{{Bloggers, \u201ccrowdsourcing\u201d and computer-generated articles are making contributions to the news media, but they cannot replace professional journalists in digging up important news.}}<\/p>\n
That is the message of a major study released this week by Columbia University\u2019s Tow Centre for Digital Journalism, titled Post-Industrial Journalism.<\/p>\n
The authors of the report said technology has led to an explosion in the amount of information available, with economic shifts which are affecting journalism in both negative and positive ways.<\/p>\n
But in certain kinds of reporting, professional journalists cannot be replaced by machines or crowdsourcing, the study said.<\/p>\n
It is not journalism\u2019s best moment if much key work were taken over by amateurs, or done by machine, the study said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is of great moment is reporting on important and true stories that can change society. The reporting on the Catholic Church\u2019s persistent harbouring of child rapists, Enron\u2019s fraudulent accounting and the scandal over the Justice Department\u2019s Operation Fast and Furious are all such stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
The role of the journalist \u201cas truth-teller, sense-maker, explainer — cannot be reduced to a replaceable input… we need a cadre of full-time workers who report the things someone somewhere doesn\u2019t want reported,\u201d the authors said.<\/p>\n
But because of the changes to the media, the report said the advertising-supported model of newspaper and broadcast journalism may never be the same, and this means news \u201chas to become cheaper to produce.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no way to preserve or restore the shape of journalism as it has been practised for the past 50 years,\u201d said authors C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell and Clay Shirky.<\/p>\n
They said the changes have lead to \u201ca reduction in the quality of news in the United States,\u201d and added: \u201cWe are convinced that journalism in this country will get worse before it gets better, and, in some places (principally midsize and small cities with no daily paper) it will get markedly worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report argued that social media, blogs and \u201ccrowdsourcing\u201d can have a positive influence by generating content not available in the past.<\/p>\n
The authors note that the first reports on the raid killing Osama bin Laden came from a Pakistan IT consultant who tweeted what he witnessed, and that social media provided a more complete view of the Japan 2011 earthquake and tsunami than any individual journalist could provide.<\/p>\n
They also conclude that tech startups like Palantir, Kaggle and Narrative Science which produce news stories from raw data through algorithms are also useful, and can free up professional journalists for other tasks.<\/p>\n
The study said news reporting has always been \u201csubsidized\u201d in some manner, usually by advertising, and that a shift to online news with lower revenues has led to a search for a new model.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American public has never paid full freight for the news gathering done in our name. It has always been underwritten by sources other than the readers, listeners or viewers,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
To make the economics work, the authors suggest flexibility: \u201cIncome can come from advertisers, sponsors, users, donors, patrons or philanthropies; cost reductions can come from partnerships, outsourcing, crowdsourcing or automation. There is no one answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
One development in the media is the emergence of sites like the Huffington Post which maintain content from rival news organizations is \u201cfair use,\u201d which can be taken in some form without payment.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuffPo management realized that fair use, as applied on the Web, meant that, in essence, everything is a wire service and that excerpting and commenting on unique content from The Washington Post or The New York Times was actually more valuable to readers than contracting with the AP or Thomson Reuters,\u201d the study said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Huffington Post has often been criticised for this stance, but this is shooting the messenger — what it did was to understand how existing law and new technology intersected.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study concludes that because readers use a variety of sources, news organisations must therefore find a niche.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a place for careful, detailed analysis… There is a place for impressionistic, long-form looks at the world far away from the daily confusion of breaking news. And so on,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot many organisations, however can pursue more than a few of these modes effectively, and none that can do all of them for all subjects its audience cares about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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