I can't leave that comment unchallenged, Dave. To summarise then, the "bastards in the newsroom" should go get another job to pay the bills so that they can support their journalism in their spare time, sort themselves out and learn up about internet marketing and the brave new world. Seriously? I'll pass those thoughts on to my journalistic colleagues, but I don't think that is the future. What will emerge will be based on many factors that are tricky to predict, but the process of change is a bit clearer. What people like about Newspapers will govern the positive moves, the forward thinking changes, and technology will accentuate those thoughts. For example, thinking about printed Newspapers, people like to read the news on the way to work. When a digital model effectively replaces the simplicity of accessing Journalism in a printed form, in a varied and moving environment like travelling to work then these people will stop buying newspapers. It's a wasteful and expensive way to get the news anyway. Will this mean that the Guardian or other newspapers stop printing their content on paper? Maybe. It doesn't mean they cease to exist though. Some people just want the facts. Some enjoy the editorial stance of a paper and the detailed opinion and featured editorial viewpoints. Some just want Page 3. Some just want the crossword. There are many reasons why people buy a Newspaper and there is no doubt Newspapers will need to adapt, but their death is not a certainty. Think about who buys a Newspaper and why. Maybe many of us here are not the target audience anyway, even before the internet provided an alternative distribution model. I like Brian's suggestion of Times TV and Sky News in a newsroom mash-up. The thought has not passed them by entirely, though they offer different types of journalism and are also governed differently in their public accountability... http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/12/thetimes.bskyb The pressure of change is immense, but the inertia is also a powerful force and it's always useful to remember that TV did not (yet) kill Cinema and Video did not kill the Radio Star. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWtHEmVjVw8 Enjoy before YouTube takes it down as the old and new models collide elsewhere...( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7942045.stm <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7942045.stm> ) Of course, though people may stop wanting to pay for Newspapers, Metro has proved you can distribute the physical newspaper for free. On my commute it is quite hard to get to work without reading Metro... There is a new exciting model out there that will deliver content of interest and preference to me, my favourite journalists packaged, what my social network likes and reinforce my own biased viewpoints. And works on the train. And challenges my thinking on a Sunday afternoon with a mass of thought provoking features and ideas carefully brought together. Not found it yet. Well played Mr Shirky. Promoting Journalism through the discussion of it's death... Cheers, jod
________________________________ From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk on behalf of Dave Crossland Sent: Mon 16/03/2009 14:41 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable 2009/3/16 Kevin Anderson <global...@gmail.com>: > > Going back to some of the previous comments though, the resistance to the > change wasn't just in the boardrooms, it was also in the newsrooms. It strikes me as exceedingly likely that the bastards in the boardroom will be joined in the dole queue by the bastards in the newsroom who have been recycling press releases and heaping scorn on people who tried to keep up, instead of keeping up. > I haven't heard many other solutions offered up in this thread. > ... > saying the BBC has a model that works doesn't really answer some of the > challenges that news organisations and individual journalists are facing > right now. The BBC model might well become more widespread when the other large beehive organisations collapse in the depression, and popular support for this communist evil ;-) emerges. For individuals, the solution is, they get another job to keep the bills paid, learn how internet marketing really works (which ought not to be too hard for those already expert at writing), continue to do journalism about what they love, and work hard at being worth it. They'll have to accept that everyone else will call them a "blogger" "podcaster" or "video podcaster" or something else that fails to see past the media form to the actual activity, and will fail to pay the social dividend of "I work at Acme Media Corp." As you said, plenty won't like that social adjustment, but those who resist will be stuck with another job and not contunuing to do journalism. There have been _plenty_ of professional bloggers during the last few years, and some were not lone individuals but small groups. Of all the ones I've paid for, my favourite was Gruber, who offered for money a full-text RSS feed with a T shirt. My hope is that we'll get more stuff like MediaLens but outwards facing (who are also not traditionally funded, but who are indeed funded.) My hope with the change is that we'll get an answer to the questions MediaLens raise about the integrity of the profession. Cheers, Dave (personal opinon only) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
