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>My conclusion is that there is no desire to increase participation in or accessibility to the field of journalism, because of a rejection of the Jevons paradox

>My conclusion is that there is no desire to increase participation in or accessibility to the field of journalism, because of a rejection of the Jevons paradox. And consequently, the shrinking field seems to rely heavily on credentialism and connections to choose who becomes a journalist. As someone who has done both (and moved from journalism to engineering 4.5 years ago), I agree with the first half of your comment, but I disagree with this conclusion. I do agree with you that we should encourage everyone to be a citizen journalist or copy editor, and to a certain extent, social media has done that -- much to the chagrin of many members of the public who then decry the state of the news media. There was a massive push by many of the leading journalism think tanks (Poynter, Niemen, CJR, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, etc.) more than a decade ago for citizen journalism and the rise of user-generated content directly led to news organizations like The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed, which in turn informed news and news techniques from the likes of the Times, the Washington Post, etc. And despite media being an utter and complete shithole, more people than ever want to be journalists. But that's not the whole story. The problem, and the reason this isn't a rejection of Jevon's paradox, is that even though the appetite and potential audience for news has increased, the business models around news have collapsed. Larger outlets have managed to sustain, and in some cases like the New York Times, pivot themselves into even larger and more powerful centers -- but thousands more have gone out of business. There have been so many layoffs in the last few years (and at digital outlets too - not just antiquated local papers), it's beyond depressing. There were 16,000 layoffs in newsrooms (print, digital, broadcast) in 2020 [1], and even with the gains in digital organizations, there are still 30,000 fewer working journalists in the US today than in 2008 [2] I don't blame tech for the death of the newspaper, for what it's worth, (although Craigslist and the expectation of everything online being free didn't help), the print industry did a lot of it to themselves. But even digital-first publications suffer to make a profit and become a business, and because the returns on a media investment are not ever going to be the 20x or 30x you get from a tech startup, the appetite for investors has wained and even well-funded outlets can go under or get sold for next to nothing. So you have a flooded labor market and not enough jobs. And those jobs? Don't pay well. Which means that like a lot of other humanities, those jobs are largely taken by the people that can afford to do it, and there goes your diversity numbers. And in New York, DC, or San Francisco/LA (where US news bureaus are largely located), cost of living is insanely high. So you have kids who paid $180,000 for a graduate degree in journalism making $45,000* a year to work in New York City, where they have to live in a shitty apartment in Brooklyn with three other roommates. Or, they come from money and have parents who bought them an apartment. From a monetary perspective, I did very well in journalism, especially for someone who was mid-career and not an executive editor. I make more than double in tech. And in journalism, I was making more than double some of my coworkers (close to 3 times for some of them). To be fair, I work at a FAANG, so I'm an outlier -- and I have some friends/colleagues/mentors who made/make more in journalism than I do in tech -- so at the very top, journalism can be lucrative. But in mid-sized cities, it's abysmal. Part of the reason people encourage "everyone to learn to code," is that for now, the labor demand is larger than the supply and so salaries are high. That probably won't last forever, but it has definitely been the trend for a long time. And another part of the reason is that in general, society dismisses humanities as being less important. And yes, to your point, there probably is also a part of gate-keeping by the elites in those fields to keep it rarified, but I don't think that's the whole story. Joshua Benton wrote a great piece for Nieman Lab (part of Harvard's journalism institution) last month that really encapsulates a lot of the diversity challenge and what changes need to happen to make things better [3], but what he doesn't touch on as much is the fact that once people are skilled to be journalists, the jobs and the pay just aren't there for many people, especially compared to other professions. * Thanks to labor unions, the floor for entry-level newsroom jobs at at least major digital outlets is getting closer to $55k on average, but I still know of big places that hire people in at $45k. And people take those jobs even when they cannot really afford to live on that salary. [1]: https://www.thewrap.com/2020-newsroom-layoffs-data/ https://www.thewrap.com/2020-newsroom-layoffs-data/ [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/13/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-fallen-26-since-2008/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/13/u-s-newsroo... [3] https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/10/its-time-to-create-an-alternative-path-into-a-journalism-career/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/10/its-time-to-create-an-alte...

