The Promise of Journalism 2.0
Is journalism dying? It’s too easy to view the field as a declining one as a fast-increasing number of [mostly amateur] bloggers sprint to get their copy online, often ignoring factual accuracy, embargoes and other processes journalists are schooled to consider. As businesses and PR firms like ours consider a story in an influential, high-trafficked blog to be the new “holy grail” in media, one can’t help but think the fate of true professional journalism may be doomed.
As a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism, I was taught to value the societal role and contributions of publications like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune … Anna Quindlen’s column in Newsweek. The Pulitzer Prize-winning articles of Friedman, the amazing sports stories of Rick Telander – that was the holy grail of journalism. But today, as a publicist for the new generation of tech innovators, I find myself in a different role. I am part of a changing industry of journalists, bloggers and media professionals– an industry called Journalism 2.0.
Journalism 2.0 is a melting pot of different people, ideas and approaches to the digital information age. The industry is not declining, it is evolving, just as the Web is evolving into “Web 2.0” and sales is morphing past the old days of cold-calling into “Sales 2.0.” J-schools like Medill are tailoring their curriculum more and more to focus on the role of “new media” in order to prepare a fresh crop of students entering a completely different era.
Rich Gordon, a professor of journalism I studied under at Medill, blogs regularly and inspires his students to blog and think of journalism with a “new media” mindset. In one popular article I remember, he wrote, “But I, for one, do not believe that journalism’s future is gloomy. In fact, I think that when we look back on the early years of the 21st century, we will recognize it as a period of exploding opportunity for journalists and the start of an exciting new era for journalism. I also think it’s quite possible that we’ll look back on these years as a period when a better informed public began to emerge, thanks to new communications channels and technologies. Am I nuts? Maybe. The signs of decline in traditional forms of journalism are real. But declining audiences and financial returns for newspapers and television news do not necessarily translate into worsening prospects for journalism, nor into a more poorly informed society.”
As Journalism 2.0 continues to mature, so do its problems and limitations. Journalists are curious people, and they report best by touching, feeling, experiencing. I recently spoke about these issues to my good friend and colleague Tim Roberts, who I reported with at the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Tim’s feeling was that Journalism 2.0 has brought readers closer to reporters and made more information available to the public than before. But he says it has also produced many more distractions: “Reporters who spend too much time in front of their computer screens are not getting a very complete view of the world (even with Google Earth).”
I think that insight is spot on. Journalism 2.0 should continue to get bigger, connecting reporters, bloggers, publicists, students – and most importantly, the public – to one another. But its complexities should not replace the subtle details, nuances and thoughtful analyses that can only be told through a story in the Times (or NYT.com for you J2.0-ers out there) that makes you stop and think.
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