Latest in irregular series on the state of journalism
I managed to attend two events in the same week run by the organisation NESTA. After being less than complimentary about last Monday’s Reboot Britain event (see last post) I was somewhat concerned about Friday’s News Innovation. I had no reason to worry. This was an ‘unconference’ for journalists academics and web developers to tackle the future of news. Attendees turn up with their own presentations and the event is organised on the day. There were plenty of intriguing ideas, thoughts and inspiration over four hours, but what it boiled down to in the end was the two pretty fundamental questions:
- Is there future business model for the creation of news? Has the twin impact of free content on the web and the current downturn signalled the death knell for journalism as we know it?
- Out of point 1. What is the future for journalists and journalism? If we can’t attach a business case or model for creating news what’s left for the hack? Marketing or PR? Analysis or data collection?
These points were debated in a session at the end of the day on business models for journalism, chaired by Guardion social media guru Kevin Anderson (who blogs here and is on Twitter). For a discussion on our potential extinction as news gatherers it was oddly invigorating. I suppose that given the amount of navel-gazing there has been in the profession of late it was refreshing to get a lot of this stuff out in the open. You can pick up a lot of it via the Twitter hashtag or through a couple of blog sites – One Man and his Blog and Currybet.
Kevin Anderson clearly has done a lot of thinking on our future as a species. And he wasn’t filling me with a great deal of confidence as to our respective qualities. Journalists appear to be protective, arrogant and conservative, more concerned with limiting what they can do now – researching and finding news – rather than how their skills can be adapted and can evolve as the media landscape changes irrevocably. One of the audience, a former journalist called Charlie Beckett, went event further. Two snippets from Beckett, who runs the organisation Polis: 80% of journalist jobs will go; there is no skill in journalism barring writing. “Journalists are crap at crating communities,” he added, further twisting the knife.
So before we all turn to our kitchen knifes as solutions to the crisis in confidence that appears to be befalling my profession I’d propose a way forward. Journalists can excel and thrive in this new world. I firmly believe this. We can be super communicators, super community managers and leaders (having changed our attitude to the audience, ie. by actually engaging with them), super analysts and linkers. This is a future where journalists have to embrace change and to more closely align themselves to the audience, to generating revenue (yes we have to attach a vlaue to things now) and to live events. This is where innovation can stave off extinction.
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on Jul 17th, 2009 at 9:19 am
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on Aug 1st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Phil, thanks for the post and the mention. Let me try to re-focus a bit on the positive. I think that journalists are defensive right now because of the economic insecurity we (and lots of others to be honest) are facing. That anxiety is never going to bring the best out in us.
One quality I think we do posess is creativity, and I think journalists can and are being creative to respond to the current challenges of this recession and the longer-term structural issues in our business. Creativity can be stifled with anxiety, and I think the challenge for us right now is to work through this anxious period and creatively address the challenges that we’re facing.
This is a conversation worth having, and hopefully, we can continue and talk about solutions and new ideas, get back to tapping our creativity.
on Aug 6th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Thanks Kevin. Perhaps we should form a support group for anxious journalists?
I think your point about creativity is spot on. I’m able to use skills honed as a journalist in my wider role which encompasses commercial and marketing responsibilities. Unlike some doom-mongers I think skills learn in journalism are transferrable.