It's not news, and I'm certainly not the first to point it out, but newspapers are in trouble. I confess to reading the New York Times on-line, not in print, which means the only way I help it survive is through the ad revenues my visits and very rare clicks bring it. If it dies, it will be because people like me didn't pay the freight (or the reporters or the editors). I hope Steven Johnson is right:
But I'm afraid Clay Shirky has it right:
We're living through a revolution, and revolutions are uncomfortable. The good news is that both Johnson and Shirky think the revolution will lead to better journalism. The bad news is that it's going to be a rough ride getting there, especially for us old fogies.
Newspapers are dying but journalism is evolving, an acclaimed science writertold a gathering of the techno-hip at South By South West Interactive Festival on Friday.
Steven Johnson equated newspapers to old growth forests, saying that under the canopy of that aged ecosystem blogging, citizen journalism, Twittering and other Internet-age information sharing is taking root.
But I'm afraid Clay Shirky has it right:
When we shift our attention from 'save newspapers' to 'save society', the imperative changes from 'preserve the current institutions' to 'do whatever works.' And what works today isn't the same as what used to work.
For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the reporting we need.
We're living through a revolution, and revolutions are uncomfortable. The good news is that both Johnson and Shirky think the revolution will lead to better journalism. The bad news is that it's going to be a rough ride getting there, especially for us old fogies.
The problem I have with so many of the "new media" outlets, is that they are really just opinion and chatter, and not actual news.
The New York Times does all the reporting and leg work, and then these other forms of media build a business out of commenting on that news.
I don't really see the new forms of media taking over, because they are structured to leech off the traditional media.
I agree. There are a few websites -- Talking Points Memo is one that comes to mind -- that do original reporting, but very few websites do their own reporting. I certainly don't. Everything I comment on I get from someone else's work. I do have a day job as a biology professor after all.
The solution is simple, according to capitalism. The "free press" as it were, was not meant to be free. Only free discussions. The paperboy has always charged, I don't think that the paper was ever actually free to acquire. In this light, newspapers should have charged from the starting gate. The fact that they didn't is their own downfall. If print starts charging now for information accessible via internet (day late, dollar short, literally), maybe some people can keep their jobs.