Just this week, I've gotten two queries about Fall freelance work both from European publications. Do they want to work with me to build up their International reporting team? No. One offered to pay me 50 eurocents per word, which apparently works out to 75 cents per word. Journalism is now being outsourced to the U.S. because we are now a lower-cost location.  

Last May, you may have seen the story about how one local Web site publisher in Pasadena, CA, actually is outsourcing some of the city's news coverage to India. Reporters in India simply watch Webcasts of City Hall meetings, write their stories and e-mail them in.

 

 

Good points, Elisa. It's true that the newspapers have to adapt and change with the times. What's unsettling is this idea of trading in news journalism for a free-for-all of Internet "reporters" who get their facts from someone else's blog.

We need international journalists -- to make cuts that do away with them would be a serious disservice to people who still appreciate news. Then we're stuck with speculative blogging and reporting based on what we read on international online news sources. I hope, as you do, that the Internet is instrumental in creating a different kind of a home for news journalists rather than doing away with them.

I briefly spoke with Chrystia Freeland, managing editor of the Financial Times, at an event where she spoke on this very matter.  She had some great points.

First, that people don't read newspapers for the reasons journalists assume that they read newspapers; many people used to pick up the paper just for the classifieds. Or, just read the "most popular" news section on any news site and you'll likely see that an in depth, Pulitzer-prize worthy piece on the Iraq war just doesn't stack up against "America's Top Ten High Schools".

And secondly, that newspapers are learning (not as quickly as they might) how to adapt to this changing environment. Some are becoming easier to carry around (the Wall Street Journal lopped off three inches in 2005 to make it a less cumbersome subway read) and some are embracing their niche markets. Chrystia pointed, as an example, to the Financial Times which will probably continue to comfortably have a base, so long as there is a business world. (Internet Evolution here, is another excellent example of this growing niche market journalism.)

But Chrystia expressed her concern that the first casualty of journalism are international journalists themselves. Apparently, all the major newspapers are cutting funds for foreign correspondents.

But, I wonder if the online community can work together to fill this gap? Perhaps creating an online community of international journalists to share their stories?

Hey Nicole!

I think that possibility (and reality) of that news could change the core of journalism.Now we have some basic topics on what we get used to obtain the news: politics,culture,sport etc...if people are able to make their own news, there is a possibility that it can be changed.I won't tell you about cultural events or what has happened in the town.I might tell that my cat has a wonderful mood and plays all day or that my neighbour  made great chocolate cookies. of course, I exaggerate, and I don;t think that such news is a bad thing, just it would be different news world.

Time for me to jump in here...

First off, thanks everyone for the great comments. I was curious as to how this thread would flesh out.

There's certainly this shift taking place in how we write and consume news. There's still journalism, but there's also this great, big, chatty blogosphere chock full of people who think they know better. For now, at least, the blogosphere is -- and should be -- supplemental to real news. Tolles didn't agree with me that there's anything that should be called "real news." To him, news is whatever the people say is news. This is true, but only to an extent.

We touched on this subject a little bit back in a blog about CNN's iReport site (CNN iReport: Sometimes It's News, Sometimes It's Not) for citizen journalists that boasts "unedited, unfiltered news." To me, that tagline translates simply to sloppy and unprofessional -- and to see a big news org like CNN want to attach its name to that doesn't bode well for the future of journalism.

Nothing against free speech, or even the blogosphere, for that matter, but the idea that snarkiness and unobjective spear-throwing is going to do away with the journalist who spends his/her life literally following stories all around the world seems arrogant and a little frightening. There should be this balancing act where there is interaction between writers and readers, as there is on Internet Evolution. I don't disagree with Tolles on the idea that "Letters to the Editor" don't exactly count as free speech. But I'm not rooting for this great shift to a Valley Wag world. 

Nicole, this message board is quite interesting and entertaining to read. And I like the Darwin GIF by the way. For what it's worth, I've never seen Insultant wrote such a long response, but all are interesting comments.

I've no experience in journalism, so I'll speak from a consumer's point of view. I agree with Lynngi that journalism is constantly changing, and I don't see any good reason why the Internet would render journalists obsolete just because journalism is getting more interactive because of the Internet. Indeed, the Internet is a new communication medium that allows more interaction from consumers or readers, but it's just another medium nonetheless. Journalism has survived the evolution of medium from papers to radio and to TV and now why not the Web. It's guickly adapting to the new technologies and will go on no doubt, just that it won't be as "traditional" as it used to be, but then again, if it's constantly changing, then there's no such thing as "traditional journalism" (a famous quote by Heraclitus - " You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually flowing in"). In this case, Tolles may be technically right. But as much as it's about the change in journalism, it's about the change in communication medium as well as the change in readers' behavior.

