Can I be honest?
I'm not very optimistic about the future of journalism as we know it.
In the digital age, I feel as though newspapers --- which are my heart and were once my bread and butter --- missed the boat a very, very long time ago.
This means great changes and great disappointments, but also great opportunities.
So, yes, somewhere in this mess there is a silver lining to this heavy gray cloud of doom currently hanging over the industry.
In my Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship class in the Marshall School of Business at USC we are learning that because the economic situation is so bleak, now is the best time for the proliferation of new ideas. Entrepreneurship is a lot about finding solutions to problems. Well, the situation with the media and how it will or won't transition into the digital age is ripe with problems.
And like Professor Geoffrey Cowan said tonight, this Leadership and the Future of Reporting in the Digital Age class has possibilities for finding solutions...or, at least to create something useful for the industry and the strengthening of democracy as we know it.
The ideas that we'll throw around in enlightened discussions among our class of reporters, television personalities, bloggers, artists, scientists, financiers, world travelers, would-be educators, innovators and, dare I say, future entrepreneurs could possibly change the world....and, well, if we save newspapers in the process, that would be great too.
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Do you not feel at all that there are enough fans of newspapers out there to keep them alive? Last semester in Jim Loper's CMGT 532 class we kept talking about the fear that internet video will kill the world of TV broadcasting as we know it. A lot of us came to the conclusion that there are so many people that still love TV for the sake of having content fed to them so they can sit back and simply watch without having to think and choose, or have some nice background nice as they do chores around the house. So, along with the question about the death of the newspaper there is the question about the death of broadcasting as we know it today. I hope doesn't because I wouldn't want to lose all that!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure. I mean, on one hand, my parents and a lot of other older folks absolutely CRAVE the newspaper. But, best case scenario regarding that audience is that they live to be in their 80's or 90's and still have enough disposable income that they're able to afford a subscription...hate to sound cynical. But you pose a good question. Maybe we're all Chicken Littles these days, running around screaming "The sky is falling!" when it's really not. I mean, the question of disappearing newsapers has been around since 19 when Oswald Garrison Villard published "The Disappearing Daily." But, I guess that's just a long way of saying, "I don't know." *shrug* But thanks for the question...
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