Painfully clueless
A poll of media insiders, conducted by the Atlantic and National Journal in the US last week, showed that an overwhelming majority of what are purported to be “prominent members of the national news media” thought the internet had caused more pain than good to journalism.
That people who consider themselves experts in the field can be so ignorant of the great strides the profession is making thanks to the internet is not new, neither is it really surprising that what they call journalism is actually not journalism.
As Cyra Master of the Atlantic puts it, (t)hose who say that news consumption on the Internet is, on balance, hurting journalism note the way the online experience is changing reader habits.
So the way information is created, presented, moved around and consumed has changed and that is bad for the information? That is almost as stupid as saying inventing the phone was bad for the transfer of news because it meant less business for post carriers.
This leads me to another thing that is very characteristic of a certain type of “influential journalists”: they tend to confuse the practice of journalism with the business of journalism. (I’m one of those who think the former is flourishing even though the latter is struggling to reinvent itself.) Here’s a noteable quote from the “hurts more” camp: (t)he Internet has (…) mortally wounded the financial structure of the news business. And: the cost to the business model (…) and the inability of the business model to monetize the Internet means that there is a disturbing net cost to newsgathering.
The fact that internet-bashers outnumber boosters by two to one may be a hint as to why the news industry is in such a bad shape, but even as they are in the majority detractors cannot help but acknowledge the inevitable: the internet has widened the circle of those participating in the (…) debate. And it will continue to do so.
National Journal also asked bloggers the same question. You can see their responses here, but I think you know what they said.
