THUS FAR I HAVE NOTED APPROXIMATELY 5 TRILLION PANELS TV programs, newspaper articles, blog posts, facebook threads and twitter feeds regarding the future of journalism, with many, many more still to come.
Not that I’m complaining. (Those of us passionately involved welcome nearly all 5 trillion.) But some of the offerings are, to put it as kindly as possible, better than others. (Here are some takedowns of some examples of the lless than great group.)
On the plus side, last night’s SoCAL Connected on KCET added some real value to the discussion. (It is well worth watching on the web).
USC’s Judy Muller moderates with Annenberg School of Journalism’s Dean, Geneva Overholser, adding some good and pithy points.
The main focus of the show was the scrappy nonprofit, Voice of San Diego, the new lean and mean online only publication, that is breaking news and at times scooping the competition in a model that many others are starting to copy.
MEANWHILE, IN A SWELL EXAMPLE OF NABOB-ISH NATTERING THAT DOES NOT add anything productive to the dialogue, Jim Rainey’s column for the LA Times pretty much compared all bloggers to the recent stunt “journalism” of Joe the….plumber/Republican political-strategist/mid-east-tell-it-like-it-is-ist/reporter. (Blogfather, Marc Cooper has already ripped Rainey’s column to shreds quite nicely).
(Note to Rainey: Many of us out here are professionals have CVs as long or longer than yours. And the new kids coming up are smart, full of energy and excitement, and more concerned with ethics—-real ethics—than many of those who populate so-called legacy media. But I know you know that already. So why the stunt column about the stunt journalist?)
YET THE FORWARD LOOKING VOICES….are far more compelling than the doomsayers like Rainey. For instance, last night I listened to a wonderfully inspiring talk at Annenberg by a terrific woman named Mary Lou Fulton. Fulton is the former managing editor for WashingtonPost.com who now is back in SoCal pioneering designs for online publications that produce vibrant local news by combining the oversite by journalism professionals with content provided by smart, energetic community members.
She gave example after example of regional online pubs where part-time work by local amateurs is being integrated with that of the pros to produce local news with a sense of community.
Fulton was also firm in pointing out that watch dog reporting and investigative journalism—a la the LA Times Pulitzer-winning King-Drew hospital series, and the WaPo’s Walter Reed series—require the efforts of pros and serious monetary support. On the other hand, entities like Huff Post’s Off the Bus and Josh Marshall’s TPM (when Marshall successfully used readers to examine the Justice Department’s document dump a few years ago), are exploring ways to combine the two to valuable effect.
Kevin Roderick’s LA Observed is another important and evolving model that hybids community tips with industry leaks in a focused aggregate of pro oversight and writing.
Here USC’s David Westphal talks about how the public has to be let in on the discussion.
And here Mark Potts at Recovering Journalist gives a terrific rundown of the places where very good work is being done by old pros and new talents in online news.
None of our worlds are secure right now. The economy is terrifying. Newspapers are tanking. The earth is warming. California still has no budget (although we may be closer). The Middle East is a tinder box. Bad people are purveying poisoned peanuts. Toxic bank and wall street executives are still taking bonuses and hoping we won’t notice if they simply hit the “rename file” button.
But everywhere one looks there are intelligent, energetic, creative people, with great ideas….working their butts off to make things better. The world of journalism is no exception.
So take heart.
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Cartoon by Geek and Poke
The future of primary journalism:
The Atlanta J&C will go out of business before I ever subscribe to that that liberal rag again. Their ONLY conservative columnist is retiring and the AJC has had to run ads for a replacement conservative. No luck so far, but it’s amazing that they have to beg readers to apply since the paper never brought replacements up through their system and journalism schools systematically discouraged and ran off true conservatives who were interested in that career.
Now, if the Democrats can pass the “Fairness Doctrine” the nation won’t even get to hear consevative voices on the radio. It’s only a short step from that to government censorship of the internet.
Is it any wonder that incompetent, inexperienced, radical, smooth-talking people like Obama get elected when only liberal voices dominate the media, which misinform and ill-inform the public?
I find it odd how these media types that keep going on and on about how much bloggers need them and what about real news.
What about the bloggers of color for the large part we have to write original stories, because the mainstream media has traditionally refused to cover us or even acknowledge us.
Why in the day where you have to do is click a button does the blogs that you name and the people who run them look very similar to the newsrooms of old.
Maybe that’s why print is dying right now, maybe instead of just looking within your own social circle the media should branch out a little or at least acknowledge our existence.
LA Eastside and The Bus Bench has covered many stories before the mainstream media got hold of the (the mainstream media even combs our blogs for info and then rewrites our stories and doesn’t credit us.)
Roger Snoble, CEO at Metro no one mentioned his name until we at The Bus Bench named him, busses running reds we broke that story first, the unfairness of the trains in regards to the disabled specifically the visually impaired we did that first. We did it first with no cutting and pasting. And we did it with no money or support from the mainstream media that claims they care about real news but keeps kissing the behind the sites that are in bed with marketing agencies and pr firms.
Not you so much you Celeste, but your comrades they are hypocrites.
Your friends want media to survive, but only if they can continue to be in charge. They are not sad about media dying they are sad about the fact that they are no longer in charge of the info that goes out there.
Browne