Tuesday, November 25, 2008

What's Happening to the News?

What inspires me the most in "Frontline"'s episode of "What's Happening to the News" is the story about the embattled newsroom.

Consolidation is the word. Everyone is talking about it. We have been hearing about it for several years indeed. Smaller companies consolidate to become a big giant media group but the industry is shrinking on the way too. Who are behind all these and who are the ones to blame?

The episode tells the story about that the Los Angeles Times, one of the few only papers still covering major national issues, was told to lay off more reporters. Those big companies who own the papers care only about money, something totally evil and conflict with the original purpose of media to serve the public. Under this kind of pressure, bet who will still be holding the firm stance on the qualities of being an honorable, decent, professional journalist? And who will still be there to uphold the values, ethics and principles of our journalism? In the story, managing editor Dean Baquet of L.A. times was definitely qualified to be such one but the result of his decision not to fire anyone was he himself getting fired indeed.

Definitely, things learned under the tower of ivory are not applicable in a real-world newsroom. Something sounds ridiculous but true.

It is a domino effect. Fewer people equal to lower quality news. And news organizations who choose not to produce any content (websites like google news) are only recycling what has already been published. This leads to fewer news gatekeepers and fewer different points of views. Like we used to expect so much from the digital boom that it would bring more different voices against the mainstream did actually cause marginalization of voices of small papers, radio stations or even local broadcasters. How ironic.

We need a profession. Bloggers may tell us some truth (in some cases) but they are not the people who are going out and knocking on doors and rummaging through records and covering events and so on. They are not trained to do so. Yes, a 12-year-old can put up a video on youtube but that is a media product, not journalism. Journalism is the witnesses of the event and the first draft of history. That is something gained not only by education but experiences throughout years and years of practice.

However, the least respected profession has become even more undervalued these days.

And all they need are just some respects.

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