Individual brands. By early 2006, Harris thought he had identified two trends changing the character of competition among media. One was the very nature of the competitors. Harris saw more and more writers develop as individuals the kind of influence and large readership traditionally enjoyed only by larger institutions, like the Washington Post . He knew many such writers personally. The institutional brand you were affiliated with [used to be] the most important thing about you, Harris observes. Yet he now noticed that there were people who were developing brand names and franchises to themselves that were quite independent of whatever institutional platform they worked for. The Web had been a part of this transformation, rendering it easy to read the work of a favored correspondent or commentator without necessarily consuming the rest of the publication in which it appeared.

Among his friends and acquaintances who followed or practiced political journalism, it was increasingly individuals, rather than the institutions for which they worked, whose opinions shaped the dialogue. Referring to Time magazine political commentator Mark Halperin, Harris notes that [they would ask] Whats Halperins take on this? Not, Whats Time magazines take on this?

At the same time that there were some star writers who outshone their institutions, there were others who simply made their own institutions. Josh Marshall, a former editor for the liberal magazine the American Prospect , had begun his own blog, Talking Points Memo (TPM), in 2000. By 2006, Marshall had been able to hire additional reporters. TPM had broken several stories of national significance, and was often cited in other media. [1] Marshalls was a small operation with a major impact. More than that, while stagnating ad revenues menaced newspapers, Marshalls blogfinanced by a blend of niche advertising and voluntary reader contributionswas self-sustaining and growing. Observes Harris:

[Marshall] doesnt need the New York Times platform to give him influence and the ability to drive conversation among people He built his own brand. Thats a huge change if you compare who had influence and how they got that influence in context with lets say 1985 which was when I first came to the Post as a summer intern.

If institutions continued to decline in influence and importance relative to individual writers, Harris feared, it could be another sign of trouble for the Washington Post .

Stories that pop. The other trend Harris discussed with VandeHei was that certain stories seemed to have more impact than others. They attracted thousands of readers, were frequently emailed, and were discussed on television news. Harris and VandeHei felt that in a glutted news environment, original analysis and a distinctive writing style were critical to winning the competition for reader attention. VandeHei felt that readers took no pleasure in the neutral tone of much newspaper writing, what he called the voice-of-God style. He thought it bland and inaccessible. Moreover, both he and Harris felt, it was no longer enough for a newspaper simply to recount events when readers could get breaking news from any number of sources. A news organization needed to provide a service for which readers could not easily find a substitute. Harris reflects:

Day in and day out, the Post , the Times and others were not really organized around creating that sort of distinctive original journalism. Most of their work was on doing the stuff that 20 years ago was important but in this environment is more of a commodity.

Listen to Harris discuss trends in the news industry.