While it is debatable that journalism is dying, it certainly is changing. In recent years, there has been little growth within the print edition of publications, and more focus on the online editions of these newspapers and magazines.
There has also been an increaseinexclusively online news outlets, such as when The Huffington Post launched in 2005, and the transfer of former print publications, like Newsweek’s transition this year, to digital-only publications.
This is an ongoing process that continues to be rocky for many news outlets. Of course, some publications have not survived this digital revolution. In fact, there is even a website called Newspaper Death Watch that tracks the newspapers that have folded since March 2007.
In some circumstances, publications have not died, but staff has been cut significantly. For example, according to Richmond BizSense, The Richmond Times-Dispatch let go 28 editorial staff members and 31 non-newsroom employees in April 2009. These kinds of layoffs have been common throughout the country, especially since the peak of the recession.
Despite the loss of many newspapers and jobs, some publications have prevailed thanks to efforts such as online advertising, social media and paywalls (The Farmville Herald put one up last year). However, recent data shows that even digitalized journalism has its faults.
According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2013 report on the state of the news media, 31 percent of adults in the United States no longer turn to the news media because “it no longer provided them with the news they were accustomed to getting.” The study attributed this to less thorough content, and a lesser amount of content overall.
This, of course, has a great deal to do with staff layoffs and less funding of resources. The study reported that many news consumers are not aware of these financial struggles.
The Pew Research Center’s election 2012 research showed that only about one quarter of information about the character and records of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama came from journalists, while half was attributed to political partisans.
The report also said more and more news outlets are running article bylines by other companies. There are publications, such as Forbes, that use algorithm to report with no human reporting necessary.
This may be the “new” age of journalism, but it seems ... cheap. People are obtaining their information from biased sources or secondhand. While this is nothing new, it is happening more often, and that is unfortunate.
News outlets release information on many topics, such as weather and entertainment and the stock market, and a decent amount of this information is objective. However, there are stories that need to be investigated. Not everything is surface level, but this new age of journalism seems to support simple reporting.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the former reporters for The Washington Post who are largely credited for the uncovering of the Nixon Administration’s Watergate Scandal, brought up this type of outlook during Woodward’s April 2012 talk entitled “Watergate 4.0: How Would the Story Unfold in the Digital Age?”
A Yale University professor had recently submitted one-word papers their students wrote on how they would uncover the Watergate Scandal today. Woodward was not thrilled with what he received.
Woodward, according to The Washington Post, “came as close as I ever have to having an aneurysm, because the students wrote that, ‘Oh, you would just use the Internet and you’d go to “Nixon’s secret fund” and it would be there.’ ”
The article went on to say that Woodward supplied the class with better information. He told the audience at this talk that “the basic point is: The truth of what goes on is not on the Internet. [The Internet] can supplement. It can help advance. But the truth resides with people. Human sources.”
Woodward’s words reflect how the Internet should be viewed: as a helpful source, but not a primary one. Of course, I gathered the information for this column from the Internet, but the opinion primarily represented in this article is my own. And when it comes to my reporting, I gather the majority of my information from in- person interviews that I conduct personally.
Journalism is heading in a direction that is already proving to be harmful. Digital or not, journalism should be rich with accurate information, not cheap or secondhand sources.
*** This editorial is an opinion stated by the writer and does not represent the views of The Rotunda or Longwood University.
