The early Spring of 2009 is feeling like something of a turning point in the development of 21st century journalism. Jon Stewart was hailed by many as a latter-day Edward R Murrow for calling bullshit on CNBC, and the practice of business journalism generally, as the US and global economy careened into its present crisis. A few days later, Clay Shirky posted Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, a thoughtful analysis on where we are currently with regard to newspapers and the internet, which set many tongues tweeting. (His conclusion? We’re living in 1500.) Meanwhile, the recession is hastening in a matter of months what the internet started two decades ago, putting journalists out of work and either closing newspapers or forcing them into online-only operations.
All of this has coincided with a module I teach on media economics, and specifically that part of the unit where we look at precisely the issues addressed in Shirky’s piece. The last time I taught this unit, in 2007, the students merely tolerated the section on newspapers, finding it difficult to engage with compared to the sections on the music, film and TV industries. Who can blame them? To the average 22 year old, a newspaper is something their parents might use, like hair dye or an orthopaedic girdle. But now, in 2009, the carnage in the newspaper industry is such that the students are transfixed, and eager to attain a grasp of the underlying dynamics.
The issue is where the economics of the crisis in newspapers affects the quality or otherwise of the journalism available to the citizenry. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Media economics, Journalism, bbc, newspapers, clay shirky, web, corporate media, jon stewart, cnbc, jim kramer, yochai benkler, robert w mcchesney, talking points memo, sunlight foundation, guardian, api
