> I realised that ‘good journalism’ is often bad as well because of deep > structural issues in the industry, and that the news as we know it might > need to die in order for something better to take its place. I also > realised that it’s time to stop reading the news as I do. Once a week is > probably fine. And this is coming from a current, practising journalist! >
You're specifically referring to the 24 hour TV news cycle or changes journalism being consumed online has wrought or the changes in people's reading habits? I'm referring to almost all of journalism which is broken: be it television or print. Even the good news outlets operate in a field where advertising-based incentives ensure a steady supply of bullshit. Another major problem is the tyranny of the 'news story'. A single news story can be frustrating to read: it assumes prior knowledge and context, and because it is one among millions of stories, it can sink without being read by anyone. So how then do you measure journalistic impact? By the excellence of its reporting or the fact that more people read it than anything else? An extension of this problem is the tyranny of the format. Take the best TV journalism in India, which I believe is NDTV. But whether it is NDTV or BBC (or take your pick), they all operate in a scenario where the 90 second story or the 20 second 'read' or the 2-minute interview is the norm. This format is just not good enough to get at journalistic truth, which is similar to scientific truth. Take the best newspapers in India. Because they are in the business of being all things to all people, newspapers don't get into depth. How much good can a 600 or 800 word story do? Once you start thinking about this, you realize just about everything related to journalism is deeply flawed: its business model, its basic building blocks, the lack of trust, the absence of attention from we, the people who are their audience and so on. End result: journalism is broken, and the news as we know it is has been slowly dying for the last 15-20 years. Maybe in 5 or 10 years it would have fully died off and the landscape would have shifted for something new to take its place (maybe a 10,000 different community-based locals?). Meanwhile, those of us who are in the business of thinking about where journalism is headed will continue to experiment. On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 5:37 PM Kiran K Karthikeyan < [email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 9 Jan 2020 at 10:52, Venkatesh H R <[email protected]> wrote: > > > I realised that ‘good journalism’ is often bad as well because of deep > > structural issues in the industry, and that the news as we know it might > > need to die in order for something better to take its place. I also > > realised that it’s time to stop reading the news as I do. Once a week is > > probably fine. And this is coming from a current, practising journalist! > > > > You're specifically referring to the 24 hour TV news cycle or changes > journalism being consumed online has wrought or the changes in people's > reading habits? > > Regards, > Kiran > -- H R Venkatesh Director, Training and Research, BOOM <https://www.boomlive.in/> John S. Knight Journalism Fellow 2019 <https://jsk.stanford.edu/fellows/class-of-2019/h-r-venkatesh/>, Stanford University Twitter: @hrvenkatesh
