I’m sorry Uncle Jim, but journalism as you know it is heading in a completely new direction and if you don’t change now, you’re going to be left in the trash just like newspapers will be.
Journalism as we know it is in the process of making a revolutionary change to better fit the new generation of tech-savvy people. Gone are the days of newspapers and traditional news station, and moving in is the same news you would have gotten before, however just this time it’s heading directly to your pocket and to your computer.
I remember as a young child on summer mornings, my parents would have me run outside to pick up our copy of The Boston Globe so they could read the news with their morning cup of coffee. It’s been over a decade since I’ve had to do that chore. Now my responsibilities consist of me showing my parents how to use their newest piece of technology just to get the same information that would normally appeared on the kitchen table.
Since the year 2000, print revenue went from roughly $65 billion dollars to only about $19 billion within the past few years. As a direct correlation to that, online revenue has increased by $4 billion in the same amount of time, with the numbers only on the incline.
Journalism today is coming to you at faster speeds than it ever has before. Instead of waiting for the paper the next morning, or even waiting for the six o’clock news, people can get the information with just a few clicks on their smartphones, tablets or computers. This has completely changed the game of news with speed and efficiency.
But with journalism trending more towards online, anyone has the power to break news. With more people breaking news faster than ever, often times the credibility of all these so-called “news” sources has declined tremendously.
“The first task of the new journalist/sense maker, rather, is to verify what information is reliable and then order it so people can grasp it efficiently,” said Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in their novel, Elements of Journalism.
In an article in The New York Times, many large newspaper industries have had to cut their budgets and reduce spending costs as a result of the less revenue that is being brought it. Some newspapers have had to transition from being Daily Papers to only being printed once per week.
“Big dailies are also being squeezed to cut costs by their corporate overlords… And while there are some great hyperlocal websites, the whole idea of the Internet — untethered to geography, universal in topic and voice — pushes against the sort of groundedness that alt weeklies provide.”
Although we don’t know when newspapers will become completely obsolete, one thing is certain, if you aren’t changing the way you look at journalism, then you might as well go back to the stone-age, because your news won’t appear at your doorstep every morning much longer.
Cyr's Thoughts 