Have we missed the point about the demise of journalism?

Posted on | May 20, 2010 | No Comments

There is a lot of talk, globally, about why journalism is in the state it is.

Some point a finger at politics, others culture, others economics and many say WWW!

So what is it?

How do we even begin to think about the change that is happening in our communication landscape?

I point you to Robert McChesney and John Nichols.

Robert McChesney and John Nichols, who have co-authored four books on the subject. Their latest, The Death and Life of American Journalism, offers a brisk eulogy for the corporate media system, a dismissal of the Internet’s power to revive it, and a call for what they see as a return to government-supported U.S. media. The stakes for American democracy are too high to leave to a “free market” that no longer wants to invest in journalism, McChesney and Nichols argue. If Americans really want public-interest journalism to survive in the 21st century, they must financially support it—to the tune of $35 billion annually, which they note is close to what some European nations spend on media subsidies on a per capita basis.

Maybe they are on to something?

How are we linking news and information to public interest?

Maybe the current media/communication model is wrong?

Maybe the need to hyper localize and pull support from the state is a reality that needs to be re-visited?

Maybe it is not about converging interests and means of distribution but divergence and aggregation?

The Dubai School of Government and Dubai Municipality have begun these very conversation in terms of one aspect of the revised media landscape, social media.

What is clear is there need to be community conversations that look at all sides of this rubiks cube and explore the permutations that work for us here and now regardless of what is going on in other parts of the world contingent on another set of circumstances.