10/9/2010 The Journalists Formerly Known as th…

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Jay Rosen: Public Notebook

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September 6, 2010 The Journalists Formerly Known as the Media: My Viewed 15277 times
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Advice to the Next Generation
This is adapted and expanded from the Inaugural Lecture I gave to the incoming class at
Sciences Po école du journalisme in Paris, Septemb er 2, 2010: their first day. You can find
reports on the speech in English here; in French here and here (with some video.) It was
given to French students, b ut it is really intended for anyone studying journalism today, or
attempting to re-learn it.

Typically when people like me—a professor of journalism who is deeply involved in the
digital world—advise people like you—students just starting their careers in journalism—
we say to you things like:

You need to be blogging.

You need to understand search engines.

You need to know Flash and perhaps HTML5.

You need to grasp web metrics like Google analytics.

You need to know how to record audio or edit video

You need to “get” mobile. ("Mobile is going to be big!")

And all of those things are true. They are all important. But I want to go in a completely
different direction today. Ready? You need to understand that the way you imagine the users
will determine how useful a journalist you will be.

A shift in power

It turns out that the original title I gave myself, The People Formerly Known as the Audience
and the Audience Properly Known as the Pub lic, is a problem, because the word for “public”
in French is the same as the word for “audience.” We have to work around that. And to help
I have a clip from a movie I want to show you. It’s from the 1976 film Network, which is about
a crazed television newsman named Howard Beale who begins to act out his craziness on
the air. This is probably the most famous scene in the film. (It takes five minutes to watch.)

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What is this scene “about?” In my reading of it, the filmmakers are showing us what the
mass audience was: a particular way of arranging and connecting people in space. Viewers
are connected “up” to the big spectacle, but they are disconnected from one another. Or to
use the term I have favored, they are "atomized." (See Audience Atomization Overcome.) But
Howard Beale does what no television person ever does: he uses television to tell its
viewers to stop watching television.

When they disconnect from TV and go to their windows, they are turning away from Big
Media and turning toward one another. And as their shouts echo across an empty public
square they discover just how many other people had been "out there," watching television
in atomized simultaneity, instead of doing something about the inarticulate rage that Beale
put into words. (“I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the
Russians and the crime in the streets. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad!”)

The reason I showed you this clip is that it makes vivid for us a great event we are living
through today: the breakup of the atomized "mass" audience and a shift in power that goes
with it. What would happen today if someone on television did what Howard Beale
did? Immediately people who happened to be watching would alert their followers on
Twitter. Someone would post a clip the same day on YouTube. The social networks would
light up before the incident was over. Bloggers would be commenting on it well before
professional critics had their chance. The media world today is a shifted space. People are
connected horizontally to one another as effectively as they are connected up to Big Media;
and they have the powers of production in their hands.

The public becomes thinkable

This kind of shift has happened before. And now I want to take you back 250 years, to events
in France and England that gave birth to the modern public.

Before there was a public that could be informed by the press, before there was anything
like “public opinion,” before there was any political journalism at all, politics was considered
the king's business, le secret du roi. It was owned and operated by the king, and secrecy
about everything that happened in government was the normal state of things. There was
publicity too, but not about what was actually happening in the halls of power. In the words
of Jürgen Habermas, it was “publicity that is staged for show or manipulation,” rituals in
which the majesty of the crown and the glory of the nation could be vivified or put on
display. Absolutism gave ownership of politics to the crown; and that included virtually all
information about affairs of state.

In 1764, for example, the King of France ruled it illegal to print or sell or peddle on the street
anything about the reform of state finances—past, present or future. It’s not only that there
was no freedom of the press. That was true, but more than that: The king’s mystery was not
considered the people’s business. The whole idea that the affairs of the nation belonged to
the people of that nation had yet to be accepted. Without an idea like that (today we would
call it "the public’s right to know...") the very practice of journalism is impossible—in fact,
unthinkable.

But by 1781 Jacques Necker, finance minister to the King of France, had published the first

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ever public record of the state’s finances, the Compte rendu. Three thousands copies were
sold on the first day. Most historians say he failed to give a true picture of how deeply the
crown was in debt, and that he hid the cost of borrowing. But simply by publishing the
Compte rendu Necker helped to raise the curtain on a new idea: public confidence required
transparency. Public opinion could not be ignored. There was a public "out there," and even
princes had to appeal to it.

