American Journalism has entered a period of great reconstruction. The presence of the internet, where newspapers have become virtually available and free of charge, has caused print articles to be in decline. This has caused massive job decreases and an increased dependency on technological advances as a means to get news. With new innovations on how to gain and distribute news coverage, the issues of credibility and originality are constantly at stake. Surviving newspapers need to keep up with the modern forms of how media coverage is spread in order to stay afloat.
Although there has been a significant shift toward digital media, there will always be a future for traditional newspapers. However, the media has to reinvent itself in order to keep up with new news outlets. Smaller staffs and decreasing revenue don’t have to be detrimental to newspapers as long as these print news organizations work with other businesses that are keeping up with present times, such as with online news, television, and radio outlets that relay local, regional and international news.
The only way to do this would be government involvement in increasing collaborative efforts among newspaper organizations and “startup online news organizations, non-profit investigative reporting projects, public broadcasting stations, university run news services, community news sites with citizen participation, and bloggers” according to an article published in the Columbia Journalism Review on The Reconstruction of American Journalism. If journalism became more of a collaborative effort, news media would become a more stable and credible outlet for information.
Credibility is a big issue, especially with the evolving blogosphere, where information gets skewed and scattered, and coverage becomes less and less reliable. Other outlets such as twitter and university newspapers, where many college students relay news information also add a degree of bias, and also decrease credibility in reporting news. Increased government involvement in the helping out of struggling print news organizations would be a positive motivation for news media. Since there is a collective notion that traditional newspapers add a degree of value and believability in reporting, government involvement would help many local and regional newspapers and startups stay in publication. These newspapers would in turn still be able to offer news coverage that would not be covered otherwise. While the government still funds support for news, reporting having to do with arts and sciences, increased governmental support, without any direct influences to shift news one way or another should be funneled into the fledgling system of news reporting. According to an article published by Reuters, “Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.” While this issue of ethics is at hand, and we can see how this would be problematic for credibility, there have been other ways the government can get involved without having direct influence and increased bias, and that is through incentives such as tax breaks, and job training for journalists as a method to save the down and out news organizations that have become more and more extinct in recent years, and will help them save face as trustworthy news organizations.
In keeping with these new incentives, job training that the government would provide can help add a monumental increase in the credibility and professionalism of American journalism. With pro-journalists taking on amateur journalists, the future of journalism and printed word can be and will be salvaged. Doing this would not only make news organizations more trustworthy, but would add a degree of professionalism as well, where amateurs such as freelancers and bloggers can gain more expertise with the aid of professionals showing them the ropes. Professional journalists also have much to gain from amateurs as well. In a time when news coverage has become more and more interactive, these amateurs, who are people considered to be rather technologically savvy as part of the new generation of 21st century journalism, can help some of the old fashioned newspaper reporters gain modern day know-how in covering news. Whether it is through blogs, tweets or facebook comments, there have been many more outlets for getting news out there quicker and faster. College students and universities offer programs and have their own local newspaper organizations where this type of pro-am journalism is able to flourish. In gaining the ability to report local news professionally as learned from professors and journalists that teach them these skills, journalists of the future will gain the know-how in reporting for larger organizations in the future, and teachers of traditional journalism can gain access to newer means of gaining and spreading news. Keeping this up is very important and it is up to these two dynamics to collaborate and learn from one another in order to save face and keep news journalism reliable during its time of reconstruction.
The key element in the restructuring of American journalism relies heavily on the collaboration between local, regional, and international journalists and the news organizations that support them. The media, government and businesses alike need to pool resources together in order to keep up with the times. Newer forms of coverage need to be embraced, while still maintaining the values of traditional reporting, and through these joint methods, we will see a positive restructuring of American journalism for the future.