wh092010@ohio.edu
Looking to the past to predict the future has always been a solid bet and the field of journalism is no different. Radio was suppose to kill newspapers, then TV was going to kill radio and now the Internet is poised to take that beloved New York Times subscription out of your hand. Except, we still have radio and we still have TV. So the question is not will journalism die, but how will print (and all other forms of media) reinvent themselves this time to a changing technological world.
The Elements Of Journalism opens with a story of the Polish people fighting against a totalitarian government using an old-fashioned form of citizen journalism by recording video on clunky portable cameras and spreading the word through secret meetings. Well, things have changed since the 1980s. I'd bet that right now anyone reading this has a cell phone (aka the fastest computer in the world back in 1980) in their pocket with a camera that records video and takes pictures that can be uploaded to the Internet for the entire world to see within a matter of seconds. Those clunky cameras now fit in pockets and, guess what, the secret meetings have been renamed Facebook and texting.
All of this is very reminiscent of the Arab Spring. The man what was to be elected the new president of Poland in 1989 said that with VCR's, computers and satellites, not dictatorship, like he had experienced could ever happen again — information created democracy. That is exactly what we saw during the on-going Arab Spring — regular citizens using technology to affect change in their community. People in Libya and Egypt used Facebook events to rally people and Twitter to give live updates on dangerous area, and they recorded it all for the world to see.
Now many people in the United States think that technology is hurting the industry because "anyone" can be a journalist. Maybe that's so, but not everyone can be a quality journalist, at least not without practice. We're slowly learning that not everything on the Internet is free, and to get a quality product sometimes you have to pay up. And the strategy seems to be working. The New York Times reported in August that they are reaping the benefits of $150 million a year through the paywall system. And that's reflective of a decline in growth.
We see the same historical patterns all around the world. China is even starting to realize that the power of the people will eventually be too much for them to control and manipulate any further. Bloomberg News reported a story back in August about a Chinese blogger and Internet personality who was arrested for allegedly hiring a prostitute, although many think it was for his outspoken nature on Twitter. The Internet can provide a forum for people to speak their mind which can be an avenue for freedom.
Technology can be damaging, but as long as journalists continue to reinvent themselves and find new ways to make the technology work, we will have no problem surviving in this new world we face. In fact I firmly believe that the technology will benefit us and set others around the world free.
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