So what happened between 1764 and 1781? The answer to that is complex and worth a
book in itself. Fortunately we have one: Jurgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the
Pub lic Sphere. Here I will simply list some of the factors responsible for the shift:

* The growth and spread of printing, which was bound up with the market for printed books.
This meant, for example, that what was illegal to print or sell in France could be published
in Holland and smuggled in.

* The rise of the periodical press. Newspapers and pamphlets—some legal and
restrained, some clandestine and unrestrained in their rhetoric—spread the concept of
public discussion of public affairs. This was difficult to contain.

* Closely related to that were the literary salons in which discussion of what was read
became normal, providing a template for public opinion as commentary on what is in the
press. (In England this role was played by taverns and coffee houses.)

* The emergence of international capitalism, which created what Habermas called the
“carrier class” for the public sphere, the literate bourgeoise: merchants, traders and
businessman who were not impressed by “publicity staged for show or manipulation,” but
who might buy French debt if they were persuaded that the government could repay it on
time. Necker no doubt had these people in mind when he published his record of state
finances, and when he called public opinion “an invisible power that, without treasury,
guard, or army, gives its laws to the city, the court, and even the palace of kings.”

* The spread of enlightenment ideas, in which reason was supposed to be sovereign, not
the king and his court. Public opinion, when it was praised by people like Necker, meant
reasoned, settled opinion, not the violent swings in mood that frightened so many
aristocrats.

* The search for other sources of authority beyond divine right and despotism. Necker
worked for the King of France. He was trying to find a way to reform and legitimate the
continued authority of the crown as it came under increasing attack in the last decades of
the ancien régime. That is why he called public opinion a “tribunal,” and said “princes
themselves [must] respect it.”

This complex shift from one constellation of ideas to another was put into words by the
historian Keith Michael Baker: “From the public person of the sovereign to the sovereign
person of the public.” Something like that has to happen before journalism can even be
conceived. In fact the rise of the periodical press, the emergence of the public as an actor in
politics, and the power of public opinion such that even princes have to respect it, are not so
much parallel developments as three aspects of the same event. Together, they made
modern journalism thinkable.

The people out of doors

In England during the same period, a similar event occurs. If we could listen in on
Parliament in 1750 we might hear a phrase in common use then, “the people indoors.” It
referred to the members of Parliament themselves when they were gathered in session. In
what way did this small and elite group represent “the” people of England? Not through
popular election; that didn’t really happen until the next century. Parliament thought of itself
as the people because the King had to consult with Parliament and when he did he was
consulting with the whole nation.

This was a fiction, of course, but it was the ruling fiction at the time. “The people indoors”
were quite aware that they were not representative of the whole population. That is why they
also referred to the people “out of doors,” another phrase in use at the time. This meant
everybody else. The king didn’t have to consult with them. Nor did the people out of doors

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enjoy freedom of speech or freedom of the press. In fact, it was illegal to publish what was
said in Parliament or to attack the King in print.

For the “people indoors,” freedom of speech was protected within the halls of Parliament
itself. A member could call the king's policies foolish and not be held to account, whereas a
printer who put that sentiment in a pamphlet could be arrested the next day. I am not going
to go into the whole story, which involves the printer and politician John Wilkes and the right
to report on debates in Parliament (established in 1771.) Suffice it to say that in England,
too, politics as the exclusive possession of the king, his ministers and Parliament gave way
to a much more open system, in which the newspapers could report on what was
happening, a literate public could discuss it and public opinion could form.

Ignoring the public became harder, gestures toward transparency more common. Rights
fundamental to the practice of journalism—politics as the people’s business, freedom of
speech and of the press, the right to record what was said in Parliament and publish it in
the newspapers—began to be established, though it took a long time for them to be
secured. The people out of doors grew up and became the public, the one that has a right
to know. These things have to happen before there can be a profession of journalism worth
joining. That is why I am telling you about them.

