Communications breakdown

What on earth is going to happen to the news media? The truth is that, despite all the bluster, nobody knows. Apparently, we are witnessing the collapse of the traditional print media, which would be fine if there was a snazzy, profitable, online marketplace where thoroughly researched, impeccably reliable, and pithily presented information could readily be bought and sold, but instead we have YouTube. We have traditional publications' Web sites with no dedicated editorial staff, pumping out stories produced by  ever-shrinking, overworked, under-funded newsroom staff. On the one hand we have Twittering from the Iranian elections, which seems sort of useful. On the other, we have the instant, vast, dissemination of anything anyone feels like saying. A person could slip into hyperventilation just thinking about how unreliable our news sources are, or are becoming, these days. It's only a matter of time before some pernicious rumor goes viral and causes a multitude of deaths.

But let's take a breath and examine the forces at work. First off: what's at stake. It's not like the old print media was all that good. No, it wasn't. I know it's tempting to hark back to some fictional time when editors could leave the front door of the newspaper unlocked, as it were, but if the New York Times swallows erroneous allegations of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq wholesale, then you have to think it's time for some new guys to get a shot at telling us what we need to know. Here is a piece of advice I got from an editor when I first started working as a full-time journalist, and wanted to cross-reference a story: You make one phone call on a lead, you get a front-page story. You make two calls, you get a small story for page 9. You make three calls, you've got no story at all. That's the kind of cynical laziness I came up against during my long, rather depressing, journalistic career, and that I still battle daily in my work as a public relations consultant. Journalism, at its best, is a street-pounding, dross-sifting, meticulous exercise in balancing skepticism, curiosity, tenacity and boldness. Back in the day, when newspapers were still printed using hot metal, there were few professionals who personified these qualities; there are fewer today. Reporters and editors have, since the profession began, been egged on to a sense of complacency by the sheer fact that they controlled, or were in bed with the guys who controlled, the means of producing news.

Still, it's not as if I welcome the fact that huge numbers of perfectly adequate, and some even very worthwhile journalists are out of a job. In most cases, frankly, they were ill-served by their corporate masters. The print media had plenty of time to think about how to adapt to (and make a profit out of) the brave new world of the Internet. Fifteen years ago, it was clear it was here to stay. But most publishers and others in charge of the purse strings took the attitude of a deer being borne down upon by an eighteen wheeler. This was despite the fact that, at most publications, journalists were doing their job and identifying that this World Wide Web thingy was actually going to be a terrific way to gather and disseminate information. At one daily paper I know, the only reason the publication ended up with its own name as a url was because a junior journo got fed up with being ignored and bought the domain name with his own money, until his supposedly superiors saw the light. When he came to sell it to them, at cost, he was treated like a criminal. That daily paper is now a thin, ill-regarded weekly with an office in a dodgy inner city location, and I can't say they have anyone to blame but themselves. Nevertheless, it wasn't the fault of the editorial staff now out of work. The same sort of story repeated itself all over the Western hemisphere. Meanwhile, zippy little Web startups came and ate the print media's lunch. Because there were almost no overheads, and no printing and infrastructure costs, the idea got established that information could be free. Before anyone realized that was a serious miscalculation, it was too late. Everyone was giving journalism away for nothing.

So, we're strapped in for the ride, unfortunately. We still have respected media figures such as Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, claiming that "information wants to be free", as if it were water running down a hill. Water's a good analogy,come to think of it. Until you've traveled to the developing world, say, it seems as if the very idea of charging for potable water is absurd. It falls from the heavens - it should be free! Then you visit somewhere full of standing putrid ponds, with no purification plant nearby, and rudimentary sewage arrangements, and it all looks very different. It's the same with information. If you want the good, clean, reliable stuff, that costs money to produce. My belief is that journalism is currently going through an unsustainable transition period. We cannot rely entirely on "citizen" journalists to do the deep digging required to hold elected leaders responsible for their actions, for example; or to challenge multi-national corporations when they put profit before public health. Dedicated reporters need to make enough to eat and keep a roof over their heads. They also need resources to gather and analyze information - plane tickets, hotel beds, global cellphones, translators, even bribe money; and, more than anything else, the luxury of time to let information accumulate in sufficient quantities to give a clear picture of what's going on. If we cannot make these economic realities work in a for-profit scenario, then let us quickly start funding news-gathering as a charitable enterprise essential to maintaining our humanity. Let NGO stand for "news-gathering organization" if we have to!

Meanwhile, do yourself a favor and read Michael Massing's excellent article on why the Internet isn't killing quality journalism, not quite, and not yet. There is, it seems, light at the end of the tunnel.