Newspapers and The Internet: Friends or Foes?

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Read just about any commentary on the state of the newspapers in the Internet age and you will see predictions of an imminent decline of democracy.  Many in the traditional press tell us that, thanks to bloggers and the like, there will be “fewer resources to investigate stories …fewer professionals to doggedly uncover shady financial practices …fewer journalists to cover community news.”  It sounds as though the Internet arrived on the news scene as suddenly and as destructively as a hurricane.

And yet, predictions of Internet supremacy are hardly new.  In 1998, Maury Breecher predicted that by 2005, “online delivery will be the primary source of all business news for executives.”  Despite these many predictions over the past 12 years if not longer, according to Carnegie’s Abandoning the News, newspaper companies have made few fundamental adjustments to the manner in which they deliver the news.  No matter the gadget which delivers the news, the university-trained journalists and their editors are still the gatekeepers; they still provide the news to the masses who are expected to absorb its content.

Even though, as the newspapers’ own finances demonstrate, the world no longer works this way.  Much of newspaper revenue is derived from print advertising.  Advertisers buy newspaper space online or in hard copy because they hope to reach a captive audience.  If companies are redirecting their marketing to blogs and sites such as craigslist, the advertisers have determined that a newspaper no longer has a captive audience.  The “masses” have gone elsewhere.  The newspapers, however, act as though their audience is still with them.

Their denial has cost the newspapers a tremendous opportunity.  For Jeffrey Cole points out, thanks to the Internet, the newspapers are back “in the breaking news business.”  Perhaps nothing better demonstrates this than the recent turmoil in Iran.  Major newspapers, such as the New York Times, carried those demonstrations “live” on their web sites, often with up-to-the-minute updates.  Newspapers have not been able to provide breaking news like this since Edward Murrow’s “European News Roundup” aired on March 13, 1938.  Combine this with the newspapers’ brand name and you seem to have an unbeatable combination—if the newspapers change the way they deliver news.  If newspapers recognize (on a systematic as opposed to a “flash-in-the-pan” basis) that society’s view of who is “qualified” to deliver and comment on the news has been greatly expanded; that news must be (to use Jeff Jarvis’ term) “brought off its pedestal and presented at eye-level”. 

This is not to deny that professional journalistic skills are of tremendous value.  They are.  As, Glenn Fleischman puts it, traditional reporting means doing “investigative features that require weeks to years of research, information requests and lawsuits; the exposure of corruption, failure and wasted funds at the local, regional and national levels.”  No-one wants to lose that.  However, the traditional journalistic tendency to look down on readers; to assume that news consumers are simply that—consumers of information the learned journalist chooses to impart—is less helpful.  And it will have to change.  As Robert Courtemanche puts it, in today’s interactive world, the “consumer is also a producer.”  That, as most news consumers realize, is very empowering. 

And it is power few will want to surrender.  But what then, you might wonder is the role of the professional journalist?  And how will citizen reporting affect the quality of journalism?  To be honest, I don’t know.

One thing I can say with relative certainty: if newspapers don’t step away from a business model in which they fill the ignorant masses with the news they deem “fit to print,” media criticism will continue to be a “growth industry” even as “news business fades.”  And perhaps with reason.