Stopping the Press
By far the best idea to keep the newspaper tradition alive is from Jon Stewart. Suggesting that the black ink that rubs off on your fingers be a highly addictive narcotic that absorbs into the skin.
As we get word this week that yet another metropolitan daily is on life support, The San Francisco Chronicle. As the endangered species list continues to grow so does the list of outright extinction; The Baltimore Examiner, The Kentucky Post, The Cincinnati Post, South Idaho Press, Albuquerque Tribune, just to name a few. The Chronicle is just one of many this week, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Rocky Mountain News, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, Tribune newspapers including The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and others in shaky situations.
Today, there is much discussion on the sustainability of the news medium, however, there is substantially less on why. Would the collapse of newspapers as we know them now be that detrimental? Or will a new delivery emerge, able to gather and bundle import topics with quality and range of diversity?
Sustainability as a photojournalist is only getting more difficult. Editors I work with are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either way, their budgets are dwindling to tell compelling reportage or they have to worry about their own job security. As I see the industry change daily, I follow the discussion and am committed to change with it and come out on the other end nimble and flexible however the new medium will look.
I realize that things will never be the same in the journalism world. Not necessary worse, just different… and most deffinately, more difficult to break into.
By far the best suggestion that I’ve heard is
“I think there are four things that the big newsrooms have today that are likely to go away unless they’re deliberately conserved. One is audiences of a global scale, 25 million or more in the case of The New York Times. Another is the independence that comes with scale, legal departments and deep pockets and an imperviousness to threat, particularly in these libel-shopping, globalized days.
And the other thing they have is the ability to protect journalists from anything other than the perfection of their own work over a long period of time and to give them the language training and the area studies that the best of them will employ to do work that matters and work that lasts.
And I think those careers which my generation was very fortunate to enjoy, those careers are going to be very difficult to replicate in the coming forms of journalism that I think we can already see around us.
“There’s never been a model of news gathering and career formation in journalism such as the one that grew up between 1960 and 2005. It’s an accident of, you know, a lot of forces in the United States in particular… foreign correspondence and some local reporting and some investigative reporting, most of which will have to be the product of philanthropy, will continue, but I would at least like to give voice to the idea that there is something that will be lost that will not be replicated in these other models.”
Steve Coll. Former managing editor of the Washington Post, and Pulitzer prize winner on a recent interview on NPR’s program On The Media.
Click here to hear the entire interview.
I encourage you to contribute to the discussion. Are you a journalist? Are you a newspaper reader? Are you wanting to break into the journalism world? I would love to hear your take on this new era and how you think it might look.
Also, for your resource take a look at these links below…
Great blog on the topic
You may think that this is all happening due to the current economic crisis, it not. This Frontline 2007 production on News War is really informative.
An independent, non-profit news room
February 26th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Unfortunately, it’s not just newspaper but all news forms. Look at NPR and where they’re heading…cutting programs and staffing like newspapers across the country.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
No kidding with NPR. Great shows like This American Life have cut back staff to the bare bones. It’s a wonder how they continue to produce what they do produce.
On top of this, the local Public TV here in Baltimore is showing re-runs of Celtic Women both when brand new episodes of Frontline and American Tradition. Pretty pathetic producing at the station. Two of the best, most respected tv journalism outlets isn’t even getting played in this market… how much lower can we go?