Get me rewrite!
Gary Goldhammer of Below the Fold e-mailed me with several questions about journalism and the media for a book he's writing about media trends. He's posted the exchange.
I wish I had cleaned up my syntax and written more thoughtfully and less on the fly. So, I did it a bit here. The additions since I e-mailed my responses are in ital.
Q. What constitutes "the media" today?
A. This is a question for the academics to debate. I'm not an academic. No offense, but I don't know any working journalist -- or citizen journalist -- who cares about a question like that. People work for newspapers, or for Web sites, or TV stations or they blog or vlog. Honestly, no one who works for "the media" calls it that, except for those pundits who criticize "the media" for a variety of ills.
Q. How has technology made things better for journalism? How has it made things worse?
A. I can't think of a legitimate reason technology has made things worse for the media journalism. Someone might say it has threatened the business model on which I make my living, but that's not true. My profession hasn't responded appropriately or effectively. Someone might say it has allowed all kinds of opinion to pose as truth. That's true, but the same can be said -- and is -- of traditional media "advances." (The development of talk news, for instance.)
Technology has given the power of the printing press and a television station to everyone. Everyone has the opportunity to publish news and opinion. That improves our journalism. It improves the world's journalism. More voices telling people what they know and think is good. The more MSM journalists who listen to their readers and viewers, the better.
As for my paper in particular, thanks to the Web, we're able to do radio and television. Our dozens of reporters -- more than any other news organization in our area -- can do video and audio, as well as newsprint. Think of the opportunity to expand our journalism! Of course, we also can speak much more directly to our audience with blogs and interactivity.
It's common to suggest that all this interaction with readers is time-consuming and hard. "I have a job to do! I don't have time to talk with everyone." Yes, it is hard and it is different. But these are the people we're writing for and who we're supposed to be serving. We need to listen and respond. It's not just good public policy, it's what we need to do to survive.
The other common concern -- although not much from folks here -- is the idea that I have one skill and that is taking notes on a reporter's pad and creating sentences and paragraphs on a computer screen for the newspaper. Take a tape recorder with me? Write what you know for online now? Take a video camera along? Are you nuts? (Although they say it a bit more colorfully.) That attitude is fading faster than you might think. At least I hope it is.
And there's that thing about transparency.
Q. What is your definition of "citizen journalism" or "citizen media?" Do you think citizen involvement in the creation of news is a trend or a fad?
A. Again, definitions are just uninteresting academic discussions to me. I guess that citizen journalism is anyone who creates news or opinion and distributes it. But, you know, what difference does a definition make?
I think citizen involvement isn't a trend or a fad. It's an historic development that will only grow. Once the power has shifted, does it ever shift back? I'm no historian, but I'd suggest that once everyone has the ability and the freedom to create their news, opinion and information report, there's no going back.
Everyone won't become a citizen journalist as we think of reporters right now. But more and more people will be creating reports of news and opinion either on the Web or in more traditional ways as the barriers to publishing come down. We have a bunch of bloggers here who are reporting the news or reporting their roles in the news and getting it on the Web before it hits either the newspaper or the local TV stations. Why would we think that it's a fad? It's big.
Look how popular YouTube is. It was next to nothing a year ago. I suspect that sometime soon everything will be on video somewhere. (I'd hate to be a celebrity in this day and time.)
Q. Who will be newspaper readers in 20 years, and why?
A. The most intelligent people. No, seriously, there'll be me. OK, seriously, 20 years, right? I think there will be plenty of newspaper readers. Don't ask me about 50 years. Twenty years is only one generation. Boomers are still alive and well. The typical newspaper reader will be in his/her 60s, but there will still be tens of millions of people in their 60s.
The more interesting question is what will the newspaper look like in 20 years. They'll be smaller in both size and number of sections. They will be local, local, local. And they'll still be good.
And an interesting question I don't know the answer to: Some of those papers -- we may be one of them -- will have old, old presses that need to be replaced. But presses cost millions and millions of dollars. Will publishers want to spend that kind of money 10 or 20 years from now? (Or now, for that matter?) And if they don't, what happens to that paper without a working press?
We're planning an upgrade of our press so I'm confident it will be around, but for those papers that need new ones. It's such a major investment that some publishers in Europe are already declaring that they've bought their last presses. That's dramatic change.
Q. Do you believe there is more news today than there is journalism?
A. Yes. Everything is "news." My daughter's soccer game is news, but is anyone turning it into journalism? Not that I'm aware of. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Science tells you that it does. If news happens and no one is there to record it, does it happen? Of course.
That is changing. More and more people are recording the news of their lives, thanks to technological advances.
Of course, what we call journalism these days may not be news. Watch the cable news gabfests that jump from one trial to another disappearance to another murder. Watch the entertainment tabloid shows and magazines that make Paris and Nicole and Jessica better known that the Supreme Court.
Q. With all the challenges of being a journalist -- from increased
competition to poor public perception -- why should people pursue
journalism as a profession?
A. Because it's a sacred trust. Because it informs people and, if done right, it engenders democracy. Because it's fun. Because it's not selling insurance or telephone service or destroying the environment.
Q. Is print dead? If not then why -- if so, who or what killed it?
A. No. No medium since the stone tablet has died. Well, except for
Nostradamos.
Q. What, in your opinion, is the best thing about the future of news?
A. Everyone can play. Lots of choices. It gets intensely local. I can't go to my daughter's high school football game? I can watch it online with broadband because someone has videotaped it. I wonder what she's being taught in school? I can find out -- even if she's a non-communicative kid -- from her teacher's Web site and from the two students in her class who have blogs.