Occasionally a technology comes along that slowly and utterly changes the way an industry operates. For example, the military was transformed by the Dreadnought battleship and the atomic bomb.The media industry's atomic bomb is (of course) the Internet. If we didn't already know this, there are countless new media 'gurus' to remind us.
On this topic, Ron Rosenbaum has a brilliant piece on Slate criticising the new media guru, Jeff Jarvis, who travels the world prosletyzing about what he thinks is the end of newspapers... Nay, not even paper, the end of atoms no less:
[Jarvis] offers chestnuts like, "The link changes everything," "Stuff sucks" ("Nobody wants to be in the business of stuff anymore. … Google's economy is more appealing"), "Atoms are a drag," and—yes, his contribution to the "X is the new Y" genre—"Small is the new big"It's fashionable and easy to knock old media, namely newspapers, radio and TV news. They're the old folk at a teenager's birthday party, falling off their perches in the corner without anyone even noticing. I mean, who in their twenties or younger even buys a newspaper anymore?
But old media hasn't completely died just yet. It means that a split has emerged between those savvy, geeky and cool media professionals who choose to work at places like Google (if not their own Internet start-ups), versus the ageing, doomed folk in newspapers, who can only look on desperately at their dwindling audiences like the captain of the Titanic.
This would all just be part of the cycle of life if it weren't the case that the best journalism still comes from the old guard. Rosenbaum adds:
[Jarvis is] among the most rational of the new thinkers. But it's the callous contempt for working journalists that grates. It's a contempt for the beautiful losers who actually made journalism an honorable profession for a brief shining moment—well, longer than that—before it became a platform for "reverse engineering."Nobody could possibly be happy that good journalism could be undermined by new technology. So, as always, the key to success must lie in harnessing the best of the old and the new. After all, we may have nuclear weapons, but that doesn't mean the world has given up on guns.
Photo from fitsnews.com
2 responses:
I agree, sort of. The 'old guard' is responsible for all of the great pieces of journalism...but also some of the worst.
Also, the 'ageing, doomed folk in newspapers' aren't sitting back and watching the ship sink-they're all trying to embrace new media, and internet video (if they're not they should be!)You're right though-a best of both approach is what's needed.
I've just written down some thoughts about the future of tv news on my blog -i'd be interested to know what you think! :)
Thanks Adam... I wish more people were embracing 'new' media, but I really don't think they are. I still remember the time when reporters would turn up their nose at the thought of writing for online. A lot still do.
Now, a helpful heads-up from Simon Owens at Bloggasm directed me to an insightful post by Mark Glaser at MediaShift, which offers one possible way to fund future journalism. The keyword, as usual these days, is crowd.
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