In Response to
The New Journalist by Paul Benedetti, Tim Currie and Kim Kierans.
Clay Shirky’s online blog post went viral in 2009 because of the controversial issues he brought up. What Shirky called the Unthinkable Scenario
[i] was already happening to every major news media outlet: plans to safeguard content sharing on the internet weren’t working – meaning that media companies are no longer surviving on the open market.
According to Shirky, the internet broke the model for newspapers, and as of yet there is nothing to replace it. His criticism is that people aren’t willing to accept a revolution and are demanding to be told that there is a solution to this Unthinkable Scenario.
Many people didn’t agree with Shirky and responded to his blog post.
Charlie Beckett wrote in response that there are many ways forward from this point. Beckett called Shirky’s post a, “fatalist approach,”
[ii] and wrote that what is needed is greater public participation.
News as a capitalist venture participates in two markets: the audience and the advertiser.
[iii] One solution to the Unthinkable Scenario is to combine news content to advertisement and sell both as a package deal to the audience. Like most magazines which have content and ads pertaining to the same subject; for instance fashion magazines.
The problem that arises from news being a commodity is that nowadays news is only one facet of a larger media corporation. The negative effects of this are obvious with companies like Canwest and Quebecor which use news as a means to advertising and cross-promotion
[iv] of their other products, like Quebecor’s Videotron. What happens when the watchdog’s owner also owns public industry? Share holders might want to think about the information they’re getting on their stocks.
What’s even worse is that Quebecor and Canwest are the only two major daily newspaper owners in most Canadian cities. This lack of diversity leads to the same self satisfied interests – with no other competitors, big media is left on its own to decide what makes it into the newspaper, what doesn’t, and most importantly, how that information is presented.
The internet has evened the playing field on a global scale for big media. Now that CBC is as accessible as
the New York Times, every big media corporation has entered into an Attention Economy.
[v] The challenge is to grab the attention of the audience and turn that into profit. It hasn’t gone too far yet, but Attention Economy brings to mind the era of Yellow Journalism, when newspapers would write anything to gain readers.
In response to Shirky’s blog post, Beckett called for more public participation. This is one of the models of online journalism that has proved popular – allowing readers to comment and discuss articles posted on news media websites in real time.
“More outsourcing and sharing within the industry,”
[vi] is what Donna Logan and Darryl Korell suggest. Media expert Martin Langeveld thinks that newspapers should produce one to two weekly papers and focus on quality and detail.
[vii] There will always be free breaking news covered on the internet.
The idea is niche marketing news, or a hybrid of big media and independent media. Independent media can report on the hyper local and sell those stories to big news media corporations. Already there are companies doing this, like propublica.org.
[viii]
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[i] Page 52 Shirky’s Blog Post
– The New Journalist [ii] Page 58 Charlie Beckett’s response –
The New Journalist [iii] Page 64 The Business of Journalism –
The New Journalist [iv] Page 68 Concentrated Capital –
The New Journalist [v] Page 70-71 A New News Media –
The New Journalist [vi] Page 82 Media Market Changes Slower in Canada than in the United States –
The New Journalist [vii] Page 87 Premium / News Digest Models –
The New Journalist [viii] Page 92 What we Know for Sure –
The New Journalist
