken into ad-integrated components that can go anywhere on the Web — will offer some chance of an information outlet getting its product spread across the fragmented network of attention.

2. Increase of information-filtration services, making human imagination and creative information synthesis the prime value of journalistic organizations

Whether provided by improved search engines or individuals united by software (del.icio.us), there will be more and better information about information because Web users will always need help to find that which is most relevant to their task or question (wondering what to read next?).

This will reduce the importance of a journalist as an information middleman who collects data and redistributes it. Instead, information sources will publish independently (check out the vision of the future from The Future of News) and let the network initially organize their material.

Luckily, machines and software cannot (yet) do what the human imagination can do:

• Synthesize information to create new information;
• Propose future scenarios from present information (though climate-change models are an exception that comes to mind);
• Make information funny;
• Communicate why a particular bit of information matters.

Focus on the capabilities — original information creation, analysis and synthesis — that cannot be replicated by software or individuals assembled by software into an information-filtering network.