A typical line of discussion these days (particularly among media people) is what affect the internet has had on traditional journalism. It's particularly relevant in a time when newspapers are folding at high numbers and online media has really changed the way we get our news.
Kay Steiger has an interesting analysis of a recent The Atlantic "informal poll" which asked traditional media makers if they think the internet has been bad for journalism. The article that came out of the poll was called: Media Insiders Say Internet Hurts Journalism.
I'm not surprised at this stance, particularly if you take a look at the analysis that Kay did about the "media insiders" they polled.
You can see on her blog, the 45 people that they talked to were overwhelmingly white, male, and over the age of 50.
Kay has some good points:
Granted, I know that mostly The Atlantic decided to do this poll to gain some quick hits and generate discussion about the future of journalism. It is, after all, something that is weighing heavily on media professionals' minds these days. But a poll like this doesn't really tell us much except that a few of the old guard of media elites are distrustful of a medium that has been around for more than a decade. The Internet certainly isn't going away as means of distributing information. It's more than a little frightening that so many "insiders" think that a research tool like the Internet is doing harm to journalism.Granted, I don't think that the Internet is a substitute for reporting. Nothing will ever substitute talking to experts and people that are deeply immersed in an issue. But I don't think the Internet is a "harm" to journalism. Maybe if they would've asked a few people under 30 they would have gotten some very different results.
The only thing I will add to this, which is important for all us involved in things like the feminist blogosphere, is that these media insiders also used to be the media gatekeepers. They were able to decide who was able to write, on what platforms and about what topics. That has long kept the kind of content that we want to see, that we want to write, out of the mainstream press. This is why independent press had been created as an alternative outlet--see Samhita's discussion of the difficultly of keeping indy media alive.
This conversation is important to me because I am very aware of the fact that without the internet, without blogging, I would not be able to do what I am doing today. If I had taken the traditional journalism route (which was the primary one available to me ten years ago) I would be lucky to be interning at a big magazine or newspaper, fact checking or doing other background work, trying desperately to get my stories published. Would my feminist, queer, radical content be easily accepted by these publications? Not likely. Would my work have the readership that I have today at Feministing? Doubtful.
The issue of money, financing and the future of investigative journalism (which costs real money, I know) is a serious one. It's a conversation we at Feministing are extremely invested in. But, like Kay, I'm a little tired of hearing negativity and whining from the media insiders of yesterday. There is a new playing field, with way more diversity of voices then ever before, and we've got to make something out of it. I for one feel privileged to be part of creating something new.
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I've been a newspaper reporter and editor for almost 20 years, and I have mixed feelings about all this. I'm also very sad to see so many papers folding and so many colleagues laid off.
The main problem with the Internet, as I see it, is that it works on the principle that all information should be free. I don't necessarily disagree, because the more informed the public, the better to inspire change, and how much money you have should not be a factor.
However, the news-gathering, analysis and synthesis that reporters and editors do every day is work; time-consuming and often difficult work. I have sat through mind-numbing city council meetings; covered heartbreaking crime cases; been called every name in the book for daring to ask uncomfortable questions or for criticizing authority. Journalists die every year because they covered stories in dangerous areas.
Therefore, being told that our work should essentially be free is galling, since we are providing a valuable service, a service we're already underpaid for anyway (most newspaper journalists will never make anywhere near six figures).
And lest you argue with me that newspapers are irrelevant, I would like to point out that papers still form the base of the information chain.
Television, radio and news services like the AP and Reuters all get 90 percent of their information from newspapers.
Blogs like Feministing refer to newspaper stories every day.
So, what happens when newspapers die? Is everyone else going to pick up the slack? Are Internet readers going to be willing to get out into their communities and cover every school board meeting and every piece of news, big or small? And, what's more, do you plan to do this for free? How will you eat? How will you pay your mortgage?
