I've been reading over the "Life in the clickstream: The Future of Journalism" summit report, and something has struck me. The future of journalism may not be so dire after all.
Not that I ever considered it completely and utterly doomed, because otherwise I would not be spending my time and money on a university degree that I believe will be invalid in the long term. However, since the start of my communications degree, my lecturers, tutors, course material and assignment sources have warned me: the field of journalism is changing, and in the future there may be no need for journalists at all. This is usually attributed to the increase in communication technologies, and 'citizen journalism's' rise to prominence.
However, Christopher Warren provides a few observations and statistics that would give any budding print journalist hope. What about the fact that although the aggregate circulation of metropolitan dailies has varied since 2002, it has only slightly fallen. What's more, the national and metropolitan dailies take second place as the dominant source of news in Australia, and that is behind television, not the internet.
What do the public think? According to a study conducted by the Australian Press Council, 71 per cent of respondents disagreed with the proposition "with the advent of the Internet and blogs and other ways to spread information, Australia no longer needs a group of trained, professionally skilled journalists." And 22-32 per cent of respondents stated that news sites and blogs, by their very nature, were superficial and "no substitute for quality journalism and analysis."
This is good news.
Source:
Warren, Christopher., 2008. "Life in the clickstream: The Future of Journalism", The Future of Journalism, accessed 17 August 2010, http://www.thefutureofjournalism.org.au/
No comments:
Post a Comment