The engineering of opinion

I am conducting this tour at the level of ideas. But one could also say ideals. The all-
inclusive public that is fully informed about what is happening… and argues about it in
public settings…. so as to form an independent and reasoned opinion… which is then
listened to by the people in power… this has never been a description of how public life in a
competitive democracy actually works. The fight has been to make it truer and truer for more
and more people. That fight goes on. When we compare the reality to the picture, we can tell
where we are, and perhaps where we need to go.

Meanwhile, there are endless complications to weigh. For example, the same tools that
make an informed public possible allow for manipulation and propaganda on a national
scale. As we enter the modern age this becomes very obvious. Let’s jump ahead to Paris
in 1919 and the Peace Conference that ended World War I. Something new was seen at
Paris. At previous international conferences intended to conclude wars and settle borders,
the diplomats would negotiate in secret and emerge weeks later with a result which was
then conveyed to the home countries as a more or less finished product. In Paris a new
pattern was seen. The American delegation was accompanied by over 150 newspaper
correspondents. They shocked the diplomats by demanding entrance to the opening
session.

Even when their demands were resisted, the reporters were a factor in the event. Word of
what was being proposed by one country or discussed by several would find its way to the
correspondents, who would put it into their dispatches, which were then telegraphed to the
home country to be published the next day in the newspapers. Over the same wires (but
traveling the other way) came word of public reaction once the news was published. This
increased the pressure on the statesmen in Paris, who in Britain, France and the United
States (the victors) had to face the future prospect of elections and no-confidence
votes. Just imagine how simple it would be for the editor of a tabloid newspaper to take
fragmentary word of what was being discussed in Paris and use it to sell papers in London.
As public opinion becomes more powerful, the incentives to engineer it also grow.

In the twentieth century we have the rise of the modern mass media—cinema, radio,
television, followed by cable—all of them huge industries that are intimately connected to
state power. So much so that the way you make a revolution in the twentieth century is not by
storming the king's castle but by taking over the broadcasting tower. The idea of the
informed public and public opinion as the final court of appeal never got extinguished, but it
had to compete with a related formation: the mass audience and the business of appealing
to that.

The journalists formerly known as the media

But today the mass audience is breaking up. This makes new things thinkab le. And that’s

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why I wrote my 2006 post, the People Formerly Known as the Audience:

The people formerly known as the audience wish to inform media people of our
existence, and of a shift in power that goes with the platform shift you’ve all heard
about. Think of passengers on your ship who got a boat of their own. The writing
readers. The viewers who picked up a camera. The formerly atomized listeners who
with modest effort can connect with each other and gain the means to speak— to the
world, as it were.

Today I want to introduce a companion idea. Because the people formerly known as the
audience have arrived, the journalists formerly known as “the media” are here, too. And this
is what you—the next generation of professional journalists—have a chance to define for
the rest of us. The digital revolution changes the equation. It brings forward a new balance
of forces, putting the tools of production and the powers of distribution in the hands of the
people formerly known as the audience. And so you have the opportunity to become the
journalists formerly known as the media, carrier class for a new understanding of the
people “out there” on the receiving end of what journalists make. I say “new,” but it is really
just another chapter in the long struggle to make good on the idea of a public that knows
what is happening because it pays attention, informs itself and argues about what should
be done.

Let me try to sharpen what I mean by “the journalists formerly known as the media” by
calling on one of my favorite lines in all of media studies. They originate with Raymond
Williams (1921-1988) a writer and sociologist in the U.K. who was well known for his
studies of mass media. “There are no masses, “ Williams wrote in 1958, “there are only
ways of seeing people as masses.” To illustrate, Williams compared the way local
newspapers addressed their readers—as inhabitants of a common world of homes,
schools, jobs, streets they walked, politics they could participate in—to the way those same
readers were addressed by the mass circulation dailies and tabloids that sell throughout
the U.K.

Seeing people as masses is the art in which the mass media, and professional media
people, specialized during their profitable 150-year run (1850 to 2000). But now we can see
that this was actually an interval, a phase, during which the tools for reaching the public
were placed in increasingly concentrated hands. Professional journalism, which dates from
the 1920s, has lived its entire life during this phase, but let me say it again: this is what your
generation has a chance to break free from. The journalists formerly known as the media
can make the break by learning to specialize in a different art: seeing people as a public,
empowered to make media themselves.

My advice...

Now I will explain what this phrase—seeing people as a public—means to journalists for
your generation. Here are some of its implications.

