The Death of Newspapers and The Future of Journalism

News will continue to be produced and delivered at accelerated rates and delivered instantaneously over wireless and wired networks so society will be no less well-informed; just the sources of news will change.  Most importantly, the nature of journalism will change.  It likely will not be about good writing, well constructed composition, or a nice human interest story — it will be more about images and communicating as much as possible while taking as little of the consumer’s time as possible; that may mean more pictures and videos, and fewer words.  Lengthy description may be supplanted with actual footage.  It will be Strunk & White on steroids, but there will be no lack of journalism.

The biggest question is whether any form of investigative journalism will survive.  The answer is yes, but the form that survives will be radically different from today’s lone investigative journalist investigating and crafting a startling and compelling investigation; rather, it will likely be through many, many individuals reporting on the goings-on at their business, government office, place or worship, etc.  The investigation will involve someone or some group of “journalists” mining the various news feeds and blogger reports and cobbling together the investigative piece.  The romance of interviewing persons of interest and being an on-the-ground detective ferreting out the truth will disappear, and the new investigative journalists will be those who pull together threads of information, verify them, and see the patters that emerge from disparate sources.  The new breed of investigative journalist may be someone who never actually conducts a live interview or leaves his or her computer for an investigation.

Thus, news and journalism will continue to thrive; newspapers in all likelihood, except for a select few, will likely not.