State of the News Media 2008 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism

If the authors had wished to print the 180,000 words of this annual report on American journalism, it would have used 700 pages of paper per hard copy. But in just one of the report’s many signals that everyone concerned with the business of journalism should “take advantage of the capabilities of the Web”, the Project for Excellence in Journalism chose to publish exclusively online.

Some points—such as news today is a service, not a product, or the media are no longer final destinations for consumers—likely made the news evolutionists wonder if they would discover anything from the report, while other findings—like the general disappointment in user-created content, the perception that the newsroom is the more innovative and experimental part of the news industry, and the agenda of the American news media continuing to narrow, not broaden—have no doubt added new dimensions and considerations to the debate of the transforming press.

Blogosphere and mainstream media weigh in:

Reportr.org blogger Alfred Hermida pointing out trends highlighted in the report that have been long debated by the new-media vanguard.

Media Business Analyst for the Poynter Institute, Rick Edmonds, on advertising, which was explored heavily in the report.

Web Has Unexpected Effect on Journalism, Associated Press

Off the record: the decay of old-world journalism

Defending legacy news organizations by pointing out the shortcomings of new media outlets is like an an old farmer trying to justify his failing crops by comparing his harvest to the first plant of the young city folk who moved in down the road: the old farmer has had longer to try to get it right.

Legacies such as the New York Times and Washington Post should know better by now, and yet, they—like journalists from lesser-famed news sources and just as bloggers (both pajama-wearing and office-attired)—don’t seem to have a compass of journalism principles to guide them.

Perhaps this is the Decline and Fall of 20th-Century Journalism, and we’ve just been experiencing media decadence, which will hasten the end of old-world journalism and usher in the dawn of a new era of information sharing.

Look no further than the past week to see the evidence of old-journalism decay:

• There was, of course, Charlotte Allen’s editorial in the Washington Post on her distaste for certain women—as horrifying as it was error-riddled.
• Little defense has been offered against the accusation that American journalists tend to protect rather than expose the secrets of powerful people, a sharp contrast to The Scotsman printing the “monster” remark by Obama’s aide, even though she tried to strike it from the record after saying it. MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson magnified the apparent US media weakness when he had The Scotsman reporter on his show.
• Buy-out bids at the New York Times were due last week, but if those staff members who opted were too few to fill up the 100 newsroom cuts announced in late February, then the paper will have to resort to lay-offs. As one long-running writer at the Times put it, “People here are used to the idea that that doesn’t happen here.”
• Add to all of that the dubious media coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential nomination race, the frequent short-comings of the American press in international news, and not to mention the incessant celebrity gossip.

As the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland put it in his worthy piece, Long Winter for the Media,

Access to the Internet gives the generations living today the choice to be the best-informed, or the worst-informed, human beings in history — but we will never be able to claim that we were the least-informed. Celebrity, slime and crude polemics pour from the electronic faucets as easily as high-minded exegeses.

Where are the leaders of the information and media revolution to guide the straying generations living today to ethical, interesting and correct information?

With links, why report when you can analyze? Link journalism leads to link editorializing.

With the advent of bloggers, there has been a shift in the ratio of those presenting the news and those analyzing it. Since anyone can publish her opinion on the Web, the balance is tipping towards more news editorials and analyses, and reporting the facts has become the task of the minority.

That’s fine. Not everyone needs to write similar stories on the same event. Subscribers can run wire stories and the rest can link. Then it’s open season for bloggers and journalists to connect the dots and add relative information to give context

It’s almost as if we’ve ushered in the Age of the Columnists. Every journalist who ever dreamed of unleashing her subjectivity should grab a keyboard and opine away.

The point that needs be stressed is that adapting such information mechanisms should be in addition to newswriting, especially since consumers can find links in their purest form elsewhere:

• Readers now can go straight to the source for the “hard facts”, which means lazy journalists’ newswriting can no longer regurgitate the press releases, but neither should they rely on the equally lazy option of simply adding a link.
• News aggregate Web sites are already in existence, and Internet users can subscribe to RSS feeds if a list of links is all they desire, so mainstream media should differentiate themselves by contributing their news expertise.
• Wiki journalism also relies heavily on linking, and like linking, it should be used by the media only to bolster its value as a news source. This is because news is real time, but the wiki concept is, as Daniel Conover puts it, “a curated form of search… a non-news based method of keeping up with developing information.” Conover further writes:

Typical news organizations shun this kind of thinking as “not news. They will soon retire that attitude. Since zapping in and out of topics is the way most informed people acquire information, creating and curating not only databases but high-quality topic articles will be one of the most significant journalism jobs of the future. Again, this will not be instead of news writing, but in addition to newswriting. The best news sources (BBC) already perform this function, often in real time.