I was under the impression that AP did pretty original reporting. They don't reprint information from newspapers. They tend to break national news or state news. City newspapers are a bit more regional. Newspapers are AP subscribers. Newspapers run their content, then as an agreement, some local news stories are picked up for national distribution by the AP. Am I not correct?
no, not all of the AP's work is original reporting. the ap re-writes a lot of local and regional stories from member papers for re-distribution to a wider audience. good article on the AP's woes with the internet:
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4730
i'm not 50 years old, but i am white, male and was formerly a journalism student. i gave up on the industry senior year because the school taught me just enough to know that journalism is dead:
http://www.nostempore.net/?p=83
There's no doubt that the internet has killed journalism. I haven't paid for a paper in 12 years, and I read 4-5 a day! Don't think that hasn't killed their profitability???
While there are a number of bloggers I respect, blogging (no offense) is a complement to, not a replacement for traditional journalism. Bloggers operate as online pundits. And while pundits have value, so does traditional journalism. I'm gloomily anticipating the day when the US press corps mirrors the (tabloid, overtly political) British one, and I can no longer find centrist, call 'em like I see 'em, analysis & reporting.
What I also wonder is what will bloggers use for material once the newspapers fully die out???
I'm a journalism student now, so this is an issue that weighs heavily on me. Newspapers are undeniably important. As much as I love blogs, they don't replace newspapers b/c they just don't have the resources. Also, they tend to cover a niche. No blogger wants to sit through some of the city council meetings I did at my last internship (or at least none I've read). They all have a position in ways that newspapers don't. (Yes, I know papers can have a bias, but they are still ethically bound to present only facts in a way that blogs aren't. Blogs also don't have the editing/filtering mechanisms as a large publication.) OTOH, the Internet is an amazing tool for journalists, so I hate to see old blowhards write it off entirely. In my reporting internship, I used it for background info every day. I literally refuse to make a phone call without googling the source first. It can give me the tools to go into an interview prepared. As a part-time copy editor now, it's an easy way to confirm the spelling of whatever senator, etc. I think and hope that we can find our place on the Web, but smarter people than I are grappling with how to use it to turn enough profits to support a staff and have been largely unsuccessful.
I really worry about what will happen if newspapers die. In the '70s, when Italy had problems with domestic terrorism, the right wing extremists blamed it on the left wing extremists who blamed it on the right wing extremists but no one knew who to believe because the country didn't have a paper that was reliably not biased.
JetGirl70 made a great point above. Without newspapers, you have a bunch of people ready to interpret the news and no one to do the grunt work and go out and get it.
"anywhere near six figures"
Not making a 6 figure salary does not make someone underpaid.
Well, it's hard to quantify what "underpaid" amounts to, but journalists are waaaay at the bottom of the scale when you're looking at salaries for jobs that require a college degree. Newspapers, especially (aside from big papers like the NY Times, Washington Post, etc.) And reporting is not a cushy job by any stretch of the imagination.
Average starting pay in different cities in Texas (I've looked) is between 20,000 and 25,000 a year for a journalist. Even in Dallas. Are you trying to tell me that making 25,000 a year in Dallas, Texas with a degree is not underpaid? I lived off of about 18 grand in Dallas, it was not fun. I was only renting a room though, so my rent was moderate. I could not imagine having to have my own place and only making 25 BEFORE taxes.
"are you trying to tell me that making 25,000 a year in Dallas, Texas with a degree is not underpaid?"
How would I know how much someone makes in Dallas? I was simply saying a salary below 6 figures is not underpaid. If the original commenter had used the figure 25k, I wouldn't have made a comment. Saying below 6 figures does not make me think 25k.
Sorry. Ha. Didn't mean to come off as snappy.
As an aside, one aspect of fewer readers of PRINT media is that there are less daily newspapers and magazines to throw away. Don't newspaper companies save some money by posting their stories on the internet, NOT having to spend money on paper and shipping costs, and making money off of ad revenue? Would less news companies be folding if they were trying harder to adapt to the internet? I'm asking these questions in all seriousness, because I have no idea if it is possible for news corporations to make as much money through online ad revenue as from paper subscribers.
I think it is because companies are having a hard time reconciling internet AD revenue with print AD revenue. People just aren't willing to pay as much for an AD on the Web as they used to pay for them in print. It's not that they're rejecting the internet, it's that antiquated business models have not allowed them to figure out a way to make money off the internet. At least that's what I've read and heard. I'll look for the articles citing this information. I think I would still consider online stories "print" media. It's just that it's harder to get people to pay for it. But most Web content, unless it's a special interactive component, is in print as well. At least that's how it was at the papers where I worked.
