Thursday, March 18, 2004

Insiders Look at Future of Journalism, Online and Off This is definitely the season for major studies of journalism, most recently a 500-page online report, The State of the News Media 2004 (stateofthemedia.org), by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (journalism.org). Pulling together statistics and results of other studies, the report addresses everything from news content and business issues to audience trends and public attitudes toward the media. (The 34-page executive summary is downloadable as a PDF.) Among the report's conclusions are that audiences are shrinking, except for online media and a composite category the report calls "ethnic and alternative news media." Cutbacks in newsroom staff numbers are endangering the quality of the news, the report says, and -- especially online and on cable TV -- there's "a tendency toward a jumbled, chaotic, partial quality in some reports." Other highlights raise big questions about control of the media, about maintaining the quality of reporting, and about whether there's an economic model to make a new online journalism pay its way. "If online proves to be a less useful medium for subscription fees or advertising, will it provide as strong an economic foundation for newsgathering as television and newspapers have? If not, the move to the Web may lead to a general decline in the scope and quality of American journalism, not because the medium isn't suited for news, but because it isn't suited to the kind of profits that underwrite newsgathering. I won't try to paraphrase any more when there's a convenient one-page list of the report's "eight major trends" already online. However, I will point to some early looks at the report by other readers, adding to this list as I run across more of them... You have to be registered with the International Newspaper Marketing Association to get at the full text of an essay in which its executive director, Earl Wilkerson, takes issue with some of the report's conclusions, so I'll quote instead of just pointing. He summarizes some of the report's conclusions this way: "We need more journalists, we need more editors to counter-balance all of that unfiltered blogging on the Internet, and media owners need to sacrifice earnings to do that." Not so, he says, at least not for newspapers. He thinks they have a bigger need for niche products, things like quick-read tabloids for the youth market. He goes on (highlighting added): "I would respectfully argue that publishing companies don[base ']t need more journalists. We need more editors, re-packagers, researchers, and consumer marketers. It's easy to say we need 'all of the above.' Yet the abdication of news gathering by other traditional media, notably television, leaves newspapers in the unique competitive position of having by far the most 'boots on the ground' gathering news." If that sounds like a marketing guy seeing only marketing solutions, Wilkinson sees the report as self-serving for another group, "i.e., a journalism project advocating more journalists and more of the type of journalism taught by journalism schools that support the journalism project." Even if he's right that "publishing companies don't need more journalists," I don't think the report is just an attempt to market journalism schools or their standards. Perhaps "the public" needs more idealistic journalists more than publishing companies need their profit margins? Perhaps "more journalists" is a good idea anyway, whether they draw their paychecks from publishing companies, broadcasters, universities or pay the rent with income from writing software or selling soap? Full disclosure: I am looking for a job teaching about journalism, "online journalism" and related issues, so I'm not being particularly "objective" here. I do believe the curiosity and healthy skepticism, fact-finding and storytelling skills, and the values and ethics of "the type of journalism taught by journalism schools" apply quite well to the online world as well as print and broadcast news. Those skills and values could be very useful to "citizen journalists" and "participatory journalists" -- the folks reading and writing weblogs, for instance. I'll be thinking about this some more, as well as reading this growing pile of journalism reports, between now and the journalism discussions at Bloggercon II... and my next round of job interviews. Other comments on the report... Digital Deliverance's Vin Crosbie, whose own study, Future of News: An Online Survival Guide, came out earlier this month and is still high on my to-read-in-more-detail list. New media might be the death of old-style journalism (The Australian) More to come 5:19:01 PM

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