Objectivity has not been marginalized. To what, then, would the news analysts link their readers? Journalists are encouraged, rather, not to editorialize in their analyses, but to contextualize. The Internet is already saturated with opinionated blogs and comments, and it is still the news reporter’s job to stick to the facts.

Survey says: more people get their news online, especially journalists

  If almost all journalists go online daily to find news and nearly half of the rest of us do the same, then media professionals should again find themselves with news expertise to offer readers.

• Many sources such as news wires and press releases, which were once exclusively available to journalists, are now open directly to citizens. However, while journalists collect and process this information for a living, other professionals don’t have all day to wade through everything.  
• Here may be where the ideas of link journalism and networked link journalism would come into play. As they do their research and investigating, reporters could then compile their reference and source links for readers who would otherwise spend hours clicking around on search engines to find the complete story.
• With such disclosure, journalists could regain the trust of their “audience”, not only letting the sources speak for themselves, but being helpful at the same time.
• The recent We Media/Zogby Interactive survey reminded the newspaper industry that it is not only facing a crisis in declining circulation and advertisement revenue, but also in declining credibility and quality.
• Now that readers can check the facts for themselves by following links in the news they read on the Internet, it is no wonder the poll found that online news has a greater share of the people’s trust, as stated in the 27 February 2008 press release on the Zogby Web site:

The survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources – nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).

  Another important reminder that the survey gives the media is that traditional journalism has lost touch with its local reader.

  As more people gain access to international and national news on the Internet, they rely less on their local newspaper or TV station to learn what’s going on “out there”. The study affirms that citizens feel they’re lacking community news about what’s going on “right here.”

  No longer does every paper in the U.S. need a Washington bureau and a Middle East correspondent. Local papers can now redouble their focus and resources on local news and give the people what they really want. Of course, they will want to provide this news on their Web sites.

Other findings from the survey include:

• Although the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism (64%), overall satisfaction with journalism has increased to 35% in this survey from 27% who said the same in 2007.
• Both traditional and new media are viewed as important for the future of journalism – 87% believe professional journalism has a vital role to play in journalism’s future, although citizen journalism (77%) and blogging (59%) are also seen as significant by most Americans.
• Very few Americans (1%) consider blogs their most trusted source of news, or their primary source of news (1%).
• Three in four (75%) believe the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.
• 69% believe media companies are becoming too large and powerful to allow for competition, while 17% believe they are the right size to adequately compete.

Does Prince Harry think blogs are news? Ask the Drudge Report.

The Drudge Report breaking the news black-out on Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan is a good example of how blogging news sites are easily and quickly slipping into the pit of greed and ambition that mainstream media has been trying to lift itself out of.

When stripped of its ethics, social justice and responsibility, journalism is just gossip. There is no better example of the harm that gossip could cause than the leaking of a Royal’s position on the front lines of a war, to the benefit and amusement of an opportunistic enemy.

For so long, watchdog blogs criticized the traditional media for their seemingly cutthroat tactics in reporting the story. Whether accused of being money-hungry, cowing at political pressure and interests or victimizing the public in trying to break the news first, the media lost the respect and trust of their audience.

Blogs, vaunting themselves as the alternative to the mainstream media, became the forum readers thought would give them the trusted quality news that they longed for, free from market competition and the influence of advertisers and politicians. With that recognition—which bloggers are constantly demanding from traditional journalists— also come responsibilities.

Instead, there is a double standard for blogger news sites. The Drudge Report plays dirty, but the only force that could demand that creator Matt Drudge be held accountable or at least apologize, is the same public that has given him the influence which prompted the Telegraph’s US editor to call Drudge the world’s most powerful journalist.

The Australian celebrity publication New Idea that first reported the Prince Harry scoop on January 7 on its Web site and later in its magazine edition made little waves but was berated by its readers for jeopardizing the lives of Prince Harry and the soldiers who fought along side him. The Telegraph reports that readers called New Idea an embarrassment to Australia, adding the statement of apology issued by the magazine:

Suggesting it had not contacted the Ministry of Defence or Clarence House for confirmation, a spokesman for the magazine said: “New Idea was not issued with a press embargo and was unaware of the existence of one.

“The story was published on Monday January 7. Since then New Idea has received no comment from the British Ministry of Defence.

“We take these matters very seriously and would never knowingly break an embargo. We regret any issues the revelation of this story in America has caused.”

Jon Williams, the BBC’s world news editor, wrote a post for The Editors blog in which he explained the position of those at the BBC who made the decision to agree to the news blackout for Prince Harry’s deployment.

Drudge has been mum on his decision not to heed it, although, unlike New Idea, he was aware of the embargo. His explanation would be appreciated by this blogger, who is sad to see him chipping away at our decency, credibility and trustworthiness.