What's the future of journalism?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I have a Kindle, and I'm quite fond of it. I get The Times every morning, have a collection of a few dozen books, and I use the built-in Wikipedia access often. Reading the news from a detailed news source has been refreshing; The Times has good global coverage and investigative journalism that I enjoy.

 

However, journalism is at a bit of a sticky point. The Times has recently made their website registration-only, and will soon be demanding a fee for access. Print subscriptions are down, and they maintain that without charging a fee, they won't be able to pay their wages.

 

On the other hand, the New York Times tried a paywall a few years ago, and found that being free made more money through advertising, because visitor rates dropped dramatically when the site was pay-only.

 

How can high-quality journalism survive through dropping print subscriptions and the proliferation of free online news? Will free blogs take over, or will journalists mount a last stand?

[rigney]

You may ascribe to my ignorance as being humanitarian, but newspapers have become so adulterated with bias, I can barely read one without gagging. I know their reasoning is political, but I sure do miss their "funnies", adds, house sales and crossword puzzles.

Edited July 4, 2010 by rigney

[jackson33]

How can high-quality journalism survive through dropping print subscriptions and the proliferation of free online news? Will free blogs take over, or will journalists mount a last stand?[/Quote]

 

In separating 'print media' and the profession 'Journalism', journalist are and will remain the source for everything. Investigative reporting or those journalist are the source for all media, including print.

 

 

USA Today

Circulation: 2,281,831

Wall Street Journal

Circulation: 2,070,498

New York Times

Circulation: 1,121,623

Los Angeles Times

Circulation: 907,997

Washington Post

Circulation: 740,947

New York Daily News

Circulation: 708,773

 

 

http://www.newspapers.com/top10.html

 

I'm not aware of how much of each these top circulated daily's have in paid online subscriptions or even if they charge for access today, but the WSJ does have 400,000 and growing (not included in above figure).

 

As for circulation declines, from memory in the 1990's the LA times was around 2.5M daily and would rather believe all have dropped to near the same degree, with the exception of USA Today and the WSJ (own their niche). I would think this has to do with cost and it's simply no longer practical to pay $150.00 annually or more to receive what you can basically receive via any number of sources for free.

 

Locals, including the larger daily's, will no doubt go the way radio has gone, either forming their own conglomerates (groups) or be owned by other related enterprises and this has been developing for many years. Advertising is sold by the numbers in all media and a large group of locals from a hundred or more places can profit where very few or none could survived independently. For instance; USA Today, prints in many areas of the Country, sell Advertising either for all or one area to its advertisers.

[Ladeira]

In Brazil, there is still Jounalism bachelor degree, though it is not needed to have that degree to be a journalist. It's consequence of the decrease of relevance of this area in a global context.

 

Actually, I've seen many jornalists out of the 'print media' scene. There are lots of 'journalists' acting like advertising people, promoting events and keeping theirselves alive through personal engagement in blogs and Twitter (something that some people do for free ). So those "free journalists" seems to get paid from these small temporary works. A fragile condition, obviously.

 

Maybe it's just consequence of the education system development. People are able to write what happens in their lives. And now people are also able to publish what they've written for whole world to see. It's a break-up with a kind of monopoly that has been present for centuries... the information monopoly.

 

What's left to be understood is: are the "normal people" trustable sources for media? A good answer would certainly be: were the journalists trustable sources?

 

For the evident manipulation we've faced in history...

 

I don't know.