Author Kevin Kelly is blogging as he writes his new book on technology, The Technium. A post highlighted by BoingBoing discusses the meaning of value in a digital world where the Internet “copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it”.

Kelly goes on to argue that when “copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.” He then proposes eight values, which he calls “generatives”, which are better than free.

The eight generatives are immediacy, personalisation, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage, findability.

Reading the list got me thinking about how some of these could apply to journalism, itself going through a tremendous period of upheaval, largely due to social and technological changes.

Immediacy is easy to apply to journalism. Create value by providing news as it happens. We have seen how tech blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo have done this, live blogging keynotes and the like. Mainstream news outlets should see the value of embracing immediacy online.

Personalisation is another area where the media can add value. But personalisation often prompts heated discussions in newsrooms, with editors arguing that they know best what the audience wants. Yet the trend on the web is towards more personalisation, powered by Web 2.0 technologies.

Interpretation is possibly what will save journalism. Having all the world’s information at your fingertips, (thanks Google), is fine and dandy. But there is still a need for someone to make sense of the chaos of our world and this is where journalists can add real value.

Authenticity comes hand in hand with trust. People will pay for the real thing rather than a copy because they trust it is reliable or warranted. Again, here is somewhere where journalists can add value, providing information that is reliable and dependable.

Accessibility should be at the heart of the business of journalism. News organisations are sitting on a goldmine of news, so finding ways of allowing audiences to access, retrieve and store this data could be priceless.

Embodiment might just be what keeps newspapers in business. Audiences can read the paper online, but some will want to buy an embodiment of the product, so we should think of ways of making the physical manifestation of journalism a compelling proposition.

Patronage is a tricky area for journalists, who pride themselves on being independent. But some independent journalists have tried raising money online so perhaps this is an area for further experimentation.

Findability should be another key value in journalism. Unfound news is worthless, so a key part of a news outlet’s digital strategy should be to help audiences find its content easily and quickly. This applies not just to its own site, but also implies distributing its content far and wide.

The challenge for the news industry is adopting a new way of seeing the value of journalism. As Kelly points out in his post:

These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can’t be replicated with a click of the mouse.

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