Future of Journalism-more arguments

An interesting piece in yesterdays Guardian comments page by Simon Jenkins.Entitled

The zone of faith will save us from the sovereignty of the mob

The piece is written about the coverage of the Saddam execution and the subject of what should have been published.

"The mass media have a less easy time. They must sell their wares in a series of niche markets. Every newspaper and broadcaster has in-house rules of taste unrelated to law. Dead bodies are rarely pictured if next-of-kin might see the corpse, which is why photographs of the Hillsborough football tragedy caused such offence. Intrusion on privacy is governed by rules no less real for being often breached. Barely a week passed during the celebrity of Princess Diana when an editor did not agonise over what not to publish, incredible though this seems given what did appear. The Guardian prints four-letter words while the Times does not. The Sun's glorious boobs are the Telegraph's unsightly decolletage."

but Simon has a number of interesting takes on its impact on the new media.

Conventional wisdom holds that this edifice of rule-bound censorship is collapsing. The editor has been demystified and disempowered. All the world can peddle its wares on the internet without let or hindrance. Each is his own artist, novelist, reporter, diarist, columnist and, above all, editor. The carefully written and processed article enjoys no higher status than the blog responses that cling to its feet. Why listen to steam radio when you can wander the backstreets of YouTube and MySpace and watch real people do real things. Alexander Pope was right: such random chance is "direction which thou canst not see,/ All discord, harmony not understood". Or as Donald Rumsfeld put it, stuff happens.

He would have us believe that journalism as an art form is going to vanish.After all

I can customise my own news site and be my own censor. Nothing need ever offend me again. I can firewall the viruses and bypass the spam. If my alter ego senses a four-letter word, a maimed corpse, a climate-change article or an "issues agenda" heading my way, it can send out electronic chaff. When all content is user-generated, the consumer is king and editors are toast. Journalists are clinging to the wreck of the Medusa, battered survivors pondering cannibalism or death.

But in reality

Whatever the borderline between amateur and professional, skill and artistry, some things are very difficult to do, and most people will admire and pay those who do them. Every creative talent comes with unseen baggage, directors, designers, stage-setters, publishers, editors and coaches. No art is without effort, and the effort is collective. If the electronic marketplace becomes devoid of copyright, producers will devise ways of protecting and "monetising" their appeal. Pulp fiction still seems to be thriving.

And this is a good summing up of the current situation

There is no substitute for a disciplined, rule-bound, edited news-gatherer any more than there is for a formal theatre, movie-maker or publisher. Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message" will not find its apotheosis in the internet. The message transcends the medium and always will. The fact that a reader's taste can sometimes be shocked shows the power of the trust on which it is normally based.

The piece and the enormous comment that has been placed on the comment is free website is developing an interesting argument about whether people want their news in effect censured by a professional.
Some of the comments lead us to beleive that the art of journalism is boring for a number of readers.

I liked this one care of Chelsea Danny

There's an interesting article in one of the history magazines speculating on the problem future historians will have in sorting the relevant from the pointless drivel given the massive amount of information we now generate.
I think we're in a period where the future format is being developed and I really hope we get through this phase of being obsessed with the potential of new technology at the expense of quality reporting.
Sadly quality reporting and comment is disappearing because the immediacy of blogs etc means we're subjected to half an idea being turned into an article with 500 responses instead of an intelligent article producing a few intelligent responses that may further the discussion.

This sums up another view

Jenkins is certainly one of the better journalists working today in the deadwood press, but he is blind to the deepening dissatisfaction with it. People are getting sick of being told what they are supposed to believe.

Perhaps this should inspire journalists

When I pick up a newspaper I expect to have paid for the process of editing to have taken place. If I read a blog I must provide my own editing. But editing is an essential process in the provision of integrity and value to a piece of journalism.

Another view of new media

Internet is simply replacing one medium, the paper, for another, the computer screen, which is more convenient because it can also convey sound and video, provides links to other sites, etc...Obviously, the paper as a medium will cease to exist, but the newspapers will always be there.I do not find much difference between a column writer and a blogger, except in terms of anonymity and reliability. Vazquez Montalbán used to say that one always has to look at who is running a newspaper wnen reading it, who is behind it. When reading a blog, we do not know who is behind it, and this can be a disadvantage .

And another

Online citizen journalism still has someway to go before it replaces trad hacks in news gathering and investigative journalism, but they are on the march, and all it takes is some network site to co-ordinate various sources of worthy news into a digest (although the foundations - Reddit and digg exist). No, the real strength of the online community is in comment and opinion - we're we excel. And that's the problem for you Mr. Jenkins; it's columnists such as yourself who will be redundant in the new world. Unless, god-forbid, you get yourself a blog. :)
Why listen to the pondering of a cosseted hack when you can read the opinions on the ground? I want to know about Iranian dissidents? Then I'll read their blogs. I want to find out about the coup in Thailand? Why that's easy, I'll visit http://bangkokpundit.blogspot.com/ The Iraq War and bloggers such as Riverbend made this the new reality. Iraq eh, where let's remember, your guys let us down and signed your own death warrant.

This is an interesting comment on the futur of blogging

Blogging is the playground of the self-obsessed. Most often it is a vacuous wasteland of self-referential detritus. Imagine if our experienced, educated journalists penned a front page, scathing diatribe on political issues one day, only to be followed the next by a photograph of their pet cat, or the 'joys of my new mobile phone'. Citizen journalism is at best just a portal for the man/woman on the street to have their ego massaged. It's a cog in this diseased world of me-media. No responsibility breeds no quality, and ultimately no value.
Blogging exists because, by and large, it is free. But as soon as those something to say individuals have to start paying to comment, opinion suddenly dries up.
It is not the future. It is a tiny chapter in communication history. Time will tell. Blogging is the preserve of the socially challenged. Arm any individual with the tools to 'have their say' and they will.
Just take a look at the general demise of our culture. TV channels saturated with cheap reality shows, the movie industry churning out remake after remake because it has run out ideas, production line musical 'artists', hundreds of sensationalist gossip-driven glossies, 'celebrity' as career choice. To that list add blogging. Fast, cheap, high on gloss, low on content. Welcome to the 21st century - brash, bright and illiterate.