Yes, Journalism as a Service — JaaS.

Peter Drucker said, “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Journalism needs a new logic, as I wrote in a post on The Membership Puzzle Project (which points in much the same direction):

The survival of journalism is too important to be left to the journalists! …unless they refocus on the business and individual value propositions of journalism.

Journalism is a service — to individuals and to society. The current existential crisis in journalism is primarily a crisis in the economics of that service. The solution is not just better journalism (important, especially in the age of “fake news”) but better economics (essential).

As you and I discussed around one of your CUNY events in 2015, we need a better economics. That centers on understanding journalism not as a product, but as a service. There is a whole emerging discipline focused on the shift from “Goods-Dominant Logic” to “Service-Dominant Logic,” and an organization, ISSIP, the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals, “with a mission to promote Service Innovation for our interconnected world.”

You are right to emphasize the need for “new definitions of journalism… Perhaps they should come from other fields …to help us envision an entirely new service to the public and its conversation.”

The real secret of reinventing journalism in the digital era is to focus on relationships. My work on FairPay points to how to do that (with emphasis on business models) and draws on the work of others at ISSIP and elsewhere who are leading this change to a logic for tomorrow.