10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head
There is hope. Ryan Sholin, a graduate journalism student at San Jose State University, spells out a few realities that somehow seem to elude most veteran news people. Here's a summary of his well-argued diatribe.
- It’s not Google’s fault.
- It’s not Craig’s fault.
- Your major metro newspaper could probably use some staff cuts.
- It’s time to stop handwringing and start training.
- You don’t get to charge people for archives and you certainly don’t want to charge people for daily news content.
- Reporters need to do more than write. The new world calls for a new skillset, and you and Mr. Notebook need to make some new friends, like Mr. Microphone and Mr. Point & Shoot.
- Bloggers aren’t an uneducated lynch mob unconcerned by facts. They’re your readers and your neighbors and if you play your cards right, your sources and your community moderators. If you really play it right, bloggers are the leaders of your networked reporting projects. Get over the whole bloggers vs. journalists thing, which has been pretty much settled since long before you stopped calling it a “Web blog” in your stories.
- You ignore new delivery systems at your own peril. RSS, SMS, iPhone, e-paper, Blackberry, widgets, podcasts, vlogs, Facebook, Twitter — these aren’t the competition, these are your new carriers.
- J-schools can either play a critical role in training the next generation of journalists, or they can fade into irrelevancy. Teach multimedia, interactivity and data, or watch your students become frustrated and puzzled as they try to get jobs with five clips and a smile.
- Okay, here comes the big one: THE GLASS IS HALF FULL.
I wish this were written by a major news executive instead, but at least some journalists seem to get it.