1. Replace readers, viewers, listeners and consumers with the term “users.” What do
we call the people on the other end of the journalism transaction? My suggestion is to be
less platform-centric; rather than naming them for the tool you are using to reach them, just
call them the users, a term I borrowed from the way Dave Winer employs it. Users is a
more active identity, it works for all platforms, and as I said earlier: the way you imagine the
users will determine how useful a journalist you will be.

2. Remember: the users know more than you do. I adapted this from Dan Gillmor's
famous declaration: "My readers know more than I do." It means that, in the aggregate, the
people on the receiving end have more knowledge, more contacts, more experience and
more good ideas than a single journalist can ever have. This was always true, it was true in
the 1950s, but the Internet allows those people-—the ones who know more than you do—to
actually reach (and teach) you with that knowledge. Look at it this way: The most valuable
thing the New York Times owns is its name and reputation. The second most valuable thing
it has: the talent and experience of its staff. The third most valuable thing the Times "owns"
is the knowledge and sophistication of its users. And if it cannot find a way to get some of
that flowing in, so as to improve the editorial product, then it will have failed to capitalize on
an immense strategic advantage. And I am convinced the editors of the Times know this.

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3: There’s been a power shift; the mutualization of journalism is here. This is Alan
Rusbridger's idea: "the mutualised news organization." He's the editor of The Guardian in
the U.K. What he means is...

We bring important things to the table – editing; reporting; areas of expertise; access;
a title, or brand, that people trust; ethical professional standards and an extremely
large community of readers. The members of that community could not hope to aspire
to anything like that audience or reach on their own; they bring us a rich diversity,
specialist expertise and on the ground reporting that we couldn't possibly hope to
achieve without including them in what we do.

We bring important things to the table, and so do the users. Therefore we include them.
"Seeing people as a public" means that.

4: Describe the world in a way that helps people participate in it. When people
participate, they seek out information. Information providers would do well to recognize this
connection. As I told The Economist:

My own view is that journalists should describe the world in a way that helps us
participate in political life. That is what they are "for". But too often they position us as
savvy analysts of a scene we are encouraged to view from a certain distance, as if we
were spectators to our own democracy, or clever manipulators of our fellow citizens.
Weird, isn't it?

As a writer for The Economist said after this was published: "Perhaps 'political' is
unnecessarily limiting. More generally, it is the job of journalists to describe the world in a
way that helps us participate in all life—political, local, civic, cultural, etc." Correct.

5: Anyone can doesn’t mean everyone will. Students of social media and behavior on the
Net are highly aware of the one percent rule, which has been observed in a wide variety of
online settings:

It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people
online then one will create content, 10 will 'interact' with it (commenting or offering
improvements) and the other 89 will just view it... So what's the conclusion? Only that
you shouldn't expect too much online. Certainly, to echo Field of Dreams, if you build it,
they will come. The trouble, as in real life, is finding the builders.

My way of putting this is, "anyone can doesn't mean everyone will." But the fact that "anyone
can" is still important because you can never predict who will accept your invitation. Knowing
this rule helps us keep our expectations in check. Seeing people as a public doesn't mean
deluding ourselves about what they are willing to do. It's important to neither under-estimate
nor over-estimate what the people formerly known as the audience are up for.

6: The journalist is just a heightened case of an informed citizen, not a special class.
Journalism isn't like brain surgery, or piloting a Boeing 747. A professional journalist knows
how to get information, ask questions, tell stories and connect isolated facts. These are not
esoteric or specialized skills, just heightened versions of things any smart citizen should be
able to do. We see this most clearly when citizens have a chance to substitute for reporters
and ask questions of candidates during debates. They generally do as well as or better
than professional journalists. That is a clue.

7: Your authority starts with, “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” If "anyone"
can produce media and share it with the world, what makes the pro journalist special, or
worth listening to? Not the press card, not the by-line, not the fact of employment by a major
media company. None of that. The most reliable source of authority for a professional
journalist will continue to be what James W. Carey called "the idea of a report." That's when
you can truthfully say to the users, "I'm there, you're not, let me tell you about it." Or, "I was at
the demonstration, you weren't, let me tell you how the cops behaved." Or, altering my
formula slightly, "I interviewed the workers who were on that oil drilling platform when it
exploded, you didn't, let me tell you what they said." Or, "I reviewed those documents, you
didn't, let me tell you what I found." Your authority begins when you do the work. If an
amateur or a blogger does the work, the same authority is earned. Seeing people as a

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public means granting that without rancor.