I agree that blogs don't replace journalism--we need investigative journalism, as much of our content is driven from it.
I'm excited by online media making models, like Huffington Post, and their attempts at funding investigative journalism.
I think we're going to see new (and traditional) media outlets finding ways to make the internet work for them to do the same investigative journalism, just differently.
Sorry for posting a lot, but this is near and dear to me.
I think my favorite solution people have been throwing out there is endowing newspapers. The NYT has an awesome Op-Ed piece explaining this here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/opinion/28swensen.html
More people read the news now that ever before, but the problem is still how to fund journalism.
I really like this solution because it frees you from thinking like a business and lets you become a public service, which is journalism's core, at least according to me.
I also found the idea in this LA Times Column interesting:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-onthemedia8-2009feb08,0,5497178.column
They're discussing toying with the possibility of having people donate money for journalists to investigate stories clients/people/community members/etc. want/need covered.
I'm taking the stance that blogs are in fact journalism.
There is no difference between the woman blogging about restraunts she's going out to and the food critic in your local newspaper.
In regards to integrity, newspapers are not bastions of integrity. Here's a small number of examples of reporters at newspapers gone wrong: Jayson Blair of the New York Times, Stephen Glass of The New Republic, Janet Leslie Cooke of The Washington Post, Scott Thomas Beauchamp of The New Republic, Carl W. Ackerman of The Philadelphia Public Ledger, and Patricia Smith of The Boston Globe. All of these reporters are famous for fabricating stories. Newspapers claim they fact check their stories, but that doesn't seem to keep them from printing outright lies and misinformation. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that just because they claim they follow a code of conduct that it makes them automatically more trustworthy.
A newspaper is not journalism. Journalism is what the writers do while crafting a story. Newspapers are a packaged product, edited down to bitesize bits of information designed to bring advertising to the masses. We're not witnessing the death of journalism, we're witnessing the death of it's packaged product. And I'm not sad to see it go.
I consider blogs a form of journalism, but they just don't have the resources (and often don't have the training - fact finding was one of the hardest classes I've taken) to do investigative journalism. Also, don't lets get into the debate on who is more trustworthy. Of course there are unethical "journalists" out there. Bloggers aren't exempt from that. The point is that there should be a way for the two mediums to coexist. To get good content you need people out there doing this as their only job. That means they need funding and a salary. Most bloggers have a day job, so they just physically cannot produce the same product. If the only news you read involves the local restraunt scene then the death of your local newspaper shouldn't concern you, but if you want to be an informed voter in local elections you're out of luck.
Resources: I don't suppose you could define this ambiguous term? Because when I think resources, I think money, and that's something newspapers no longer have.
Training: bloggers are too diverse a group to say that they are trained or untrained as a whole.
Trustworthiness: I debunked the notion that newspapers were more trustworthy than bloggers.
Coexistence: There is nothing stopping newspapers from existing, except that no one is reading 'em. And blogs exist for the blogger, not the reader.
The Founding of Newspapers: Sam Adams started the Independent Advertiser in January 1748, he also worked as a brewmaster even though he was a trained lawyer. Ben Franklin founded the Pennsylvania Gazette in October 1729, he also happened to dable in gadgetry and had a full time job as a merchant. John McLean ran The Independent Journal while being a lawyer at the same time. The point is that newspapers didn't start out as full time jobs, they evolved and eventually implemented a business plan that allowed for full time staffs of hundres of people.
The evolution of blogging: I see a chance for bloggers to implement business plans. First, stay local. What matters is your community, you may have an opinion about what's happening three states over, but that's not what your blog is about, it's about local events, so cover your local events. Get a network of fellow bloggers in your area, you may like covering school issues, others might like covering police reports or common council meetings. Group your blogs together, ideally at the same domain that you control together. Drive traffic to your site, this will allow you to start capturing viewership rates. Not everyone is going to care about what's happening in Mt. Horeb, WI, but when you start getting 10,000 unique page hits a day and are able to show that they are mostly local IP addresses you will beable to sell ad space to local businesses based upon that information and eventually you should beable to start turning a profit from these ad sales. The next level is reselling the stories that your bloggers write, you do this through the AP and Reuters.
