Unsurprisingly, the news these days is full of apprehension about the demise of...the news. A little closer to reason, the NY Times' Opinionator had a good round up of current "future-positive" thinking about the next few years, prompted by this post by Clay Shirky. The takeaway message is that news is still important, but newspapers (and the organizations required to practice traditional journalism) are obsolete. Shirky says:


Often, defenders of newspapers say it is the local paper that must be preserved. I disagree. I believe there is a very important factor that isn't getting considered in this conversation, even by those, like Shirky, that are willing to let go of traditional models.

Traditional journalism is a fundamentally exploitative industry: it uses the stories of others for financial gain. The terms of the debate about the future of the news have been too kind to the newspaper industry. Too often, the papers have been depicted in an overly altruistic light, where the world would face disastrous consequences without the knowledge unearthed by crusading reporters. Fundamentally, however, the newspaper’s business model is to extract information from a person or community and sell that information to other people for a profit. That profit is never returned to the source of the information. Indeed, paying for information is looked down upon, a practice only fit for the pictures of celebrity babies.

Information is a resource like any other - with the one giant exception that information is a resource that disadvantaged populations have plenty of. So taking away the stories of a low wealth community, for instance, in order for a publisher to turn a profit is especially hurtful. In an information economy, stories are a potential source of both fiscal and social capital. As the arbiter of community storytelling, traditional journalism business models deny opportunities for communities to develop capital from their own information resources. It is for this reason and no other that newspapers, both local and national, should die a quick death, not because newspapers operate in an outdated model. The latter fact is merely a happy coincidence that is also an opportunity to re-think storytelling in the information age.

I can think of only one instance where paid journalists are necessary, and that is the realm of investigative journalism, a realm where the subjects involved are actively trying obscure a storyline that needs to be told for the greater well-being of others, e.g. the New York Times’ uncovering of Bush’s domestic wiretapping program, or the Washington Post’s reports on the mistreatement of veterans at the Walter Reed hospital. This kind of reporting takes training and resources above and beyond what could be accomplished in a community media framework. That said, one can imagine the difference between the Post articles and what a wikumentary by the soldiers themselves could have looked like!

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