Journalism is dead
There's a lot of talk about the financial death of newspapers, as the advertising-supported online model fails to support them. Some are speculating that premium papers like the New York Times could switch to a paid model for premium content.
The assumption here is that newspapers have something of value -- quality journalism -- that is worth paying for, or at least paying premium ad rates on. I don't think that's true. Newspapers are dead, because journalism itself -- journalism as a career, being a fulltime reporter -- is on the way out.
Here's a reporter's job:
- Be nosy
- Find out what people are talking about
- Find the people who know about that topic. Specifically, the chatty ones who like talking to reporters.
- Chat to them, and write down what they say
- Tell everybody else what they said
- Get paid
Here's how blogs work:
- The internet is full of nosy people
- Bloggers read other blogs, and blog about the interesting things on them
- Internet searches find the blogs of people who know about that topic. They're the chatty ones.
- Those bloggers are already writing down what they know on their blogs
- Anybody can read what they're writing
- For free
I used to think that even if much of what newspapers used to do is now irrelevant -- especially their non-real-time reporting of news -- the practice of actual, investigative journalism was a real and necessary skill and would live on. I no longer think that. Journalism is as dead as the pony express, superseded by technology that has cut out the middleman in the information-dissemination game. We can find the chatty people on our own, and they already have blogs. Need somebody to glue together all the separate threads of conversation from dozens of specialist bloggers to get an overall picture of what's going on? There's half a dozen knowledgeable-bystander bloggers already doing just that, like Read/Write Web for tech and Talking Points Memo for politics.
Some of these blogs make a lot of money. Most make very little. But reporting has been long-tailed, and that means the head will lose a lot of revenue as the money instead spreads, very thinly, across the tail. This will be terrible for newspapers. They're dead. But it will be great for the chatty expert people, the knowledgeable bystanders, and especially the advertisers, who instead of having to outbid each other to broadcast to a 90% uninterested populace, can pitch their wares to increasingly specific blogs until really, they only need to advertise on the most popular blog on their topic and get a gigantic return on their investment.
Advertisers getting much better value for their money, perhaps counter-intuitively, means bad news for newspapers, TV and other forms of media that relied upon limited supply to bid up rates for very ineffective, untargeted advertising. But advertisers getting better value for their money is good news in the long run for all of us. Because if you can advertise very effectively for a small amount of money, then your very niche business, previously unviable, is suddenly a going concern, meaning more choice in the market. And very targeted advertising means that instead of irritating you, ads are more likely to be for something you actually care about. And all the money these companies used to blow on advertising can go into lower prices, or more value for their stockholders, or more R&D for new products, or any number of other uses to which capital can be put, most of which generate more value for everybody than persuading housewives to buy yet another new type of toothpaste.
Journalism is over. Newspapers will be reduced to rumps, competing for real-time coverage of the news with wire services and the news networks, both of which will eat them for breakfast, clinging on through residual brand recognition.
But that's fine. Reporting will be all the better for the death of journalism.
Comments
thomblake
If I can't pick up the New Haven Advocate for free, what will I use to wrap my christmas ornaments for storage?
ed
I don't think you've actually proven that fat head outlets are gone, though. There is still a lot of news that is of very broad interest, and there are a lot of people who don't need the long tail analysis that the likes of TPM provide. As for targeting of advertising, I don't see how this is even remotely limited to blogs. News articles also get the Adwords/Adsense treatment, right?
I have to get back to work, but basically I think your conclusion is much too broad. You have more work to do if you want to prove that media outlets are entirely dead, as opposed to just shedding their print arms.
Laurie
The fat head of broad-interest news isn't really "journalism", it's more "real-time observation". This is the kind of thing that BBC News, CNN and Fox are doing. They're not really analyzing, they're just putting cameras everywhere on earth and beaming the pictures back to us as fast as possible. There will always be a market for that.
Ryo
jason brown
Interesting viewpoint, compelling even. I have to admit the logic of your argument was compelling enough to make this journo reluctant to read on. Lucky I did, the thoughts above were reassuringly valid too, and prompted some thoughts of my own.
Journalism is not dead, not today, and I remain doubtful about tomorrow.
Global chat may be a fun way to pass the time, but when it comes to finding information, the word that immediately springs to mind is reliable. How do people assess chat from one billion+ online?
They go to sites they trust, like BBC or CNN or, God Help Us, Fox News.
I'm wondering too whether journalism might actually be strengthened by the online world. Before, a journalist worrying that the full story is not getting out, maybe her editor won't print it, had few choices. Now, the internet sees censorship as a mere error and flows easily around any blocks.
There are millions of blogs making all sorts of speculative and sensationalist claims. A journalist no longer has to worry about drawing attention to an issue by being either.
Journalism of the future will instead rely on being reliable, authoritative. There is nothing to stop amateur chatters providing citizen journalism. But they won't always have the skills or training to ask the kind of questions that make journalism what it is - a unique form of mass communication.
onwards,
jason
. . .
Matt
I've just discovered this piece, from my desk in a no-doubt soon-to-be-defunct journalism office (certainly we've already run out of hyphens). The only thing I'd say - but then I would, wouldn't I? - is that most of what you're talking about is news reporting, when the print media actually allows for a lot of discourse beyond this. For a lot of readers, it offers the space to learn more about a specialist hobby or interest from the experts in the field, who simply won't spout their information so readily if they're not being paid for it. Stapling pages together = editorialising = supposed guarantee of quality = higher quality of contributor. Or so the argument goes.
Also, I'm not sure if I'm being dangerously outmoded with this, but liking the 'new' 'look' very much.