Your business plan suggestion for bloggers is already being implemented by local newspapers on their websites, and they're still losing money.
In this economy, advertising rates are down online and offline, and that is the biggest thing hurting journalism right now.
Just look at Gawker. Nick Denton had quite the online empire going, and still gleefully celebrates the death of newspapers. And yet, he's laid off lots of people and folded/sold several properties. It's the economy.
And quite frankly, I think you are underestimating the work and skill involved in journalism. You are also underestimating the amount of resources you need to put out a quality news product. You don't just need reporters, photographers and editors. You also need ad reps, and accountants, and legal staff (in case someone sues you for a story). All that costs money, and the better the staff, the better the product.
One lone blogger isn't going to cut it.
A good blogger is also not necessarily going to be a good journalist, since so many bloggers aren't trained to cover news as objectively as possible. Journalism is an actual profession, and, to be done well, takes talent and experience. Yes, there are crappy and dishonest journos out there. But I don't think it's fair to judge us all by Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair.
I think Yoshimi is right.
Resources doesn't mean only money. It can also mean a lot of programs such as LexisNexis and Accurint for reasearch. I could be wrong, but I don't think that many just regular bloggers have easy access to these sites which really help out when it comes to investigative journalism.
It's super difficult to cover beats like city council. You literally need to be there 24/7 to have a grasp of what's going on. Bloggers can't do that.
And everyone reads the newspaper product--just online. Readership is up like it never has been before. It's just that people aren't buying the actual piece of paper with ink and all that good stuff; they just read it online.
And just because you've had a few bad apples doesn't mean all journalists are shady, like Yoshimi said. Blair was fired, wasn't he?
And trust me, it takes training.
Look at the QUALITY of these two stories. They are both about M.I.A. and being labeled as a terrorist supporter by some in Sri Lanka.
From a blogger: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-30/mia-goes-to-war/
From the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/world/asia/11mia.html
I'm not sure if you've ever worked in a newsroom, but editors and copy editors are essential. This is cheesy, but as the saying goes, the best writing is rewriting.
You're not going to get that finished product from a blogger unless they've been working in journalism for 30 years. Even if they're super passionate -- journalism is a skill, it must be honed in a real newsroom.
Yes, WRITING IS A SKILL.
And like any skill, it's improved by PRACTICE.
That practice can come from anywhere - blogging or regular journalism.
No disrespect intended to traditional journalists - but not all of us had the time or money to go to J school or to get hired by a media outlet.
I got started writing on a volunteer basis at small left wing newsletters - at the dawn of the internet, I graduated to writing for a listserv and a geocities page - now I blog.
So, spare us the professional snobbishness please!
Also, I can write what I like.
You, on the other hand work for a corporation, who finances the newspaper you work for with ad revenue.
So, the cold hard fact is, the advertisers do have a veto over what you cover.
That "wall" between the editorial and business sides of media outlets is a myth - and you know it as well as I do.
I can't speak for everyone else, but I'm not trying to say blogs are worthless. I love reading blogs, posting on blogs, even making community posts here on feministing. Obviously they do things traditional media can't: They allow everyone to carve out a niche for themselves and that's great. But blogs cannot replace newspapers. That's all I'm trying to say. That we need both. Basically, I'll be really pissed if I wake up in the morning and I don't get both the NYT and Racialicious on my RSS feed. I'm not trying to be snobby, but why does my defense of newspapers lead to accusations that I think other forms of media are worthless? It's not like I live in a cave.
I agree.
You are totally right and totally awesome, Yoshimi. I feel the same. I love online everything. I practically live on my computer.
Another thing to think about though is what if people don't have internet access? What happens to them if newspapers get obliterated?
There are a lot of people with economic barriers that might depend on actual newsprint.
Even if they can go to their local library, how often will they be able to do that?
In the old days of journalism, my voice would have been blocked out - I'm African American, I live in the inner city, I'm a union carpenter and I'm a far left political radical.
I primarily write about labor issues in construction and trucking.
Up until about 10 years ago, only pro business-oriented trade publications and the official newsletters of unions used to write about those subjects - with their own biases being the only views presented.
