The transformational impact of the so-called ‘digital age’
on traditional, legacy media is undeniable. As an industry, mainstream
media have virtually lost monopoly status with respect to news, views and
information that matter.
In many ways, this follows on a longstanding relationship
between mass media and technology. Think of the value of the modern printing
press to newspapers and the innovations in wireless communication to broadcast
media. Print lost to radio what radio went on to lose, in part, to television.
Yet, whatever their respective conditions, they endure to today.
The immediacy of broadcast media now shares important space
in the world of online content. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others are
broadcasting and narrowcasting ‘live’ and way in excess of the reaches of
broadcasting towers and cable connections. At the helm of these new platforms
is a cadre of ordinary people telling ordinary and often extraordinary stories
– much of it ‘journalistic’ in nature, but this is not ‘journalism’ in its
purest professional sense.
The relationship between technological change and the
practice of journalism however appears to have been important but somewhat less
linear in character when compared with developments in the media industry as a
whole.
On this question, for example, it had not mattered at the
elemental level of journalistic practice, that the Gutenberg press and its
associated functions had given way to more efficient mechanised processes.
Tracing the development of the T&T Guardian over its 100 years tells us as
much about the news of the day, as it provides us with an insight into the
application of new publishing technologies.
It is undeniable though that the current era has challenged
both traditional media and the journalism they produce. This has been achieved
through the undermining of previously impervious revenue streams that served as
platforms for the practice of professional journalism and through a
diversification of alternative, virtually unmediated sources and streams of data,
information and opinion.
Yet, journalism remains steadfastly relevant and important.
This is in part so because though the aggregating of news and information is
now possible by way of app and algorithm this is incapable, on its own, of
advancing knowledge to the point of understanding or providing meaning. What
some offer as the “DIKW continuum” comprising data, information, knowledge and wisdom.
Some insert “understanding” before the word “wisdom”.
There are numerous studies on the manner in which the new
digital landscape affects notions of verifiable news and information. GML
technology correspondent, Mark Lyndersay, has written extensively on the
subject. He points to the fact that online publications are already turning to
“automated solutions to create basic stories” and in the process dramatically
challenging the “modus operandi” of newsgathering and therefore some important
pillars of traditional media practice.
This may eventually prove that the nature of what is broadly
defined as “newsgathering” may evolve beyond current reliance on journalists as
we know them (already there is the vexing question of so-called “citizen
journalism”) and turn attention to the mechanical features of aggregating vast
streams of data and information.
Yet, journalism remains at the core in so far as there
continue to be the imperatives of verification, accountability and the nuanced
voices of reporters on the ground, whatever their professional or vocational
manifestation.
A Tow Center for Digital Journalism paper on Post-Industrial
Journalism: Adapting to the Present prepared by C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell and
Clay Shirky concludes starkly that while all journalism may not prevail, “hard
news is what matters in the current crisis.”
Yes, journalism matters. But the real question is, which
journalism. In my view, Lyndersay and the Tow Center researchers are not those
many poles apart.
Another Tow study ‘The Story So Far’ by Bill Grueskin, Ava
Seave and Lucas Graves enters the discussion from the vantage point of the
media industry.
“Fifteen years after most news organisations went online,”
they ask, “it is clear that old media business models have been irrevocably
disrupted and that the new models are fundamentally different from what they
once were.”
“What made traditional media so vulnerable to the Web? Or
perhaps the better question is this: Why has digital technology, which has been
such a powerful force for transmitting news, not yet provided the same energy
for companies to maintain and increase profits?”
They conclude that even as the industry wrestles with the
monetising of news and information in this new era, “we think the world needs
journalism and journalists.” Why? Because while people now have unprecedented
access to data and information, much of what media audiences need to know “will
go unreported and unexposed without skilled, independent journalists doing
their work.”
It is true that the nature of the job remains in transition.
Today’s journalists are reporting and editing, but also aggregating data and
information from a much deeper and wider pool of resources. Anderson, Bell and
Shirky describe the process as capable of yielding “the iron core of news.”
It is this “iron core” that remains as the steadfast bastion
of professional journalism. To me, this represents an important moment to
reflect on the value systems that drive and motivate the work of journalists.
As a working journalist and trainer of some seniority, it
has occurred to me that the current generation occupies favourable
technological space even as they confront the dilemma of medium and message in
ways we could not have previously countenanced.
Clearly, tomorrow is already here. What it portends for the
media industry shares space in the eyewall of the storm alongside journalism
and all the profession continues to offer.
