It is sometimes said that things are hardly stable or fixed and that instead, they exist in a perennial state of constant flux. With the vast array of ongoing changes in our society, politics and economy, even the least cognizant person perceives, at least to some degree, that our world is currently placed at a pivotal point. And so it seems, as a field that perhaps best mirrors this world we live in, the field of Journalism not only reflects this pivotal predicament, it is consequently itself currently characterized by it. What exactly is the future of Journalism? How will the distribution of information change as technology continues to improve? Are we experiencing the death of American newspaper as we’ve come to know it?
These issues and several others were addressed and discussed at the Steve Allen Theater Thursday night at an event featuring several experienced journalists attending as participants in a panel organized by the Los Angeles Press Club. Moderated by Ezra Palmer, a former managing editor at Yahoo! News and a founding editor of WallStreetJournal.com, the panel discussion was an attempt to shed light on an industry increasingly described with stark language and apocalyptic analogies. And yet, while the field of journalism is anything but dead, difficult challenges seem inevitable and the seemingly stygian nature of its present state demands further scrutiny and is thus worthy of a poignant discussion.
One notable challenge deals with revenue and the idea of journalism as a business. Although many consider Journalism a public trust, it is quite apparent that journalists have to be thinking about their work as a business as well, as the success of their business is becoming increasingly dependent on revenue. Ezra Palmer points out, “This is interesting because journalists don’t usually talk about revenue. I know that for the first ten or fifteen years of my career, much of that being at the Wall Street Journal, never once did I think about the business of the place that I was working at. In fact, I was discouraged from thinking about it.” Though there are several reasons responsible for increasing economic pressures, the most significant of all appears to be the advent of the digital revolution. As more and more readers want their news on demand and more continuously updated, newspapers have created their own websites.
However, though these websites add revenue via online advertisers, it is still not enough to replace the revenue lost from circulation and print ads. Susan Denley, director of editorial hiring and development at The Los Angeles Times says, “We are surrounded by it, we have to figure out what to do about revenues.” Echoing this remark is Peter Viles, a senior producer for Real Estate at LATimes.com and creator of LA Land, a blog dealing with the housing market and real estate in Los Angeles. “We’ve been encouraged to think about revenue. Where I work on the website we are very focused on daily traffic and to what we are doing that people are responding to? I wouldn’t call it pressure but there is certainly an expectation that we’ll start thinking that way,” says Peter. It is important to note here, that measuring web content by traffic, which brings to mind the ratings system in television and radio, seems to raise questions about problems that may arise as a result of placing too much emphasis on the popularity of a particular news posting. To what extent will a website be able to report balanced news when there is an obvious need to create traffic? Problems such as this and our understanding of them appear to be only in their infant stages.
As a member of the audience pointed out, “what will happen when a story by a certain person receives little traffic and consequently raises questions about the journalistic value of the person supplying the information. Additionally, not only is the internet reshaping the way newpapers and public radio do business, it is also influencing their hiring process. Nick Roman, managing editor of 89.3 KPCC News/NPR, has been working in public radio for almost 30 years. When asked about what he looks for in a potential hire, he adds, “this whole notion of looking for younger people who are more familiar or more comfortable with the Internet is starting to show up. Last year, we really expanded our online presence and so reporters now have to be able to take snapshots and compose them so that we can add them to the website.”
Seth Lubove, Los Angeles bureau chief for Bloomberg News, pointed out that data analysis, which is sometimes referred to as computer assisted reporting is becoming an increasingly coveted skill in journalism as well. Data Analysis, as it relates to journalism, refers to the act of taking hard data and finding or mining for stories that are found within the data itself. In addition to data analysis, there is also an increasing emphasis on proving that you are able to draw an audience by generating traffic. This ability is particularly true in the realm of blogging. As Peter Viles puts it, “One of the good things and the challenging things is that you can be measured numerically in your work, not just every couple of days but every couple of hours”. He also goes on to say, “in general, in the job market, if you put yourself in the shoes of the place you want to work and try to develop a product you think they need, whether it’s a column, a blog or the kind of news coverage or video coverage that you really think they need, and you then convince them that you can give it to them, I think that is a good way to go about it”. And yet, while hard skills like data analysis or quantifiable skills like traffic are currently highly sought-after, versatility appears to also carry great weight. Susan Denley states, “We will be looking for people who are multifaceted. Journalists with technical skills are in high demand. New websites are getting into bidding wars over them, as database skills, design skills, graphic skills, photo-editing and producing skills and other multi-media talent are very hard to find. Also, resumes with Spanish fluency and social networking experience are becoming a bigger deal.” In the journalistic world, the importance of social networking and micro-blogging sites is also growing significantly. This refers to sites such as Facebook, Linked-In, Myspace, and Twitter.
Essentially, each of these sites can be characterized as sites where people share information on a moment to moment basis. Eza Palmer elaborated on this phenomenon with the following statements: “These sites don’t look like they have anything to do with journalism until you start looking at what is going on under the surface. You’re seeing two things. Number one, when there are major world events, social networking sites are often the first to report on them. The wire services, as ubiquitous as they can be, are sometimes not there to take a picture. I can think of countless times in the past few years when I found my first photo of a news event on the flicker photo sharing service. It’s generally thought that the first postings to come out of China about the recent earthquake came over Twitter, which is a micro-blogging service that allows you to update personal news by using your cell phone. So, an inventive journalist can use these social network sites to develop new stories and develop new ways to tell these stories, and it’s a rare thing that people are watching those and mining them.”
It is expected that as much as journalism has changed in the past five years, it’ll change much more still in the next five years. And while there are a variety of challenges facing journalists themselves, it is generally believed that these changes are ultimately beneficial for journalism as a whole, as we continue to be surrounded by an abundance of media-outlets and therefore a wealth of information. And while it is easier for some to be thrown into a torpor and others to proceed with fatalistic mindsets as a result of such an unpredictable pivotal point in time, others would do well to lend an ear to the insight provided by active participants. As it has been said, “There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.”
Photo by Yan Arief
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1 response so far ↓
1 Memo Gutierrez // May 30, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Chingon…good article!
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