Misspelling

I dread the day I run out of 'mis' words. If anyone bothers visiting the site with any regularity, you've probably noticed some changes. The grand experiment worked and so, I've decided to clean the place up a bit. Also a new addition to your right, I've included an RSS feed for those who feel compelled to keep up, as we all know I post at a rocket pace, yeah?

Moving on, I was browsing around today and caught a piece on journalism and how it's slowly being killed off by celebrity news, texting, Twitter, and so forth. This got me thinking, is the traditional form of journalism doomed to the same fate as the dinosaur?
In my estimation we're looking at two wholly separate beings here, completely different beasties altogether. Traditional media sources, this being newspapers and the like, are losing ground to the internet among a younger audience, certainly. By most estimations the younger audience drifts towards Google and the like for their news if they are wanting it. A quick search or clicking on the 'News' tab will take you wherever you want.

I saw one educator and former journalist decrying Google for it's use of the 'Fair Use' doctrine in terms of gathering up news articles. But he's over looked one thing that comes to mind immediately. Google is a content distributor, not a publisher nor creator. They don't make it themselves, they disseminate it, much like Wikileaks does with it's information. That's not exactly the purpose of this entry, but it does give one something to think about.

What is the point is that established journalism is much slower to report on things. This is a given. Why buy a newspaper when you can hop online and grab the news for free? It's a good and fair question, I think. Newspapers are feeling the pinch of dropped subscriptions and in turn journalists are feeling it because the paper cannot afford to hire them or to buy their articles freelance. This lack of alacrity to report news is a shortcoming of newspapers, I will grant you. An example of this would be the events in Tunisia recently. The established media was late to the party when people were able to get their information directly from people involved via Twitter and other social networking sites in near real-time. By the time television stations picked up on it, it was all over, and by the time newspapers had gotten wind and journalists had written about it, it was stale news.

We aren't entering into a new age, it's already come upon us and swallowed us whole, it's only now that people are beginning to realize it. The era of real-time guerrilla reporting is here and in full swing. You have a number of people spilling various types of information all over the tubes. Anyone can become a 'journalist' after a fashion, just by publishing stories happening near them in their chosen format. No need to go through a corporate filter influenced by advertising, biased editors, political affiliations and so forth. People can go direct to the source for their information. Journalists can post whatever they'd like, wherever they'd like, whenever they'd like. Further, people like myself are able to add their thoughts and comments without worry.

With everyone shouting into the void, I'll grant you the signal to noise ratio is expanded but in such an environment one can engage the thrill of discovery by finding those certain diamonds in the rough. When found, they are passed around and it becomes a viral affair. I'll grant you that not many would stick around but there are those who do, and so said journalist becomes a source of information for some people. So how do they get paid? Well, that honestly depends on the creativity of the journalist and their wishes. Some could very likely do the bartender thing, establish a following then sell their writing to papers to increase readership, or...Well, I can't give away all of my ideas now, can I?

So given that newspapers and the like have a difficult time keeping up, what role could they possibly have in this age? I think that newspapers can actually use their slower pacing as an advantage. Instead of simply reporting news directly, I believe they can give a contextual basis for the news. Certainly explain an event, but also go more in depth by explaining the links, causality, historical context and even possibly going further, though that is bordering on opinion pieces, which seems to be a dirty word outside of the editorial section. But in reality, what is so dirty about opinion, as long as it's informed, educated and supportable?

Newspapers can take up the position of education as much as information, giving people a reason to learn more about events. After all, just because people are no longer in school does not mean they have to stop learning. Let television and internet take up the mantle of rapidity, let newspapers take on the more philosophical bent and manage the longer view. Being able to sit back and consider a topic for a time can create a richer source of information and further a more informed populace overall.