8: Somehow, you need to listen to demand and give people what they have no way to
demand. The Web effortlessly records what people do with it. Therefore it is easy to
measure user behavior: what people are interested in, what they are searching for, clicking
on, turning to... right now. What should a smart journalists do with this "live" information? I
just told you: you should listen to demand, b ut also give people what they have no way to
demand because they don't know about it yet. In fact, there is a relationship between these
things. The better you are at listening to demand, the more likely it is that the users will
listen to you when you demand of them: pay attention! You may not think this is important or
interesting, but trust me... it matters. Or: "This is good." Ignoring what the users want is
dumb in one way; editing by click rate is dumb in a different way. Respect for the users lies
in between these two. Get it?

9: In your bid to be trusted, don’t take the View From Nowhere; instead, tell people where
you’re coming from. Treating people as a public means refusing to float "above" them.
Instead of claiming that you have no view, no stake, no perspective, no (sorry for the
academic term) situated self, try to level with the users and let them know where you are
coming from. As David Weinberger puts it. "transparency is the new objectivity." You may
find that trust is easier to negotiate if you don't claim the View from Nowhere, but instead tell
them where you're coming from. (Here's my attempt to do exactly that as a critic.)

10: Breathe deeply of what DeTocqueville said: “Newspapers make associations and
associations make newspapers.” Alexis De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, visited the United
States in the 1830s. Among the observations he made was: "newspapers make
associations and associations make newspapers." What I think he meant was: wherever
people have a common interest and wish to discuss it, there lies an opportunity for a smart
journalist. Today one of the things that is fast changing our world is the falling cost for like
minded people--people who share the same interest, problem or fascination--to locate
each other, share information, pool what they know, and publish back to the world the
results of their interactions. The Net makes this act increasingly common. For example,
people with a health problem that medical science has been unable to treat will find each
other over the Net and begin to discuss their condition. They're an association. Smart
journalists will pick up on this and realize: there's a story there. Want to be useful online?
Find a previously atomized group that shares a common interest and create a space for
their association.

I conclude: The struggle to make the fiction of an informed and engaged public more factual
—that is, realer—continues on. When technology and markets change, new things become
thinkable within that struggle. And so journalism itself has graduated to the next stage of its
development. Bonne chance!

Comments (21)

Sep 07, 2010 Mike Ewing said...

An excellent overview of the past, present, and future of the media. And as a young
journalist, I can tell you that we're all on board 110%-- after all, we "Milennials" are children
of the Internet age. Interactivity, connectivity, and utility are our bread and butter when it
comes to the information that we consume, let alone produce as journalists.

But I can also tell you that the best young journalists I know are leaving the "professional"
media in droves. Amidst so many layoffs, experienced journalists are settling for lower-level
jobs, and others are working as freelancers. Good luck breaking into the "media" at all, or
even trying to be "entrepreneurial" when people with more experience and professional
reputation are trying to do the same exact thing.

How do we convince the "public" that paying for "professional" journalists is a worthwhile
investment in their community?

Sep 07, 2010 Anna Tarkov said...

Mike, I don't know if @jayrosen_nyu will reply, but I share your frustrations and at 30, I'm not
even that young. I think that a lot of the problems stem from the fact that many media
organizations are huge, swollen conglomerates, much the way that, say, the Detroit

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automakers were. Some are similarly encumbered by unions (and there's nothing wrong
with unions inherently, but they make change excruciatingly slow). Some are having difficulty
making even the most basic technological changes, and on and on. I think we are also all
well aware of the difficulty with monetizing content online. This is still a puzzle that is slowly
being put together. We also still have people making HUGE salaries at media companies,
both in the newsroom and outside of it. The industry has had it so good for so long that
these companies just don't know or don't care to run a lean operation, to really analyze if
they're getting the most from each dollar, etc.
Sep 07, 2010 Jay Rosen said...

