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Participatory journalism and the inevitable death of newspapers
Yes, I said it. Newspapers are a dying medium. They have been for the last several years, and it's only going to get worse. Ask anyone in print journalism behind closed doors...they know their days are numbered. And don't just think I'm ripping print people because I'm a broadcast guy, because I've been involved in print for nearly nine years.
In their seminal book, "Unleashing the Killer App", Chunka Mui and Larry Downes predicted the inevitable downfall of newspapers, foreseeing the rise of the Internet and exposing the print industry's greatest single flaw - the time-to-market in getting news to you. The near-lightspeed delivery and multi-platform, multi-device nature of today's Internet continues to negate the unnecessary need to wait until tomorrow to find out what happened today.
As this dull itch continues to rapidly fester in the collective body of newspaper owners, playing catch-up, their implemented revenue models will be hack and ill-effective. The only easily-implemented solution for most - subscription-based content - won't adequately subsidize a revenue stream with diminishing returns, as people gradually give up their real-life subscriptions for online information through a plethora of channels more accessible than any corner newsstand and more convenient than any ink-based publication.
With the 'Net now firmly rooted as a commercial entity, we're already seeing the beginning of the end. Audiences in the Age of Information aren't satisfied with the old dictum of media being unidirectional: those in the biz ramming the day's events down your throat with you having little, if any, chance to interact. Audiences are now getting directly involved in the flow of a newsday. Producing news without giving the audience an opportunity to interact with it or with those who produced it is now seen as a severely inferior way of publishing since the paradigm shift brought about by the weblog.
The rise in blogging applications and the millions of people flocking to use them, serving as ad hoc reporters, has already blurred the definition of what a traditional professional in our beloved field is. One of the main advantages of being a journalist in years past was that you belonged to a somewhat-elite industry, meaning only that you had to be officially employed as such. Now anyone can just jump in and arguably be legitimate.
A savvy 'Netizen can analyze and report on the events and major events, say of the Super Bowl or an election or an assassination, and get the word out faster than classical disseminators of data, who've got to cover the entire game, run it by editorial staff, enter it in the day's circulation, and then wait for publishing. Bloggers just hit 'SUBMIT' and wait. And the requisite technical proficiency in being a reporter is also a thing of the past, as most blogging apps can be mastered by a sixth grader with Web access. So, the ease-of-entry into the wonderful world of journalism has also been widely opened. If you have a functioning brain and an opinion, you're a reporter.
Additionally, the instant gratification nature of the Internet and exponential consumption rate of online users keeps growing phenomenally, imposing more and more strain on traditional print media. Worse, newer generations are growing up not seeing this as new media and have accepted this type of input as mainstream, further distancing digital data's lead over newspapers. Eventually, papers will suffer the ultimate insult - no longer being seen as a viable news commodity - because print outlets simply can't keep up.
And with metaengines and advanced search services spearheaded by Google now including news sources, updating their indexes as often as every fifteen minutes, there's really no discernible difference in what a media outlet is. The disparity between me and the next guy is that I just happen to get paid for my labors, I've got my contacts, and I've got access to a much wider distribution channel than Joe Six-Pack with a DSL line and a little too much time on his hands, but nonetheless the same level of commitment to say something about what happened in the world today. And the assumption that my stuff is always reliable. And that's where the difference ends entirely.
But that, too, has changed for the better, as blogs have matured from being exclusively a tool of the nerd to a dependable source of information for the masses. Kids use them for reference in their school projects all the time. And there are growing communities of participatory journalists who unite under an umbrella of wanting to make a statement of some sort and not be held down by corporate bureaucracy and procedural red tape. These union-free journalism factions have already done irreparable damage to the classical paper-bound community.
And bloggers still have the advantage of being under the radar - not being official news sources gives them the opportunity to be as scathing or critical as they wish, as opposed to paid reporters that still have to subscribe to ethics, journalistic integrity, career longevity, and the responsibility of being a good representative of the company employing them. At the end of the day, blog jockeys are just voicing an opinion or commenting on a news event. They can't be held responsible for verifying, or criticized for getting something wrong.
I've decried the future of print locally. I've often said when giving speeches on the Guam media industry that local newspapers will, without doubt, be completely out of business in a decade if they don't radically alter the channels through which they distribute news information (meaning if they don't merge with other electronic media companies to better diversify the distribution of their content, and even that won't save them entirely).
In my opinion, most newspapers will fall victim to their own ignorance/arrogance and failure to realize they're too far behind the times until it's too late. They'll be dead before they know it - a sad but not unexpected casualty in the name of industrial progress.
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