Bang up post Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable by Clay Shirky, sent by a friend on Facebook, complete with a history of the case of The Internet v. Print Publishing. He goes about it the classic way, by looking back—mapping where publishers went wrong, what they tried, and how to proceed based on what they failed to try, kind of. I say kind of because it was more a failure of imagining failure.
His best guess of an answer is a sort of citizen journalism, or something yet unnamed. Which is so exciting. What is the solution? It will take us several decades to figure it out, he says. I love this stuff, I love being in the thick of this. What will journalism look like in 30 years? We get to watch it develop (on Twitter and Facebook and iPhones), and I’m just so glad that I’m living through this time of uncertainty and not the solid, newspaper dominated past. I love the NY Times, but can you imagine a world of information coming only print, with the control and time lag? Gah, terrifying.
While I adore the romantic idea of living in the past and being one of those old fashioned journalists that hunted down and got the story, that brought it out when it wouldn’t have otherwise seen day, one that kicked and scratched and schmoozed stories from people, I abhor the thought of being that reader, putting down my paper and that being that.
But, with so much information from so many people available, without media giants and journalist heroes, will we pool collectively towards a dull median, all watching cat videos?
Shirky teaches at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, which I rediscover and drool over every year or so.
Some big quotes:
“In craigslist’s gradual shift from ‘interesting if minor’ to ‘essential and transformative’, there is one possible answer to the question “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.
Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it’s been Wal-Mart and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it’s been Richard Mellon Scaife. Increasingly, it’s you and me, donating our time. The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can’t be expanded to cover any general case, but then nothing is going to cover the general case.”
And then:
“For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail.”
Tags: ideas about communication, ideas about the future of media, ideas about the internet
Here’s a rebuttal to the citizen journalism idea from David Simon, the Baltimore reporter who created The Wire testifying before congress.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/7/david_simon_creator_of_acclaimed_hbo
He doesn’t see much hope in the idea of amateurs being able to get anywhere near the access or hold the Powers That Be accountable as a real newspaper. He also thinks that most of the ‘content’ in the blogosphere is people commenting or reposting on news that is created the old fashioned way, by reporters.
He also asserts that newspapers are / should be a profitable business but lost all their value in the process of being taken over by wall street, just as the solid real estate market was destroyed.
I’m fine so long as the NYT hangs around. The O has never done anything for me anyway.