Geodog

The future and past of journalism

Scott Rosenberg has written a very nice essay on the future of journalism in the age when anyone can publish. He has caught the moment that we stand in well, with the old media monopolies dying but not dead, and the new media struggling to be born, but not clear what it will be born as.

He captures well a phenomenon that experienced in my teens and will never forget, the experience of having someone report on something you know well, and discovering how flawed and human supposedly authoritative institutions like major newspapers are. In my case, I was living in Niger in West Africa, and I once met the Washington Post journalist who was responsible for covering the entire continent of Africa (which is by itself an amazing fact). He spent 5 days in the country and then left, not to return again for a year or so, and on the basis of those 5 days wrote 5 or so articles on events and trends in Niger, each of which contained things stated as facts that I thought were patently false. It was a good learning experience for a future political activist.

I suspect that, in spite of the many reasons why the existing institutions and practicioners of journalism should be able to see the writing on the wall, we are entering another period of Schumpeterian Creative Destruction. I also suspect that what arises from the ashes that we will recognize as journalism will arise from the mix of new sources like blogs, group blogs, indymedia, PLOS, Kuroshin, etc. not from the transformation of existing institutions.