hat’s really interesting, is the identity crisis the newspapers are going through. Their traditional role of ‘news’ / content creation and distribution has been completely supplanted by digital. So what can they do? Attempting to ‘own’ the news and control the ‘news agenda’ is now nearly impossible. However, there’s a new role for them to play in ‘convening’ conversations and information. Some type of aggregation model around gathering, filtering and empowering people to share/discuss ‘news’. Of course, this is what blogs have been doing, but with the exponential rise of information, the need for a ‘trusted’ brand who can meaningfully filter/curate news becomes more and more important. For example, online is brilliant for real-time, immediacy, open engagement, widespread commenting and discussion, and for its sheer diversity of sources ( truly ‘breaking’ news which in theory is smarter and less biased thanks to the wisdom of the crowd). So it would make sense if the ’slow’ next day print edition was more focused on deeper analysis, a top-down view of how the stories evolved, and curated snippets of filtered content. It could even track the evolution of the news throughout the previous day(s). It could also be positioned around driving people online to continue conversations, which would feed into the next day’s analysis etc. In some ways, it is the ‘letters to the editor’ concept swallowing the entire paper! This is where the market is already moving, however as long as newspapers decline to take the initiative to define a new role for themselves, they will have a new role defined for them; obsolescence. Here are some of the answers from global network of experts on the future of journalism. Answers that imagine a variety of possible scenarios, though a common theme emerged which points to a system that combines crowd-sourcing with some kind of editorial curation and professional reporting.
“I’d go with fragmented tribal media. Ground up, Wikipedia-style editing. Private philanthropy will support institutions like The New York Times, if they exist as printed media. Everything goes digital in the next 10 years.” ( Erik Johanson )
“I envision the future of Journalism to be collaborative and social made up of citizen journalist much like newsvine.com combined with features of craislist and twitter where one can search and contribute by zip code and topic, upload photos, videos and share or retweet content.” ( Yesenia Hernandez )
“The future of journalism is the the future of music production – independent, modular, self-resourced, entrepeneurial. Sometimes relevant, mostly on the cutting edge.”( Constantine Frantzeskos )
“The future of journalism is information written, or passed on, from your friends. The tipping point will be when the line between gossip and news is drawn. (as most of my friends choose not to share gossip via electronic media)” ( Matt Carr )
“Journalism will inevitably be a multi-media, multi-platform discipline. With all the tools freely available to pull the “reader” in and with the need of bleeding publishers to extract more value from its payroll, simply writing about something on a single format will not be good enough. Competing online requires sacrificing profit margins in the hopes of capturing a wider target audience. Not competing online will mean irrelevance, which is journalism’s equivalent of death. A volume game tends to always demand more from its players because of the high stakes and the low margin for error. Journalists with broader communication skills will be able to tailor their offerings better to create a broader base and survive this transitional era of new media natural selection.”( Jason Tan )
“One future of journalism is to disintermediate the institutions that now represent them (magazines and newspapers) and create a micropayment system that allows them to get paid directly by the reader. They will have to supply their own editorial direction. They will have to fund their own initiatives, but this model could work well. It depends of course on a micropayment system. And this has been very slow in coming. And this is odd because the person who creates this system gets to be Bezos or Gates. (Good point. Who would want to be Gates.)” ( Grant McCracken )
“Technology, connectivity and riding the Google Wave will no doubt rapidly transform online media to “Churnalism” where everyone with a Twitter account is a journalist. Meaningful quality journalism will always require integrity as its backbone and be inspired by asking and investigating the hard questions that no-one wants to answer. The two are already in separate distinct forms catering to separate markets both of whom would probably click into a headline like “Paris under siege” but one group would be clicking out quickly, disappointed with the content.” ( Tony Carne )
“Print, Television and Radio and to some degree the Web supply the canvas for journalistic excellence and objective reporting. Wire services and web networks (like Twitter) are the pipes the stories flow through. The Web casts a wide net for seasoned, amateur and would-be journalists to voice positions but, at the same time, dangerously blur the lines between true journalism, soapbox antics and personal, more subjective opinion.” ( Paul Benjou )
“The future of journalism, and to a certain extent quality printed word, seems a little bleak from both the inside looking out and visa versa. Here in Stockholm we have precious few decent writers, those with not only a grounding in the basics of writing but also capable of more than scratching the surface of subject matter. I popped to a seminar held by Svensk Form, the Swedish Design Council, recently where to topic of design criticism was broached. All agreed that there are a lack of emerging writers thanks to number of reasons. Firstly, the blog scene is big here but, again, due to the ease of having one the amount of decent content is limited. Plus editorial budgets have to go into features, which are the only way to earn a decent crust but, as a result, have to be undertaken by decent writers to appease the readership. So you have Editors unable to commission new writers for this reason – there is only a finite time you can write for free before you realise you need cash. Although try telling this to the poor deluded kids working grattis for Dazed & Confused. If you want to have a career as a journalist the current market means you cannot afford to be picky about who or what you write about. Any graduates emerging thinking they are likely to get a swish job for Elle, iD or Wallpaper are seriously deluded and it’s those willing to turn their hands to every form of writing who will get far. Casting your net wide as it were seems to be the future for proper journalism, which also demonstrates you are capable of writing across the board in a number of different styles.” ( Richard Prime )
By Justin McMurray