quadrifoliate 5y ago
Thank you for the detailed response with your real-life experience and links; material like this is why I come here! Link 3 in particular sounds like a tailor-made companion piece to this article. > But even digital-first publications suffer to make a profit and become a business, and because the returns on a media investment are not ever going to be the 20x or 30x you get from a tech startup, the appetite for investors has wained and even well-funded outlets can go under or get sold for next to nothing. This is exactly what I don't get. You'd think at least one large regional newspaper would have the gumption to try and pivot completely into an app-only, region-wide live version of Twitter or something like that. Currently, small swathes of this are being captured by (terrible) startups like Citizen [1]. Basically, what you're saying is the standard narrative, that free content on the web has destroyed the traditional media model. What I'm saying is the traditional large media houses have totally failed at embracing this model, and converting themselves into efficient producers of it. If they had shown more imagination, maybe we'd be reading information-packed Live Wires on NYTimesWire interspersed with ads, instead of Tweets interspersed with ads. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22595648/citizen-app-crime-scene-paid-live-streamer-nyc-la-emergencies https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22595648/citizen-app-crim...
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  > Basically, what you're saying is the standard narrative, that free content on the web has destroyed the traditional media model. What I'm saying is the traditional large media houses have totally failed at embracing this model, and converting themselves into efficient producers of it. If they had shown more imagination, maybe we'd be reading information-packed Live Wires on NYTimesWire interspersed with ads, instead of Tweets interspersed with ads. I actually don’t disagree with you at all. I think many of the newspapers have only themselves to blame. They were entirely unwilling to embrace digital until it was too late. But for many of them, it is too late. Because they are dead or owned by hedge funds that want to maximize profits and cut costs, and local reporting, even for stuff like city council meetings, is expensive because it has a smaller aggregate audience than just doing national stories. I think the challenge is that even before the collapse of print, you'd had an extended period of rollups of various newspaper owners thanks to eased regulations that has only accelerated over time. Gannett/GateHouse, all of the Tribune drama (which could be its own book), for two more recent examples) effectively means that most local papers are owned by a major conglomerate or hedge fund. I won’t even get into any of the pension stuff that has been horribly mismanaged (Poynter has had great coverage of that), but this report [1] from UNC Chapel Hill is five years old but does a great job showing how ownership of local papers has collapsed over the 2000s and how many papers have died. (It is somewhat ironic that one of the most important endowments/sponsors of journalism grants/research/education is the Knight Foundation, named for the newspaper magnate and half of once super publisher Knight Ridder, which was bought by McClatchy in 2006. McClatchy filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and was bought by a hedge fund in a bankruptcy auction. Meaning, Knight itself hasn’t existed in a material way in 15 years.) Now, to be sure, as I said, those local papers did themselves no favors. And Knight Ridder and some others were more savvy about technology (McClatchy not so much), but it hasn’t worked. Or at least not at scale. There have been many attempts, but most of it has come from the wrong place. You had initiatives like Tim Armstrong's Patch, which was the idea of turning every local area into a blog, similar to that LiveWire concept you had. Patch expanded fast and was quickly sold along, with Armstrong to AOL, where as CEO Armstrong poured millions and millions into it, before having to accept defeat and sell it off at a massive loss. Patch still exists, but it’s much smaller in scope than what was its plan. Then you have all of the attempts of Tribune to modernize, which have mostly been disastrous (Tronc). Google Digital First Media and read about how the foxes conspired with some of the hens to raid the henhouse [2]. Gannet has tried too and failed. But you’re not wrong that more innovation was needed from smarter people. The New York Times did it. In 2014, their current publisher (who at the time was learning the business from his father and as a millennial, was one of the younger people in a power position at the paper), famously commissioned and was the lead author a digital innovation report [3] that excoriated the Times' strategy and seriously set it up for the success it has had over the last seven years. That’s ultimately how he got the publisher job in 2016, several years earlier than people expected. But the Times had a much stronger financial situation than most other papers and the gravitas and hubris to be innovative and take chances. That’s why it’s the Times. (It’s the Yankees of media companies) I don’t mean to be dismissive. My own bias is def towards the tech/digital side of media, having never worked in local news and spending my whole career in digital (I graduated from college in 2008 and never even thought about going to print), but as someone who has been obsessed with tech and media my entire life, this is an area I’ve been watching for as long as I can remember. CJR, Poynter, Nieman, The Knight Foundation and others are actively trying to fund and incubate ideas for the future of news, especially at a local level, but it’s difficult. The Colorado Sun is one rare example of a local community paper, born from the ashes of the hedge-fund cultures, that has managed to break through, but it’s just a tough business. [1]: http://newspaperownership.com/ http://newspaperownership.com/, http://newspaperownership.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07.UNC_RiseOfNewMediaBaron_SinglePage_01Sep2016-REDUCED.pdf http://newspaperownership.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07.... alt link https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07.UNC_RiseOfNewMediaBaron_SinglePage_01Sep2016-REDUCED.pdf https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07.... [2]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/hedge-fund-vampire-alden-global-capital-that-bleeds-newspapers-dry-has-chicago-tribune-by-the-throat https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/hedge-fund-vampire-a... [3]: https://www.scribd.com/doc/224608514/The-Full-New-York-Times-Innovation-Report#download&from_embed https://www.scribd.com/doc/224608514/The-Full-New-York-Times...

