The Future of Journalism
Friday, August 26, 2011
On Tuesday, the Bay Area News Group (BANG) announced a
rebranding of many of its newspapers to better reflect the scope of its regional coverage.The reality of that statement: eleven newspapers that are currently operating independently will merge into two newspapers. This is also anticipated to impact 120 jobs- at least 40 of these journalists.
It seems everywhere I've looked this week, I have come across mention of newspapers either closing or cutting jobs. With such drastic cuts, where does that leave the journalists of the future? The answer is online.
In spite of these cuts, BANG is placing an emphasis on multimedia content delivery. They have put out a stream of recent apps for iPads and iPhones. Their websites are offering new and expanded coverage. BANG is far from being the only place where online growth is being seen. The full article about the changes to BANG can be read here.
This week also happened to mark the launching of a new newspaper: The Daily Dot. It proclaims to be the Hometown Newspaper of the World Wide Web. It aims to cover the news among the social media outlets of the internet. This includes, but is not limited to, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, Digg, and YouTube.
The first reaction might be to scratch your head over this, but after some deep contemplation I believe this is trending in the right direction. The Daily Dot might not be too far off when it claims that
The global online community is the largest body politic in the world and it is growing rapidly, stretching across geography, boundaries, and borders.Social networking has grown to such massive proportions that its population could rival countries.
If the population has the interest, why not write about it?
It will create more journalism jobs. It will create a stronger demand for journalism in the online communities. This could be the phoenix rising from the ashes of the paper newspapers.
And maybe this might even convince some people to pick up one of those paper newspapers. I can't wait to see the ripple effect that The Daily Dot creates. I, for one, am excited about the future of journalism.
Photo Credit: Newspaper Death Watch via Creative Commons.
2 comments:
I think covering news in social media outlets is brilliant. With unemployment rates at highs not seen in decades, it makes complete sense to start creating jobs in untapped markets such as this. There are very few sectors not affected by our current economic situation, and journalism is certainly not one of the lucky ones that will be untouched by it. I hope this can start creating jobs for those who have lost it with the change in this industry.
Who will watch the Watchmen...
What an inovative idea. Thedailydot.com seems to have a solid grasp on what it means to be socially involve in journalism today. The website truly reads like the sections of a newspaper. Top news here, special interests here, the wacky and obserd pretty much everywhere else.
This website helps to define the big question, "What is news?" Though I would not consider some of the articles and links on this website to be "news", I do agree with the sites summary page that it gives "a voice to the Web’s communities".
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