And last point, I agree with Insultant that not everyone can be a good journalist. I want to add that not every news agency or broadcaster can be a reliable and trustworthy one either. We will still need good journalism in an "Internet news-driven world".

Quite a few interesting ideas on this thread, as well as a few examples of people indulging in old, dull behaviours ("journalists are biased" "I hate journalists" "journalists all suck" etc. etc. ... yawn).

My thoughts:

First, there are lots of different types of journalism and even more flavvas of journalist. Some (types/journalists) do a lot better than others when it comes to passing the "are you worth your weight in newsprint/html electrons sniff test."

B2B journalists tend to do pretty badly. Technology B2B journalists, worse. Brit technology B2B journalists ... well, we're talking about a BIG barrel and very long scraper indeed.

Nevertheless, and I say this with 24 years as a former B2B technology journalist from Britland under my belt, pretty much any journalist who is managing to maintain gainful employment in this current economy is doing a greater service to society in terms of imparting useful and unbiased information than the vast majority of unfettered bloggers now sullying our Internet airwaves.  

Internet Evolution tried (my God, how we tried) to find some decent third party blogger material to syndicate on this site and after a few weeks of looking it became obvious that the blogosphere outside your browser window is just what it looks like: utter crap. So we did the obvious thing: went out and found our own squad of elite bloggers, and instituted a system for things like - oh, I don't know - EDITING their articles before running them on the site.

I was in a restaurant tonight  sitting next to some fundamentally annoying twenty-somethings twoddling on about nothing in loud voices, thinking they were funny (they weren't - trust me on this), and taking themselves waaaaay too seriously. Obviously, it reminded me of the blogosphere (in 'Bistro Blogosphere' there are no doors - and no-one has a shotgun). 

Right now there is a small sea change going on, in that Web 2.0 technology has given a voice to lots of people who really don't have anything to say. But eventually people will get sick of the twittering and "listen to me!" nonsense and will revert to type (heh) looking to trusted sources (journalists, working for  established brands with hard earned reputations) to get their news and analysis.

Not everyone vcan be a good journalist. Many journalists aren't good journalists. But compared with 99% of the blogosphere anyone getitng paid to be even the most egregious hack deserves a medal - and your thanks. 

Insultant

"Internet to Render Journalists Obsolete?"...We can only hope! Not only do we not hear  "The Voice of the People...in traditional newspaper journalism, apart from carefully chosen Letters to the Editor."; we also don't hear much truth either. I could easily live w/o either traditional or Internet Journalism. Piling up even more (not stacks of newsprint or dung) - "Likening newspaper journalists to 'artisanal cheese makers' and himself to 'Kraft,' Tolles said,..." ; I guess I wouldn't mind seeing the "artisanal" Journalist "'cheese makers" cease from making their Limburger...who needs/reads/heeds all that cr@p anyway (besides of course the human sheep who see anything in print and think that it's gospel. Baaaa.)? And, even better, we could save a lot of trees (or energy w/ recycling costs) too eliminating all that newsprint. Of course then what would the fish markets and pet shop owners wrap their catch and line their cages with?

""It's gonna be tabloids, it's gonna be opinionated, gonna be rock-throwing, gonna have fire. It's gonna be awesome." "

 In other words, it's going to be a little boy's gradeschool playground? 

In the 1990s, we kept hearing that "dot coms" were going to put "bricks and mortar" stores out of business. Online stock trading was going to obliterate stockbrokers.

And then came the dotcom bust.

Bricks and mortar stores, stockbrokers and other "dinosaurs"are doing great. The dotcommers are long gone.

Journalism will survive. It will change (and is changing) certainly. But it will outlive the loudmouth yapping that is the world of "blogging" today. There will undoubtedly still be bloggers, but those who thrive will be more professional than is typical at the moment. All technologies have their 15 minutes of fame, and all eventually die down as the new "next best thing" bursts onto the scene. This phase, too, will pass.

I think there's something of Darwin in all of this. Traditional Journalist will need to adapt to the new World we are living in - just like everyone else. I can't think of a profession that hasn't been affected by technology. Those who decided to fight it can be seen sitting in Union Station, DC. I bet that some of the Journalism courses in some universities include a blogging elective.

Now, back to my original topic - I think we will see a higher increase in the popularity of user-directed news when mobile technology becomes more accessible (that involves offering a good data service, getting good data-capable devices and doing that at a reasonable price). And not because of mobile-bloggers (I think we have enough news already) but because of the readers. As more and more readers get involve, more users visit the news site. This will help the websites charge more for the ads - and then offer a better service and a healthy-cycle is created.