quadrifoliate 5y ago

Thank you for the detailed response with your real-life experience and links; material like this is why I come here! Link 3 in particular sounds like a tailor-made companion piece to this article. > But even digital-first publications suffer to make a profit and become a business, and because the returns on a media investment are not ever going to be the 20x or 30x you get from a tech startup, the appetite for investors has wained and even well-funded outlets can go under or get sold for next to nothing. This is exactly what I don't get. You'd think at least one large regional newspaper would have the gumption to try and pivot completely into an app-only, region-wide live version of Twitter or something like that. Currently, small swathes of this are being captured by (terrible) startups like Citizen [1]. Basically, what you're saying is the standard narrative, that free content on the web has destroyed the traditional media model. What I'm saying is the traditional large media houses have totally failed at embracing this model, and converting themselves into efficient producers of it. If they had shown more imagination, maybe we'd be reading information-packed Live Wires on NYTimesWire interspersed with ads, instead of Tweets interspersed with ads. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22595648/citizen-app-crime-scene-paid-live-streamer-nyc-la-emergencies https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/27/22595648/citizen-app-crim...

filmgirlcw 5y ago
> Basically, what you're saying is the standard narrative, that free content on the web has destroyed the traditional media model. What I'm saying is the traditional large media houses have totally failed at embracing this model, and converting themselves into efficient producers of it. If they had shown more imagination, maybe we'd be reading information-packed Live Wires on NYTimesWire interspersed with ads, instead of Tweets interspersed with ads. I actually don’t disagree with you at all. I think many of the newspapers have only themselves to blame. They were entirely unwilling to embrace digital until it was too late. But for many of them, it is too late. Because they are dead or owned by hedge funds that want to maximize profits and cut costs, and local reporting, even for stuff like city council meetings, is expensive because it has a smaller aggregate audience than just doing national stories. I think the challenge is that even before the collapse of print, you'd had an extended period of rollups of various newspaper owners thanks to eased regulations that has only accelerated over time. Gannett/GateHouse, all of the Tribune drama (which could be its own book), for two more recent examples) effectively means that most local papers are owned by a major conglomerate or hedge fund. I won’t even get into any of the pension stuff that has been horribly mismanaged (Poynter has had great coverage of that), but this report [1] from UNC Chapel Hill is five years old but does a great job showing how ownership of local papers has collapsed over the 2000s and how many papers have died. (It is somewhat ironic that one of the most important endowments/sponsors of journalism grants/research/education is the Knight Foundation, named for the newspaper magnate and half of once super publisher Knight Ridder, which was bought by McClatchy in 2006. McClatchy filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and was bought by a hedge fund in a bankruptcy auction. Meaning, Knight itself hasn’t existed in a material way in 15 years.) Now, to be sure, as I said, those local papers did themselves no favors. And Knight Ridder and some others were more savvy about technology (McClatchy not so much), but it hasn’t worked. Or at least not at scale. There have been many attempts, but most of it has come from the wrong place. You had initiatives like Tim Armstrong's Patch, which was the idea of turning every local area into a blog, similar to that LiveWire concept you had. Patch expanded fast and was quickly sold along, with Armstrong to AOL, where as CEO Armstrong poured millions and millions into it, before having to accept defeat and sell it off at a massive loss. Patch still exists, but it’s much smaller in scope than what was its plan. Then you have all of the attempts of Tribune to modernize, which have mostly been disastrous (Tronc). Google Digital First Media and read about how the foxes conspired with some of the hens to raid the henhouse [2]. Gannet has tried too and failed. But you’re not wrong that more innovation was needed from smarter people. The New York Times did it. In 2014, their current publisher (who at the time was learning the business from his father and as a millennial, was one of the younger people in a power position at the paper), famously commissioned and was the lead author a digital innovation report [3] that excoriated the Times' strategy and seriously set it up for the success it has had over the last seven years. That’s ultimately how he got the publisher job in 2016, several years earlier than people expected. But the Times had a much stronger financial situation than most other papers and the gravitas and hubris to be innovative and take chances. That’s why it’s the Times. (It’s the Yankees of media companies) I don’t mean to be dismissive. My own bias is def towards the tech/digital side of media, having never worked in local news and spending my whole career in digital (I graduated from college in 2008 and never even thought about going to print), but as someone who has been obsessed with tech and media my entire life, this is an area I’ve been watching for as long as I can remember. CJR, Poynter, Nieman, The Knight Foundation and others are actively trying to fund and incubate ideas for the future of news, especially at a local level, but it’s difficult. The Colorado Sun is one rare example of a local community paper, born from the ashes of the hedge-fund cultures, that has managed to break through, but it’s just a tough business. [1]: http://newspaperownership.com/ http://newspaperownership.com/, http://newspaperownership.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07.UNC_RiseOfNewMediaBaron_SinglePage_01Sep2016-REDUCED.pdf http://newspaperownership.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07.... alt link https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07.UNC_RiseOfNewMediaBaron_SinglePage_01Sep2016-REDUCED.pdf https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/07.... [2]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/hedge-fund-vampire-alden-global-capital-that-bleeds-newspapers-dry-has-chicago-tribune-by-the-throat https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/hedge-fund-vampire-a... [3]: https://www.scribd.com/doc/224608514/The-Full-New-York-Times-Innovation-Report#download&from_embed https://www.scribd.com/doc/224608514/The-Full-New-York-Times...