Is the news industry changing too quickly?

Posted Mar 13th 2009 4:45PM by Joseph Lazzaro
Filed under: Industry, Newspapers

Journalism in the United States is hurtling toward a new era. The trouble is, no one in the craft knows whether the new period will represent the start of a new golden age... or a brave new world.

There are breathtaking technologies, platforms, and distribution channels that hold the promise of bringing news, news analysis, information, and more, to countless new markets and to new audiences. This holds the promise of increasing knowledge, learning, public input and citizen awareness -- as well as publishers' online revenue streams.

A two-edged tech sword

But the new era also has ushered in dozens of problems, quandaries, and potentially ominous scenarios.

For example, numerous print newspapers, many of them large budget metropolitan dailies, appear destined to close, and no one has yet figured out who will fill their role as a check on both public sector and private industry abuses.

The era has also ushered in many, new, talented journalists and aspiring journalists who will add much to the craft. But their incorporation has also produced its share of conflicts, along with some mind-numbing errors.

For example, there seems to be a lack of recognition of -- incredibly, even a disdain for -- institutional memory. This, as Solzhenitsyn reminds us, is the first step away from civility and accountability.

Case in point: An editor colleague and friend at WashingtonPost.com pointed out that not one but two factual errors occurred in the online obituary news story on Deep Throat. The Post had to run two corrections, he said. "Two corrections!" he repeated.

You can rest assured that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein agree with Solzhenitsyn that the decline of institutional memory is the first step away from civility and accountability.

Financial Editor Joseph Lazzaro is based in New York.

Tags: Internet, journalism, newspapers, online newspapers