As I sat in the waiting room of a financial services firm in Manhattan, I was surprised that the coffee table was not sprawled with the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, or BusinessWeek. Rather, there was an Amazon Kindle.
As news moves online, newspapers will become obsolete. People are already seeing the versatility of a handheld device that can give the viewer the breaking news of the last hour. Buying the newspaper meant reading the news of yesterday, and paying for content that might not be of interest (for example, the sports section). Not only is online content greener for the environment, it is also more tailored to individual interests.
Google will play a large part in the movement towards online news content. Using Google News, the individual user can modify the news that appears on the website. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, Inc. described a device that “knows who I am, what I like, and what I have already read.” While Google might be the pioneer in this technology (Google News already supports many of these news update features, including a section for local news) it will not be the only one. Various companies will contract with news organizations and blogs, offering news from a variety of sources to its subscribers.
For subscribers to this service, some news will be part of a monthly subscription package, while others will give only a free preview, and cost only a few cents to read the article in its entirety. Eric Schmidt also envisions a new advertising scheme to pay for this model. As the news is already tailored to the specific user, so is the advertisement. As newspapers had once relied on advertising for revenues, so can this online model.
Youtube will also become more integrated into Google, and multimedia news content would be viewed alongside text. Multimedia could serve as a check on the integrity of news sources. With the click of a button, a user can compare the coverage of an event to those of other sources. Users would also be able to comment on the coverage and bias of the article, and view the comments of others. Online content has already facilitated the media’s interaction with the public, and it will only become more integrated as a way for people to participate in global and local affairs.
Magazines, like newspapers, will also move online, cutting the costs of printing and deriving its profit solely from subscriptions. Magazines, as an example of niche media, will likely earn more revenues than newspapers that cater to a wider readership, because readers are more willing to pay for content that is unique to a source.
As the news becomes more accessible, there will be a new group of citizen journalists who cover news that they encounter every day. News stories could be derived from an uncommonly large amount of Twitter posts on a particular subject, or from simply an occurrence in the neighborhood. The byline for these hyperlocal news stories will be likely be shared by the investigative journalist and a professional editor, through pro-am journalism. The background of the journalist covering the story will be transparent for all of the readers.
Newsrooms will likely cut their full-time staff. Special stories will be done by a team of freelance journalists, or will be contracted out to smaller, more niche newsrooms. The professional journalist will become the investigative journalist, paid from a public fund for investigative journalism. These investigative organizations will function in the way that ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom functions. The public fund will disperse money to worthy proposals from independent reporters or news organizations.
The Texas Tribune, a web-based newsroom that recruited its professional journalists from full-time positions at newspapers, is experimenting on the concept that an investigative niche blog can function through funding from non-profit organizations and well-compensated editors.
As Downie and Schudson suggest in the November/December 2009 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, universities should play a larger role in local reporting through supporting investigative reporting projects with facilities and financial capital. Elementary schools can also support the cause by integrating current events into the daily curriculum. When news consumers are an aging population, the younger generation should relearn the role the press plays in society. News will again be an integral part of their education and daily lives.