Who Says Journalism is Dead?

All this talk about how journalism is dead is because we are approaching a breakthrough in the actual concept of news reporting. No one can back the claim that the way journalism was sufficed?

There are so many problems with the current "dying" system:

• Consolidation of media outlets resulted in an information monopoly of newspapers held by a handful of powerful families.


• The interests of investors who owned shares in these converged companies have influenced what news is reported.


• Advertisers have also gained a bit of leverage in what makes the news.


• The audience has become discouraged with the media and have moved to the web to find more independent news media


• Many journalists who blog for free are part of the angry audience who are passionate about informing the masses.

Moving forward is a risky operation with a chance of great losses and setbacks. Pay Me For My Content is an editorial by Jaron Lanier, that rustled the feathers of the Jouralism community. More people accept the fact that things need improvement and online is the trend. Working with this we need to put forth a feasible plan and the optimistic encouragement to embolden people. Confidence is the only way we will convince investors to support experimental projects in the current recession.

First we have to understand WHY we need a new system. I outlined this earlier, but there have been books like Media, Profits and Politics: Competing priorities in an Open Society (Harper and Yantic 2003) and Journalism: Critical Issues (Allen 2005) written on the topic. One could dapple in it for quite some time; all you really need to know is the North Atlantic Model of news is old news. (See Hallin and Mancini's "Comparing Media Systems"; 2004.)

With this knowledge we can easily recruit the WHO. This step has already been jump started online in the form of blogging. People are taking on journalism as a hobby, but it is time consuming, The affordable and accessible qualities of online journalism enables those anyone with free time to report.

Unfortunately, in the current system good journalists are not adequately recognized for their exceptional abilities except by their audience size. They don't have enough funding to really expand their capabilities and make it worth their time and efforts. Noteworthy successors who have achieved somewhat sustainable systems include The Huffington Post and Montreal City Weblog (by Kate McDonnell). These blogs have built a prestigious name for themselves, but they often only scrape by. Some, like McDonnell, have not monetized their blogs at all in spite of their large audience.

WHAT can be done to change all this? The PEW Research Center's annual State of the News Media 2009 report show the advertising money is going towards online investments and cable companies over newspapers. The final obstacle we have to overcome is discovering how to profit from this audience. This economic step is the final, most difficult in the process of rebuilding journalism.

All in all, this uncertainty and change will be most beneficial to the practice of journalism. It will revive the integrity of journalists. It will allow for more localized community based systems that can to work together with others in a global media web, while allowing for more specific audience targeting. It could become a more equalized system too, where news is reported according to its true worth and the media net is more evenly dispersed. Such a project under experimentation is the sustainable system Patch.

These systems need to be interconnected with national and international partners to complete the sustainable web. The Internet provides the perfect setting for truly democratic news. Ironically, it may be the infinite trait of this form of telecommunications itself that leaves us hesitant. We have to all move forward together or there will be no hope for progress.

WHEN AND WHERE? Well obviously this is all happening here and now. Those of us passionate enough to revive the media need to jump on the wagon. We can't hang ourselves by mocking the present situation and drowning out our importance and credibility. We need to take this step confidently so that the masses will follow suit. Change is scary but it is usually a good thing and most people understand that now. Journalism economists just need to find that price that people will pay that is not too high but still worth our service to them.

This is not even to say newspaper is out. Once online media begin making significant profits, they can produce free print editions or, more modestly, special weekend editions. However, we are not paying for the (wasted) paper; we are paying for the information and the transparency good journalism creates. That demand will never die. Journalism will never die.