Since 1996, the Los Angeles Times has sponsored an annual book festival where authors, publishers and religious nuts hock their wares in endless rows of small, white tarp tents. While representatives from the L.A. Times usually spend the festival basking in Pulitzer-fueled accolades from their fans, this year’s staffers faced increasingly pointed questions about the future of their paper.
‘How long are you guys going to stay in business?’ ‘Have you closed your Washington bureau?’ ‘Can an online-only paper make enough money to stay afloat?’
Smiling a little too widely, L.A. Times luminaries such as columnist Steve Lopez and blogger Geoff Boucher spoke in reassuring, dulcet tones about online advertising revenue and the paper’s continued commitment to the community.
Regardless of the L.A. Times’ happy-go-lucky posturing, newspapers like the L.A. Times and their ilk, sometimes referred to as ‘old media’ because they began before the advent of the Internet, are being eclipsed by ‘new media’ tools such as blogs, social networks and upstart news sites.
While no one is disputing the need for trained journalists, many would rather get their information about, say, rock climbing, from a rock-climbing blogger than a L.A. Times’ journalist that has researched the topic for a month or so. While the rock climber may have poor grammar, misspellings or even a run-on sentenc
e, their specified knowledge will probably prove more helpful than an article in which the reporter interviewed the climber and then related it, however lyrically, second-hand in the morning’s paper.
While online news sites are often perceived as a democratization of information, one problem with Internet coverage is that bloggers almost always begin writing to promote their personal biases. If you are so passionate about a particular topic, you are probably not planning on delivering neutral content. In rock climbing, this is fine. When covering politics, however, this can encourage voters to seek out viewpoints similar to theirs instead of hearing the other side’s arguments, leading to an even more extreme partisan divide.
But, just because the Web spews a stream of constant misinformation, biased diatribes and personal rants, doesn’t mean that it can’t become a legitimate vehicle for timely information. While some more traditional sources may be, ahem, a little less ‘fair and balanced’ than others, we generally assume that we’re not being fed a pack of lies. Online news sites with no prior brand to build on face the challenge of trying to be taken as seriously as, say, the New York Times.
News sites that practice what has been termed ‘hyperlocal journalism,’ in that they focus exclusively on one geographic location, are gaining hold as a viable replacement model for the print papers that are in severe economic straits as they attempt to cover global news. But hyperlocal sites will always be limited. This model should be seen as just one of the many aspects of a whole new world of ways to read about events.
Proponents of specific business models ‘mdash; whether it be citizen journalists, or nonprofits ‘mdash; must recognize printed newspapers will not be replaced by another, single model. We saw citizen journalism in play when a plane crash-landed in the Hudson River, which was first reported by a local man on Twitter. While this can’t be a replacement for traditional newspapers, it does provide useful supplementary, firsthand information.
An example of the nonprofit broadcast model succeeding in the news arena is Voiceofsandiego.org, a nonprofit daily news site that began publishing in 2005 with funding from community members. Reporters at the site were recently awarded an important industry recognition award for top-notch investigative journalism, after uncovering widespread financial corruption among two local redevelopment agencies. The reporters at this site adhere to a code of journalism that gives readers incentive to take their stories as a balanced view of any issue. Thankfully, the reporting they’ve done on the issues has led to the exposure of financial misdeeds occurring right under our noses.
Do you want someone to monitor your politicians? Or, would you rather do it yourself? In choosing a new business model, you should ask yourself why journalism exists in the first place. Even if you live in Washington D.C., your nine-to-five probably doesn’t come with days off to explore exactly what those guys in the White House are doing. Thanks to journalists, you don’t have to.
The problem with supporters of new media models who say that establishment papers must go is that with them goes the funding for news bureaus outside of New York. The investigative reporting being done at daily sites like Voiceofsandiego.org is clearly superior, but they will never have an overseas reporter in Baghdad. New models will need to address this area once so capably covered by large media organizations. Newspapers are on their way out, but we need to make sure we don’t discard journalism along with them.
Fortunately, as Marc Cooper, a professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication, remarked at the L.A. Times event, technologies don’t simply disappear because people become interested in other, newer inventions. As he aptly put it, fountain pens are no longer used for regular correspondence, but they’re certainly still easy to find.
While I won’t be flipping through one newspaper over breakfast, I will receive news on a periodic basis throughout the day, whether it’s from a political site, blog or Twitter feed. This news is going to need to be reliable and timely.
This way, when a plane crash-lands in the Hudson, I won’t be spitting out my coffee in shock the next morning when I read the headline. I’ll know minutes after it occurs, and I’ll be able to add to the conversation if I’m in the area or have first-hand knowledge about the event through the comments section on my news site of choice.
As I listened to a panel discuss its innovative news projects from an entertainment Web site competing with the Hollywood Reporter,’ to the award-winning site in my college’s hometown, one thing became clear: No one has any idea what the next big model of information distribution is going to be. And these people are the head honchos of the media world. If they aren’t sure what’s next, then we have a long Internet highway ahead of us until we figure it out.