Going, going, gone

image courtesy of www.ezprezzo.com

As journalism students (which many of us in this class are), it's extremely important to be aware of the processes and consequences associated with making a published error. 

We've heard it a million times by the end of our first year: "CHECK YOUR FACTS!"  Well after reading straight out in Chip Scanlan's article the embarrassing correction and retraction process, we just might be motivated to be as anal as possible when writing our stories. 

While Scanlan's article/interview transcript focuses on errors, it brings up a hugely important issue right at the beginning of the article: people's attitude towards newspapers.

What's interesting about this piece is how Scanlan highlights the idea that making such mistakes in newspapers actually makes people lose confidence in the already declining medium. 

I think that entire concept relates to the fact that this is, simply put, a fast generation. Fast food, fast shopping, fast everything. When a mistake is made in an online article, all it takes is one or two e-mails and the problem is usually fixed almost instantaneously. But in the newspaper, it takes a few days to print a retraction, which just contributes to the idea that newspapers simply aren't part of the bandwidth-information highway-high speed connection lifestyle.

There is an excellent blog called Fading to Black that really explores how the newspaper is a dying medium. The blog also cites practical situations to use as examples of the shrinking industry. 

Montreal is no stranger to the concept. Just last year, the Gazette offered packages to many editorialists. You can see the actual memo from the publisher here. 

These situations are really scary for everyone, but particularly for journalism students. What's the future of our industry going to be? I recently heard an estimate that if newspapers keep doing what they're doing without making any changes in response to market fluctuations, they will have their last reader within decades. 

"Philip Meyer, who has studied the newspaper industry for three decades, can see the darkness at the end of the tunnel. If present readership trends continue indefinitely, says the University of North Carolina professor, the last daily newspaper reader will check out in 2044. October 2044, to be exact." (source)

Now that's a scary number for anyone studying print journalism. That's why classes like this one are so important. They're training young journalists to change the state of current print journalism to meet market demands. People don't want to wait until tomorrow to read relevant headlines. As such, many papers are beginning to keep regularly updated websites; and their journalists are maintaining blogs. Some say this is too much for journalists to do in addition to their traditional responsibilities. This is the argument that has lead to the longest lockout in french print media at le Journal de Quebec.

What this means for the future of print journalism remains unknown. Until then, perhaps the most useful thing to do is to arm ourselves with modern skills such as the ones being taught in this class in order to infuse the currently dying medium of newspapers with new life, ideas and energy.