Dear Mike: If I had a solution to the business model crisis in journalism, I assure you, I
would have made my speech about that. I'm sorry, but I don't. This remains an unsolved
problem. Simply persuading people to pay is not enough of a solution; there is also the
problem of adding more value so that the product is worth paying for. The results of many
decades of complacency and under-investment are being felt today, especially in the
newspaper business.

But I still believe there are opportunities for young people, despite the trends you cite.
Please don't get discouraged.

Sep 07, 2010 SJ said...

Perhaps professional journalists can find their niche in in-depth investigative reporting.
Despite all the virtues of citizen journalism, not many ordinary citizens have the commitment
and resources to engage in investigative journalism that often requires institutional support
and monetary resources. Readers (Sorry, I mean, "Users") would be willing to pay for such
in-depth investigative journalism.
Sep 07, 2010 Stephen Feller said...

I can think of more than a few people who work for or run news companies that would
benefit hugely by reading this.
Sep 07, 2010Leave a comment...

markpoepsel said... Sep 07, 2010

SJ - I wish that I could find something to back up the claim that investigative journalism
garners user investment.

markpoepsel said... Sep 07, 2010

Perhaps if it were considered part of the infrastructure of Democracy you could get public
funding for it (McChesney).

markpoepsel said... Sep 07, 2010

Also we've got a collective action problem-to produce a public good. Maybe we could add
value by adding convenience.

markpoepsel said... Sep 07, 2010

But then it's no longer a public good in the strictest sense. It's more of a "club good"
because access is restricted.

markpoepsel said... Sep 07, 2010

Anyway, ideas welcome - markpoepsel at gmail.

Sandra_Sully said... Sep 08, 2010

Good piece on Journalism and the road ahead

Jay Rosen said... Sep 08, 2010

I thought I would point out here the passage I see as the most important in this piece. In a
sense I wrote the whole thing so as to say this...

Seeing people as masses is the art in which the mass media, and professional media
people, specialized during their profitable 150-year run (1850 to 2000). But now we can see
that this was actually an interval, a phase, during which the tools for reaching the public
were placed in increasingly concentrated hands. Professional journalism, which dates from
the 1920s, has lived its entire life during this phase, b ut let me say it again: this is what your
generation has a chance to b reak free from. The journalists formerly known as the media
can make the break by learning to specialize in a different art: seeing people as a public,

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empowered to make media themselves.

I added the italics.

Mike Ewing said... Sep 08, 2010

Jay & Everyone else-

Great insights, and believe me, I'm not expecting a fix to the whole industry to come anytime
soon. And I'm definitely not discouraged. I'm currently working at Chicago's public access
network (CAN TV) as an Americorps VISTA, and I think that the community media folks have
been working with empowered citizens/media-makers for decades. From my experience
here it seems like their strengths (and weaknesses) are very complimentary to those of
traditional media.

For community media, their strength is working WITH ordinary citizens to help them be a
part of the media and to DO IT WELL. Their weakness is that of their platform- as with all
nonprofits, their focus is on serving the people, not on developing compelling content.
Compare that with "traditional" media, whose strength has always been that of the platform
(although that's taking a hit) and they've been very bad at engaging the public beyond
"Letters to the Editor."

So does working with an empowered public mean bringing them into the fold, like they
already do in community media, and not just taking their content and selling it for free, but
actually INVESTING in users need to be a part of every "media" organization? I'm beginning
to think so.

tkatsumi06j said... Sep 08, 2010

Great. At least I know I've translated the right portion of your post!

BrutlYuth said... Sep 10, 2010

I want to address #8 on your list of advice regarding demand ("give people what they have
no way to demand") with a memorable quote I got while interviewing Garth Ennis, one of the
most creative comic writers working today: "Don't give the readers what they want, give them
what they don't know they want."

It's the writers job to keep users engaged with the material. Over the years this quote has
stuck with me, especially as many retreat to networks/sites/publications that reinforce their
views as opposed to challenge them.

It's not easy to make everything engaging. It takes a lot of thought, effort and ingenuity, but
it's possible. The flip side is once the non-demanded story gains traction, and people
demand more of it, the vultures will descend and pick it to pieces. But by then you'll be on to
your next scoop. (Yes, I said scoop. I'm feeling old timey. And Network is my favorite movie. I
love the quote: "You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are
unreal." Paddy C. was a genius.)

