The future isn't bleak

Rich Gordon, an associate professor of journalism at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, wrote an article published in 2005 titled "Online opportunities make journalism's future bright, despite gloomy feelings" in Online Journalism Review that argued the downturn in the media industry may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean that journalism as a profession will disappear.

Well I certainly hope it won't, I am about to finish my degree.

But more to the point, he suggests that the Internet has opened up tremendous other opportunities. In a telephone discussion with him today, I asked what has changed since the article was published. He responded that media outlets are finally seeing they must change their business model. Although it might seem as though the industry has experienced a rapid decline in readership and viewership recently, and it might be tempting to blame that on the Internet, he said newspaper circulation stayed stagnant while the population increased, meaning this has been a gradual loss. He suggested that with the overabundance of media offerings available now, more people are reading the news than ever, they simply aren't getting it all in the traditional print format.

"It's scary and uncomfortable and challenging and any other negative adjective you can come up with," he said. "Three or four years ago there were still an awful lot of people in the traditional media publishing community with their heads in the sand."

Gordon said those people are now beginning to understand that the industry needs to adapt and innovate in order to stay relevant. Although he admitted he is concerned with how much investigative reporting will be funded because the days of giving five reporters six months to work on a project are probably gone. Hopefully those types of groundbreaking stories aren't gone as well. I am hoping, myself, that those kinds of stories will be easier to do with the amount to technology available to us.

Gordon said there's no real set path for a journalist just out of school to follow. This job is one of constant learning, and to remain employable, journalists must learn to adapt. I think that's valid. I don't worry about finding an entry level position at a mid-size daily newspaper. I don't think that will be a problem, I just don't have as much confidence that I will be doing the same kind of journalism down the road. Actually, I'd like to write books someday, maybe after I pay off my student loans.

In 20 years.

Citizen journalism

It's hard not to associate yourself with television "journalism" when you work for print media.

The new community journalism

So where do story ideas come from? Better yet, where should they come from?

Connecting to the community is more important to journalism today than ever before. As readers are falling off in droves, newspapers nationwide are seeking new ways to connect to the community and remain relevant to readers. One concept in its trial stages is the idea of crowdsourcing for journalists.

Essentially, this means that newspapers are turning to readers for information and tips and then using those to develop investigative stories. Why didn't we think of this before? It makes perfect sense, especially since good tips often come from anonymous whistleblowers interested in making a difference in their community.

While journalists live in the communities they cover, they are not the recognizable faces from the nightly broadcast, and are often somewhat mysterious to readers. It takes effort to find out what your favorite writer looks like, and they can't be everywhere all the time. To find out what people are talking about, what easier way than to ask them in a way that makes it possible to ask many at once?

In this article from American Journalism Review, proponents of the concept make it very clear that the need for professional journalism is not diminished by the concept of asking readers for information. In fact, the need for editing content, especially reader produced, is in some minds more apparent.

Robert Niles argues in "Why journalists make ideal online community leaders" that journalists should embrace the idea of being discussion moderators on the Web. He suggests that the skills journalists cultivate such as asking open-ended questions that inspire thought and knowing how to choose your words carefully make them naturals for developing user-generated content.

Crowdsourcing isn't just for journalists:

Building an inside out onion

This article from Newsweek suggests that the era of user-generated content is nearing completion. Apparently people are tired of being mislead by faulty information on the Internet. While journalists get at least some training in how to tell a trustworthy Web site from one that could contain false information, most average Internet users in the U.S. don't. 

So how is one to tell the faux from the Fabergé? It's hard to say. Some Web sites look so real they are very convincing. Sourcing is often the only way to determine the quality of information. Government Web sites are trustworthy, but if you're going to use the information in a Wikipedia article then you had best follow the sourcing links to find out how accurate the information really is. 

What I see is a merging of user-generated content and expert content. Participatory journalism is the way of the future. It will blend reader contributions, from photo submissions to videos caught on cell phones, with stories researched and written by professionals.

Journalism 2.0

In an earlier post I briefly discussed the idea of Web 2.0, the interactive Internet. Merits not withstanding, it is here for good. So how is a journalist to incorporate this participatory Internet to give their readers the most comprehensive experience possible?

I had the pleasure of being a part of a teleconference with Journalism 2.0 author Mark Briggs. A free PDF version of his book is available here.

Briggs wrote his book for the members of his newsroom, he said, but, "I'm glad it's getting more use than it was intended for." Briggs, a self-taught media guru who works as online editor of the Tacoma News Tribune, said the skills new journalists need should encompass many areas, and that it is not necessary to be really good at one thing. His book is meant to jump start any journalist's presence on the Web, so I tend to think of it as a "Dinosaur's Guide to the Internet." But that doesn't mean I'm not going to read it and use the skills it teaches.

A vocal advocate of blogs, Briggs has a blog that compliments the book. Briggs said all reporters should blog, and that many, although initially resistant, find that they can use their blog to organize their reporting for the print edition. Commenting on the natural flow of writing that appears in blogs, he said the News Tribune sometimes reverse publishes things that are written in blogs for the print edition because an author's voice is not distilled from the piece.

Briggs' enthusiasm for the possibilties of the Internet and connectivity were very apparent when he said, it's never been a better time to be a journalist if you're excited and willing to take advantage of the new tools now available.

To see a collection from the Pew Center of neat ways that newspapers and other Web sites have been using the Internet to connect to the community or tell stories in a entirely new way, click here.

Why archives should be free

Isn't it funny how newspapers will let you read the day's or the week's news for free, but if you develve deeper in the Web site to find related stories, background information and the like, you are often asked to cough up? Well, I for one disagree with this practice.

I think of news archives as history, and I don't really think anyone can own history. It may depend on whether you consider newspapers works of creativity, such as sculptures and books. Arguably, books can center around history, but they remain the property of their creators. Unless the author explicitly sells the rights to his or her creation, and does so to the extremity of no longer retaining any such rights, the creative work remains copyrighted to the creators.

Now, in the case of the newspaper, this is certainly not so. When a reporter comes back with a story, that story is sometimes hacked into little bits by different parts of the copy cycle or is placed in the newspaper looking relatively similar to what the reporter originally wrote. This creative work belongs not the reporter, nor the various parts of the copy wheel, but to the newspaper, and inevitably, the community in which it is consumed. It becomes a part of the community because, if it does its job correctly, it will inspire some dialogue, thus becoming a part of history. The news does and should be an active participant in our lives. We should be motivated, outraged, inspired by what we read in the paper, and then take those feelings to others.

By producing stories, the newspaper is an active part of the community that forever affects what history looks like. To better see my point, try to imagine what our nation would look like without the influence of the press. That's too broad. What if the New York Times had not published stories about Nixon and Watergate? What would our government, constantly shrouded in secrecy, be doing while no one was looking? Check out this analysis from American Journalism Review of the effect Watergate had on journalism.

I believe that just as documents are housed in public libraries for anyone to see, so should be the recording of the past as it happened. Newspaper stories have an active voice and undeniable influence on the world around them. Just as they record history, they also influence its course, therefore becoming a part of it that belongs to the public.