Journalism to Return to Its Blue-Collar Roots

The good news: There will still be jobs in journalism in the digital future. The bad news: They won't pay much, or last long, or come with benefits.

That was the consensus at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit Wednesday morning, where YouTube's Kevin Yen, NPR's Dick Meyer, AP's Michael Oreskes and Newser's Michael Wolff debated "The Changing Face of Media and News."

Wolff was characteristically cautious with his predictions, waiting until the discussion was nearly halfway over to prophesy the death of every major news organization within the next five to eight years. "All of these companies, they're gone," he said.

Meyer, asked for his own take on whether any existing media institutions will survive, was more circumspect. "It's a fool's errand to prognosticate at this point," he said. "It's fun, but it's like guessing who's going to win the World Series in 2012 -- 'I think it's going to be the Giants.'"

But no one challenged Wolff's assertion that the journos of the future will earn considerably less than their forerunners. "Nobody wants to pay anyone a good wage to create content now because there's too much of it," he said. He recalled growing up as the son of a newspaper reporter "when to be a newspaper reporter was to be kind of a working class person. Then we transitioned in the 1970s to where to be a journalist was a professional thing.... I think one of the things that happens here -- and I say this with some trepidation, given my monthly nut -- I think we do return to something else. It becomes a different sort of livelihood, a different profession."

Oreskes, a former New York Timesman who was recently promoted to co-senior managing editor of the Associated Press, said the young journalists he's polled recently come to the field with the expectation that their careers will be made up of short-term freelance projects, perhaps supplemented with grants or scholarships, rather than with steady full-time jobs. "I do suspect that he future will be much more like that than the past has been."

Comments

[William Cowie:]

Journalism has two core aspects: information and opinion/perspective. In the 19th century, newspapers were the only ones with access to the former, which gave them the platform to espouse the latter.

Technology created the radio/TV networks and the Walter Cronkites. More information, and more concentrated influence. Because they were the major filter of information, they decided what was news and what to make of it. Journalism school evolved to prepare journalists more homogenous and alike, all geared to a career in Big Media.

What technology gaveth, though, it now taketh away. The internet has made information much more freely available. Big Media no longer can decide what's news and what not; we decide that for ourselves.

The only remaining value Big Media can offer remains making sense out of the glut of information. But the rub is they now have to do that competitively; theirs no longer is the only opinion which can be heard by the masses. In the past, they had little competition, which left them unprepared to accept that they have to back up what they say, and make sure they remain in tune with the readers and viewers out there. I didn’t go to journalism school, but the impression I get is today’s journalists were not prepared to succeed in this environment.

The warning signals have been there. For more than 20 years we've read about the decline in viewrship of the Big Three networks and readership of big-city newspapers. My perception of their reaction was they blamed it on the ignorant and rebellious masses, and held to the notion of being pre-ordained as society royalty. Not unlike, for instance, Detroit.

The recession merely brought all these issues to a point. It has turned ugly for Big Media and the journalists they employ, not because they didn't have warning, but because they refused to heed those warnings with a little dose of humility. I don't think it's coincidence that Jon Stewart suddenly found himself a de facto journalist because of the void left by others of that title.

Why are no networks or big newspapers exposing Chris Dodd as having received AIG money, and insisting the guys who brought down the company get their bonuses? (We learn that here at Seeking Alpha.) By avoiding realtively clear issues like that they become the authors of their fate, not victims.

Mar 19 01:32 AM

[Bcolb:]

Some of the premier journalism schools are finally starting to teach the crossover. The University of Missouri has been pouring money into their new media projects and they have even partnered with Newsy.com, an innovative social news outlet.

Apr 15 06:06 PM