Traditional journalism, the kind defined and sustained for long by print media (read newspapers) has had it bad for a while now. No matter which way you look at it, traditional journalism is on the decline - newspapers have shut shop and/ or shrunk in size, the rate of which has only been surpassed by the fall in revenues of those publications still in business. Worse, even those that have made the transition to the online world have suffered, with some at best only managing to stay afloat.
The online world of social media and the peer production of news is blamed for this. Many like Shirky argue that the online, networked world has sounded the death knell of traditional journalism as we know it. Traditional journalism is expensive, episodic, and often mundane while peer produced news is cheap, explosive, and constant. According to Shirky, traditional journalism operates on a now irrelevant and anachronistic paradigm of monopolized content and media whereas the peer produced world of news unshackles information and places the power of producing and accessing content directly in the hands of the very people that consume it. Traditional journalism had a role in society – witnessing events and bringing news to people in an age when doing so was expensive. This problem is no longer relevant in the world of the Internet. Now, everyone is a witness and the Internet brings news anywhere at close to no cost.
The online world of social media and the peer production of news is blamed for this. Many like Shirky argue that the online, networked world has sounded the death knell of traditional journalism as we know it. Traditional journalism is expensive, episodic, and often mundane while peer produced news is cheap, explosive, and constant. According to Shirky, traditional journalism operates on a now irrelevant and anachronistic paradigm of monopolized content and media whereas the peer produced world of news unshackles information and places the power of producing and accessing content directly in the hands of the very people that consume it. Traditional journalism had a role in society – witnessing events and bringing news to people in an age when doing so was expensive. This problem is no longer relevant in the world of the Internet. Now, everyone is a witness and the Internet brings news anywhere at close to no cost.
While the change in paradigm is emancipating, people like Starkman raise the valid concern that the decline of traditional journalism is also leading to the decline of professional journalism. By virtue of maintaining control over content, newspapers or even the online versions of them (e.g. New York Times) have so far also played the role of curating content and editing it. More importantly, in the spirit of true journalism, they have retained their focus on sourcing stories that really matter, those that contribute to the public good by maintaining a check on institutions of power, as manifested in the genre of investigative journalism (e.g. this Pulitzer Prize winning story on Wal-Mart). This makes traditional journalism professional – deep, responsible, focused, and accountable.
On the other hand, led by the trends of the day, peer produced news can miss key issues and is often based on unsubstantiated facts. It’s amateurish and carries no particular mandate to keep an eye on the institutions of power that control us. To that effect, peer produced journalism is shallow, often irresponsible and unaccountable, and more or less lacks credibility.
If journalism as we know it is moving in this direction, can we then expect the death of professional journalism, the kind that has played a critical role in public accountability for decades past? I would expect, no. Shirky talks about the need for experimentation that might lead to the new paradigm. In this news media revolution in which, as Shirky puts it, “old stuff gets broken faster than new stuff can be put in place” new models of the production, distribution and monetization of news need to be tried out until a new, viable paradigm emerges. So far, the experimenters have been in opposing camps – the traditionalists who are hell-bent on replicating the traditional news business online and people like Shirky, who insist that the future of news is one that is entirely peer driven and devoid of institutional support.
Why not envision the future of journalism to be one where the strengths of both the old and the new come together? Why not infuse the breadth and witnessing capacity of the online peer production world with the editorial capabilities of expert journalists? Nothing stands in the way of a paradigm that sees journalists engage in a two way conversation with the broader internet world, seeking ideas for stories, suggesting some, tracking amateur stories, building on them, and I could go on. Experiments like this are already in motion – the Guardian did an investigative story based on the inputs crowdsourced from its readers and the newly launched online news site Vox has tried curating reader comments. Why not imagine a paradigm where the comments become the story and vice versa?
On the other hand, led by the trends of the day, peer produced news can miss key issues and is often based on unsubstantiated facts. It’s amateurish and carries no particular mandate to keep an eye on the institutions of power that control us. To that effect, peer produced journalism is shallow, often irresponsible and unaccountable, and more or less lacks credibility.
If journalism as we know it is moving in this direction, can we then expect the death of professional journalism, the kind that has played a critical role in public accountability for decades past? I would expect, no. Shirky talks about the need for experimentation that might lead to the new paradigm. In this news media revolution in which, as Shirky puts it, “old stuff gets broken faster than new stuff can be put in place” new models of the production, distribution and monetization of news need to be tried out until a new, viable paradigm emerges. So far, the experimenters have been in opposing camps – the traditionalists who are hell-bent on replicating the traditional news business online and people like Shirky, who insist that the future of news is one that is entirely peer driven and devoid of institutional support.
Why not envision the future of journalism to be one where the strengths of both the old and the new come together? Why not infuse the breadth and witnessing capacity of the online peer production world with the editorial capabilities of expert journalists? Nothing stands in the way of a paradigm that sees journalists engage in a two way conversation with the broader internet world, seeking ideas for stories, suggesting some, tracking amateur stories, building on them, and I could go on. Experiments like this are already in motion – the Guardian did an investigative story based on the inputs crowdsourced from its readers and the newly launched online news site Vox has tried curating reader comments. Why not imagine a paradigm where the comments become the story and vice versa?
No comments:
Post a Comment