Now, thanks to the blogosphere, people like me get to balance that out.
And that's a good thing.
Something I think it interesting is the respectability (or lack thereof?) of online journalism, especially blogging.
Example - last year the blog Talking Points Memo won a Polk Award for breaking the story on federal judge firings. In an article about it, some asshat from Columbia was going on about how they would never give something like a blog a Pulitzer. (No wonder the NY Times picked students from CUNY to intern on their blogs over them, lol)
I blog a lot for my internship. Even though it's attached to a known and established magazine I'm not sure how much of my blogging counts as "clip" or if I should even mention it in the future, etc.
I am genuinely interested in online journalism - I love the interactivity, how you can attach things like videos and slideshows or link to backing information, etc. But every time I hear about a newspaper going under - or when I hear that Rupert Murdoch has bought another one - I die a little inside. OK, maybe that's extreme, but it's really sad.
I do love that anyone can have a voice, even if only a few people hear it. And that means that there's a higher chance (like you said) that more people will ultimately hear it than if they had to do something more traditional.
Online "journalism" is garbage and will continue to be garbage for a little while yet. Blogs are only useful for their opinions on stories they take from somewhere else (or sometimes what they invent on their own).
Endowment is a likely model, but as other commentators have pointed out, actual journalism (especially overseas or wartime journalism) is difficult and not exactly glamorous. I'm not really sure how endowment or any other model is going to work out, but suffice to say the loss of variety will damage our information-gathering capacity as a society, and in the meantime the hyping and self-generated stories from blogs will escalate exponentially to try and fill in what has been lost.
I'm not sure if endowments are practical. How is a paper going to raise the initial money? Who would manage it? I guess I'm seeing so much trouble with my university's budget cuts right now b/c the endowment money is down that the idea of being dependant on that for the rest of my life makes me nervous. That being said, I'm no expert on the subject. Why do you think endowments are a good option? (I'm not being mean, I really want to know.)
I don't think it is a good model, I just think it is likely to happen (at least in some cases) unless someone can come up with a brand new Internet-based sales scheme that works.
Interesting, thanks.
For me, blogging and traditional journalism compliment each other. The bigger independent blogs, such as indymedia, and dare I say it, Feministing, are read by the likes of the BBC and the better papers.
The bottom line is money. Bloggers often (always?) do it for the love of what they do, whether that be merely a subject that they love, or as a means of expression, or to try to change the world.
Things are beginning to change again. A change that may well lead to the end of the plethora of free websites that are now taken for granted.
So, what's causing this change? The driving factor is Facebook.
Yes, you heard me right.
To explain, Firefox users have the luxury of an add-on called 'Adblock Plus'. It was once the preserve of computer geeks, the more savvy computer users, and people like myself who see advertising as a form of brainwashing, and see targeted ads as an invasion of privacy. People who will actively seek out means of NOT seeing adverts.
The recent - and extremely unpopular changes that Facebook have made have provoked a massive backlash. There are a plethora of protest groups against the changes. The largest is just short of 3 million, between them, they have over 10 million members. That is just the English language ones.
It is in the very active forums of these groups that adblock plus is being plugged left right and center. In the last few months, here in Europe, Firefox has overtaken Internet Explorer as the most popular browser and Adblock Plus has had a surge in downloads, well over 2 million in the last month.
It is feasable that this could be the start of a snowballing effect. If, 5 years from now (or maybe sooner), most PC users are actively blocking adverts, that means the end of advertising as a means of revenue, or at the very least, a vastly reduced ad-related revenue.
That's really interesting. On a similar note, I really wonder how DVRs are going to change advertising on television.
On The Issues Magazine was once published on paper and is now an online only publication. OTI uses the internet for excellent journalism, with the same standards as print publications, and the move has allowed our radical and feminist ideas to thrive and be spread more quickly. How can we argue against the Internet when more people have access to our stories?
Publishing online also costs only a fraction of publishing on paper.
Miriam makes a good point in stating that the old media insiders were also the gatekeepers. The Internet provides a platform for all kinds of voices, and that platform can more easily be attained online.
Georgia Kral
On The Issues Magazine