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>"The journalism industry seems to be in trouble. Newspaper revenue has shrunk from $57.4 billion in 2003 to $38.6 billion in 2012." I think what the article i
by wklauss 13y ago
>"The journalism industry seems to be in trouble. Newspaper revenue has shrunk from $57.4 billion in 2003 to $38.6 billion in 2012."
I think what the article is trying to say is that the printed journalism is in trouble. And it might well be, but there are a lot of other forms of journalism that are rising up.
We might not see something homogeneous resulting from it or a direct substitute/evolution of these printed media formats. Maybe one of the consequences of living on a permanently connected society is that we no longer need a periodical summarization on whats going on in the world.
But as a journalist myself, theres a couple of things I'd like to see, even if they might not be profitable or practical:
1. A big daily newspaper shifting the news producing cycle. Devote the web to last minute, daily news. Create a weekly focused on analysis and long features.
2. A tool to reach different groups of readers with different ages and ways of consuming news pieces.
2.1 How are teenagers discovering these days whats going on in the world? Through links in 4chan? ok, lets put links in 4chan then.
2.2 How are 60-somethings engaging with important issues? through long forwarded mail chains with powerpoints attached? Great, lets do that!
3. A way to effectively measure audience, something more useful than pageviews and time spent on a page.
4. An advertising platform that doesn't consider ads something to sell for cents on the click. This has been one of the major disrupting elements in the printed journalism world. We used to sell ads for A LOT of money, even when (or maybe because) there was no way to effectively measure the reaction of the reader.
But mostly what we are seeing is a total transformation of a business and I don't think theres a way to change that or "save" anything. It's similar, in a sense, to what happen to music labels a decade ago.
A. The business structure cannot sustain the current way the people are using the product.
B. People in charge are worried of making big changes that might render them obsolete, therefore they try to maintain the statu quo.
C. Most of the income is gone. Ads are cheaper and people buy less newspapers.
- sliverstorm 13y agothere are a lot of other forms of journalism that are rising up. I'm not sure I'd call a lot of what is rising up, "journalism".
- wklauss 13y agoI think we got spoiled by an era where we got really amazing examples of journalism (Post-war, Watergate, etc...). Go back a century and you'll see that what was around was not much different that what we have today. Editorial, opinionated...
- Shivetya 13y agobased on the AJC here in Atlanta, don't forget half your audience. Failure to keep their editorial slant out of their everyday reporting clobbered this paper. After a few attempts to reinvent themselves, they tried to prop up their numbers with web content. The sad part, far too many printed stories sent you to the web to get the complete story which basically told readers, why bother with print! Another area people overlook, the for sale pages of papers took a direct hit from ebay and craigslist. I remember buying papers just for the wanted ads, but vehicles ended up on dedicated sites, cars.com / autotrader.com and such.
- danso 13y agoEditorial slant has long been a characteristic of the most successful newspapers, both in the Yellow Age and the Golden Age. The "golden age" was golden, not because media achieved that perfect state of neutrality, but because it was a time when newspapers merged and monopolized the print ad industry. The slant of a newspaper is very likely a minor factor compared to the major shift in advertising and information distribution caused by tech. But to think that media is reaping what they sowed for disagreeing with one's political beliefs is a more comforting, digestible explanation, like when a adulterer gets hit by a car as a purported act of God.