The Journalism Debate
Jul1
I first wrote this as an email to a friend of mine. I think it sums up my thoughts on the future of Journalism fairly accurately, so I figured I would post it here and see if I could start some dialogue.
Right now newspapers are obviously in a state of flux. There aren’t enough advertising dollars to keep them afloat in print; and they don’t yet know how to monetize online to retain staff. I don’t think you can really blame the news giants. Business as usual was good business for them for a long time. There was a space of time where there was a way to distribute paper quickly, effectively (hah) and for a nice profit. Obviously, that meant we would see newspaper companies left and right. Everyone wanted [wants] the news, and if you could deliver it to your community you made money.
But people are no longer having the news brought to them; they are now GOING to the news sources. Other than long-term investigative reports (Deep Throat and such), people above all other things want one thing from news: they want to hear it first. If a blog publishes a rumor about MSFT buying YHOO, even if its NOT true, it creates a huge buzz. Whether it isn’t fair, ethical, etc is beyond the point. Who cares? If a blog like Perez Hilton gets 500 comments in 2 hours because a friend told a friend told a source told Perez that Britney Spears is banging Marky Mark, how can a magazine like US Weekly compete? By the time they publish the Spears story, Perez Hilton has broken 10 more pieces of news.
If Techcrunch posts the MSFT rumor and it’s true, it’s breaking news. Nobody can compete with that. If TC posts the rumor and it’s false, they hide behind the wall of “process journalism” and “we’re a blog we can do this”. Again, if the Globe publishes a misleading story, they get reamed for it.
The conclusion I can’t help but come to is this: the demand for AWESOME writers will skyrocket, while the demand for mediocre content generators is going to take a nosedive. The internet only needs a certain amount of writers per topic. How many articles about Sotomayor do I need to read? 1? 5? 10? Certainly not all 5,000 articles written in various newspapers around the country. If they are online, I have access to them all. But I don’t need it…
I also want to note that I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. In a way, I’m right in the trenches. CampusLIVE is an advertising agency AND a college homepage. We do (currently) all of our own ad sales, and I’m seeing first hand the effects of a dying print medium on our entire industry. But money isn’t falling out of the sky for websites, either. More and more large brands are learning the importance of TRACKING your advertising effectiveness. You can’t count the number of clicks on a print advertisement, but you sure as hell can install Google Analytics (a very sophisticated product) onto your website in about 3 minutes.
Now, if my ads don’t send you traffic, leads or sales - fire me.
Enjoy this article?
Consider subscribing to our RSS feed!
3:49 pm on July 16th, 2009
I agree with your assessment of the state of journalism in this country. The only reason they are still around these days is because that last generation who were exposed to a computer to late in their lives to use it still has to get the news from somewhere. And, while the daily newspaper may be a thing of the past, there is still room for the Monthly or Bi-weekly publication, for several reasons. Primarily, I do think that some people take solace in the fact that a printed publication does hold its writers to a certain level of credibility because issuing a correction or rewrite is a huge faux paus. A news source based online can update regularly and thus practically eliminate any errors past writers made without much confusion. I personally read a paper once a week, mostly during my breaks at work, because more often than not, they get it right the first time, and make the most of a story when given the chance because it is their one shot that day. Yet, this is all a moot point given the fact that advertisers aren’t going to choose credibility over the amount of people reading it, so unless they decide to consolidate all the best journalists into a collaborative paper(s), the printed paper is going the way of the VHS.