14 DAY TRIAL // Leading journalism experts are currently trying to alienate fears that professional coverage of significant events is about to disappear. Many people fear that the downfall of newspapers, caused by both a massive surge in Internet user numbers and the current economic crisis, will mean a complete re-shifting in the way journalists report the news. But acclaimed science writer Steven Johnson told on Friday a crowd gathered at the South By South West Interactive Festival conference that new forms of coverage have already popped-up to replace the old ones.
For example, he said, Twittering is one of the new-age methods of distributing information. Naturally, questions as to the neutrality of the information shared in this manner may occur but, on the other hand, past experiences have shown that even the largest newspapers can be subjected to influences, be they political or economical. Another advantage of citizen media is that pressure groups, which might otherwise pay newspaper editors to keep quiet, will be left with no clear target for their pressure.
People distributing news that some may want to keep hidden will do so from all corners of the world, and not from a central headquarter. Johnson also cited blogging as another way to get information across huge distances, saying that the connections that at this point exist within the blogosphere make information very hard to censor. Citizen journalism seems to indeed be the path of the future, seeing how more and more people become involved with independent media agencies, These agencies are not owned by large news corporations, and are therefore relatively immune to outside pressures.
“I'm bullish on the future of news. I am not bullish on what is happening in the newspaper industry; it is ugly and it is going to get uglier. Great journalists are going to lose their jobs and cities are going to lose their newspapers. There is panic that newspapers are going to disappear as businesses,” the expert said at the conference.
“Then there is panic that crucial information is going to disappear along with them. We spend so much time figuring out how to keep the old model on life support that we don't figure out how to build the new one. The business model sure seems easier to support if the printing goes away.They don't have the print costs,” and they no longer have to cut down the trees, Johnson concluded,
He envisions the future of news and reporting as a very tightly-connected network of blogs, independent journalists, and social media users, as in people having accounts on sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Within this environment, he says, information will be passed on very quick, so as to satisfy people's thirst of learning the news as fast as possible. Such a system will also remove the possibility of outside interests intervening in the presentation process, and will eliminate corporations' options of putting a certain “angle” on a “uncomfortable” subject.