The Internet has been both great and terrible for journalism. On the one hand, information has never been more accessible– available in such large quantities and to so many people. On the other hand, the free and unlimited access to information means that consumers of news no longer need to pay media outlets if they want to find out what’s going on in the world. This new era of hyper-communication has stirred fears within the news and media industries that journalists, the original mass-media messengers, will eventually become obsolete.
According to seasoned journalists Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, however, there is no danger of that happening– if anything, journalism is needed even more these days, with the endless pouring-in of information from innumerable sources. In their book, “The Elements of Journalism,” former director of Xerox PARC John Seeley Brown is quoted as saying, “What we need in the new economy and the new communications culture is sense making. We have a desperate need to get some stable points in an increasingly crazy world.” Journalism isn’t dying– it simply needs to be restructured to adapt to the new changes in technology and information-sharing. With that thought in mind, I have come up with a few proposals for sustaining journalism in America.
Trying to restore the former sales figures for print publications is futile. Print media will not return to what it once was– at least, not in the foreseeable future. But this does not mean print media has to die altogether. Not every American has a personal computer or gets their news from the internet. In addition, there is value in having information in tangible form, in being able to carry it around. Newspapers can survive in print… with a few format changes.
According to “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” an article in the November/December 2009 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, newspapers in small towns that have very few alternative media sources have so far managed to protect the majority of their advertising and print circulation. If the same principles of these local papers were applied to all print newspapers throughout the country, perhaps all of them would be able to stay in print. I propose that print newspapers be converted into thinner, more compact publications run by small staffs, with local news as the primary focus.
There would be a second benefit to switching to more local coverage. According to “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” local news coverage has seen a decline in recent years: “In most cities, fewer newspaper journalists were reporting on city halls, schools, social welfare, life in the suburbs, local business, culture, the arts, science, or the environment, and fewer were assigned to investigative reporting.” More thorough coverage of local issues might keep local news reporting from disintegrating altogether.
Meanwhile, the bulk of large-scale news reporting would migrate to the internet. Comprehensive news sites would contain news articles, features and news analyses, and would be highly interactive. Consumer participation would be encouraged, and citizen journalism, user videos, comments, and input would be regularly featured, with the disclaimer that these submissions are products of citizen participation and not of professional journalists.
These sites would also play another role: that of news aggregates. In the November/December 2009 CJR article “A Press Without Its Public,” Paul Starr writes that news sites alienate consumers, who are more likely to go to “specialized sites that are often superior to the comparable sections of their local newspaper. But unlike a newspaper, the sites do not expose them to news about their community or the world.” By linking to sites that focus on specialized topics, news sites can offer readers the ‘best of both worlds’– that is, in-depth information on their topics of interest and coverage of world news and events.
All of these methods that I have mentioned above would be designed to attract as many hits as possible for news sites. This in turn would enable the sites to at least partially carry themselves through advertising. There have been proposals that publications should be funded by the government and private donations. I don’t believe that this is the best option for news organizations. As Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson wrote in “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” government funding may make it more difficult for publications to report against said establishment. And while private donations are useful, relying on the generosity of donors is not a reliable business model in the long run, and may invite corruption. While donations can be encouraged, it’s important that news and media organizations be self-sustaining.
Television journalism would undergo some format changes as well. The days of TV journalists being first to report “breaking news” are over. Since news can be updated immediately on the internet, TV news programs could shift their focus more to analysis of the news that has broken, in cooperation with internet sources and citizen participation. To keep audiences tuned in, TV news programs could also feature live studio interviews and discussions with the individuals who were featured in the news, or with witnesses to events that were covered.
Though the structure of American journalism may be changing, in the larger sense nothing has really changed. Information has always been out there– the internet has just created a wider outlet for it. And while the internet has caused a lot of problems for print and broadcasting organizations, it has also created a lot of opportunities, many of which are yet to be explored. Perhaps the business models news and media organizations adopt in the future will even strengthen journalism in America.