Glen Frost said... Sep 10, 2010

Jay; a wonderful presentation. For your younger journalism students it may be worth
mentioning that every industry goes through it's own "paradigm shift" at some stage. The
workers in the telecom sector have recently moved from state owned analogue monoploies
to competitive IP-based networks; the energy sector is moving from coal to renewable; all
face massive changes to the business model from new technology, and most importantly
for "the workers" is that their skill-set needs updating or they are unemployable. The internet
is doing this to Journalism and news.
The internet has already "disintermediated" various sectors - we buy books online, so
bookshops have been disintermediated. The web is disintermediating traditional media.
The Economist would probably say the increased competition in the media sector from
"new media" and bloggers -including the better technology for delivering news to
consumers any time, any place, any platform is a good thing, because you can serve your
customers better - and that's they key in business. The "consumers" of news today are
better educated than their parents and grandparents so require better quality news and
analysis (hence rising sales for The Economist, falling sales for tabloids), consumers own
and use technology, so compete with Journalists as bloggers - and this will increase. The
key messages for Journalism students are therefore:

1. You are entering a pool of commentators/writers/bloggers that is growing at a massive

rate; think about how you can stand out from the crowd.
2. Therefore, your biggest opportunity is to start your own online publication and take a
business/marketing course along with Journalism so you'll know how to market "you" - you

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will need to be a brand, with followers
3. Journalists need to be experts in their field; simply running with a PR release and getting
two differing opinions is no good; your readers know more than you, and to expect them to
pay (or to attract advertising) for your copy means you'll have to deliver something they don't
know.
4. Newspapers and other traditional media are already recruiting bloggers and trying to
work out how to incorporate blogger content into the online mastheads, but so are
companies, who are looking to engage in "blogger outreach" programs... nowyou
candisintermediate the person formerly known as The Publisher and disintermediate the
person formerly known as The Editor. You, the media

yongle said... Sep 10, 2010

I LOL when I consider that newspapers are trying (in 2010) to "incorporate" new media. As a
Rural Press hack in the early 2000s we had no access to the internet - only the editor was
allowed access. AND all emails came thru (his) machine. We could not open attachments
and were basically living in a digital-rationed police state. NOW they want to incorporate new
media - but that window of opportunity has passed by...
Jay Rosen said... Sep 10, 2010
I'm advising a newspaper company that, at the point new management took over a year ago
and made sweeping changes, was working with some Windows95 machines. Many
editorial workers had no access to the Internet. They couldn't get email at work, etc. There
was no training budget, either. That's why this post is about journalism, not newspapers.
Glen Frost said... Sep 10, 2010
Interesting. I pitched a proposal to an Australian media company that involved a start-up
with one of their staff and some external investors. They didn't go for it, which is a shame as
many Journalists have lots of great content ideas - and I feel are held back by the old style,
and usually older, management attitudes. And eventually the good journalists will leave to
start their own businesses; better for the traditional media to have 50% of something than
100% of nothing... how many other opportunities have they missed? If I was a shareholder
I'd be asking this question at the AGM. Too many Directors just coasting along perhaps?
Chris Spurlock said... Sep 10, 2010
Jay, thanks for the great post.

If anyone is interested in reading the thoughts of a young student-journalist, I wrote a blog in

response to this post. You can check it out here: http://bit.ly/dk34hD

Your thoughts and comments are appreciated.

WilliamCB said...

I think the things you're interested in actually happened almost a hundred years earlier in
England. During the civil way in the middle of the 1600s there was a period when a free
press was tolerated by the government, and fully taken advantage of. There were systematic
reports of proceedings in Parliament, the first newspaper (or more accurately, subscription
newsletter), wild comment in pamphlets that like todays blogs pushed their opinions to
extremes to win readers. Clearly the horizontal connections were there because
underground churches like the Quakers crystallised rapidly, as did social movements.
Indeed, the war was arguably between two groups of the upper classes who disagreed over
the best way of keeping the tumult under control.

So I'm not saying the 1700s and what happened then weren't important, and different. I just
can't see anything in what you think is important in France in the 1700s that wasn't there in
England in the 1600s - before censorship was reimposed.

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