Google+
Here’s the problem with journalism
By Steve Outing on Jan 10, 2008 in Journalism
Did you see the Brodeur survey of journalists released the other day? “Brodeur Journalists Survey Identifies Blogs’ Influence on Traditional News Coverage.”
Flipping through the PDF version of the report, my jaw dropped when I saw this slide:
One in four journalist blogs. One in five has a page on a social network. Good grief, Charlie Brown!
The audience is marching online, in many cases switching allegiances to online and digital, or at least adding significant digital consumption to their media diets at the expense of traditional formats, and most journalists don’t move with them. News professionals can’t understand the transformation in media consumption if they don’t live it themselves. I think every journalist should blog, maintain pages on social networking sites, use new media-related websites (Twitter, Digg, et al), etc. (Just follow Howard Owens’ advice.)
It’s 2008, folks. My young daughters, apparently, are more attuned to the media reality than three-quarters of journalists. Do you expect to be relevant to them when they become adults if you don’t live in their world?
When I see stuff like this, I sometimes wonder if there’s hope for the news industry.
(Of course, I bet lots of people will look at the numbers above and think that it shows progress. Sure, some. But take a gander at recent headlines over at Romenesko, where hardly a day goes by that one or more of them aren’t about yet more newspaper layoffs. Journalists are not adapting fast enough to help their organizations make the necessary transformation to doing business in the Internet era. It’s not all the responsibility of those in the executive offices.)
Oh, and while my inner critic is letting loose, I’ll point out to Brodeur that the chart is confusing; a pie chart is not the correct graphic device to present the information above. (What can I say… I once was a newspaper graphics editor.) Pie charts can’t be used when multiple answers are possible, such as with the question above.
On Jan 11, 2008, JohnofScribbleSheet
said:
I do all 5!
On Jan 11, 2008, JohnofScribbleSheet said:
I do all 5!
On Jan 13, 2008, Tom
said:
The problem with posts like this is the presumption that blogs lie at the centre of the universe, and the closer that journalists get to achieving the state of electronic enlightenment that you have found, the closer they come to truly understanding the people they’re writing for.
This isn’t true. Most people succeed in living modern, completely-connected, fully-engaged lives without writing a blog. Many might read blogs, but not everybody is cut out to routinely produce good content. The Internet is changing the way people get their media. But it’s not turning them into Techmeme clones.
(On the flip side, it *does* strike me as odd – and inconsistent with my experience – that fewer journalists would have social networking profiles than blogs. Unlike blogs, social network pages *are* a part of many readers’ daily lives. On top of which, social networking pages are basic news-gathering tools today.)
On Jan 13, 2008, Tom said:
The problem with posts like this is the presumption that blogs lie at the centre of the universe, and the closer that journalists get to achieving the state of electronic enlightenment that you have found, the closer they come to truly understanding the people they're writing for. This isn't true. Most people succeed in living modern, completely-connected, fully-engaged lives without writing a blog. Many might read blogs, but not everybody is cut out to routinely produce good content. The Internet is changing the way people get their media. But it's not turning them into Techmeme clones. (On the flip side, it *does* strike me as odd – and inconsistent with my experience – that fewer journalists would have social networking profiles than blogs. Unlike blogs, social network pages *are* a part of many readers' daily lives. On top of which, social networking pages are basic news-gathering tools today.)