The above title was the name of an FTC workshop that just finished its first day. Get past the thought that it seems like a funny title that seems more at home in the 90’s. Journalism, in its current form, is definitely changing. But is it really dieing? Is there a chance it might not survive?
Here’s my answer: Yes, journalism will survive. Duh!
Will old newspapers survive? Probably not. I hope not. I think it’s a dreadful waste of trees, and they haven’t exactly done an inspiring job of revealing some of the most important stories of the last decade.
Will incisive, investigative reporting and good critical commentary survive? That’s probably the better question. The answer is pretty obvious: it is not only surviving, but thriving. It’s the old models that are changing.
At the workshop, Murdoch referred to news aggregators (which is just about everyone from blogs to Twitter to Digg to Slashdot) as “parasites” and “vampires.”
A lot of this reminds me of the apocalypse that happened in the music industry a few years back. Instead of figuring out how to adapt to the changing landscape, they went on the warpath looking for regulation to do for them what their products couldn’t. The result was years of anklebiting and drama; in the end, the entrepreneurs and technologists won out anyway. We now have iTunes, Last.fm, Xune, etc. Although there’s a lot to dislike about the current music industry, there are pockets of amazing growth that are satisfying consumers. Commercial news media needs to do the same.
Arianna Huffington also spoke and made a number of comments that I agree with, particularly the observation that traditional media companies (including News Corp) are also in the aggregation business:
Plus, let’s be honest, many of those complaining the loudest are working both sides of the street. Take, for example, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Just look at the sites News Corp. owns, as TechDirt.com recently did, and you will see example after example after example of the pot calling the kettle black. And aggregating its content.
You can read Arianna’s comments, including her list of cases where News Corp and others are aggregating content at Journalism 2009: Desperate Metaphors, Desperate Revenue Models, And The Desperate Need For Better Journalism.
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