Who Will Pay the Messengers?

by Adam | November 13, 2009 | KLAMP | 2 Comments

Lawrence Grossman – Digital Promise Project

Creative Destruction – following up on Paul Bass’s presentation from the last panel

We have heard about the trouble that the news industry is in, the fact of the matter is that we are living through the creative destruction of a $50 billion industry.

The Web is killing off the news media of the 20th industry. Every single monopoly newspapers is in serious financial trouble – not to mention the major news magazine and network television news.

Even the normally wealthy Forbes, Fortune, and Business Week are suffering.

This is evidence of capitalism’s propensity for creative destruction.

Presidential Election, Michael Jackson’s Death, and Shooting spree in Fort Hood. Once the videos are seen, the viewers do not go back to the old media forms.

Six grandchildren from ages 18-28 and never seen any of them read a newspaper in print, let alone purchase a newspaper in print.

Perhaps the most intriguing statistic of the day – for the first time, the annual survey from the Society for the Protection of Journalists – demonstrated that the largest single group of imprisoned journalists was Internet journalists.

We should stop trying to save “old” media. It is dead and it isn’t coming back. So how do we ensure that the new journalism will flourish?

And regardless, we are not looking for a return to the days of party-controlled journalism or Father Coughlin-style radio reporting (think Lou Dobbs but rabid anti-semitism that made Dobb’s xenophobia look like niceties)

Reconstruction of American Journalism Report – focus on local news coverage will require a big increase in funding from Congress. But this is neither a practical or realistic solution. The lack of funding is pathetic and not even close and the high budget deficits make it next to impossible to imagine additional funding for public broadcasting.

Although weak, there are interesting entittes, like the New Haven Independent and the Chicago News Cooperative. But perhaps the pooling of resources that so many papers are engaging in will provide a model for the future.

But the biggest impetus for expansion will come from the new digital technologies themselves.

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