The roles of journalism and journalists

Diego Sorbara
Where are journalism and journalists headed?
Despite the new avenues that the Internet and other emerging media have opened, the course of journalism is steady. Take a look at what the mission of journalists from several decades ago and compare it to the mission of journalists now. From Woodward and Bernstein at the post to the somewhat-dubious Dateline NBC child predator stings, the elegant mission is to inform people more about their world and the dangers therein. The goal is to make a more informed citizenry; this was the ideal from the time of Thomas Jefferson.
What is changing is the way the mission is being undertaken. While most newspapers are discovering declining numbers of subscribers (the News & Observer [Raleigh, N.C.] is a notable exception), the Web presence of those papers is gaining more and more readers; according to a report from the 2006 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman and publisher of The New York Times, said that there are more readers of the Web version of the Times than of the paper version.
And now we are facing a slew of avenues for transmitting news outside the big three: television, newspaper and radio. The Internet has already been maturing, but even more outlets have grown from it.
The largest off-shoot of the Internet as a news vessel is the blog. Etymologically, the beginnings of blogs (in a conventional sense, not blogs as records of requests handled by Web servers) can be traced to the late ‘90s, according to the electronic edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. (See end of post for the OED entry, just for fun.) Beginning mostly as records of day-to-day events, you can find blogs attached to just about any news site. The public editor of the New York Times has his own blog; you can even find a list of mid-Missouri bloggers.
Beyond that, the portability brought about by iPod and other portable audio players has spurred podcasting, a mélange of multimedia to push more information for people on the go. Working better for feature programs, podcasts are popping up not only through newspaper sites but also from radio stations (this includes KBIA’s “Global Journalist” and “Views of the News.”)
And of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But the important question is what this means for journalists. Can a journalist fresh out of school make it in the industry having the skills to just write a story for the print product? Can a designer make it just knowing how to design for print? Harvey Remer, the copy desk chief of The Hartford Courant is wary: “Think about what newspapers and other media might look like 20 years from now and make sure you have the skills to be a desirable employee. Or switch careers altogether. I don't suggest these things lightly. I think newspapers are definitely dying and aren't likely to come back even if the economy does.” However, Adam Sapiro, a copy editor at The Courant, makes a case for emerging technology as the future: “I've been arguing here that we need to start doing a lot more online, with the goal of going paperless in 5 or 10 years. I think we should eventually go paperless all but two days a week (Thursday and Sunday, the biggest days for the ad circulars) and pour some of the savings back into CONTENT (all the reporters and columnists we've lost over the years). We should charge subscribers the same amount as the actual paper, supply them with a computer if they don't have one (like the cable companies supply boxes for a fee), make the interface user-friendly and the content easily printable (like with eMprint), and boost local coverage (and keep it updated). Then, down the road, if it's working, we should go paperless seven days a week. I'm glad you kids are on the case. The news business won't die, but newspapers will if they keep getting rid of reporters and columnists to cut costs. The content is the most valuable thing we have to offer.”
So the new purpose for journalists is to fuel the changing media. Like Downie explains, making new online news outlets is, for now, doomed to failure (with examples of the Motley Fool and Slate). And in fact, most sites are still relying on conventional Associated Press reports for breaking news. What is happening, though, is a natural evolution in the world of news, where news starts adapting to new technology. Rather than journalists forcing the evolution unnaturally, journalists should instead being gaining the skill sets as they become necessary.
It’s impractical to try and predict what’s next, and it’s impractical to start training journalists in school on what will, at the pace we’re going, become obsolete. Instead, journalists should maintain their roles and transfer the skills of newsgathering from print to the next big leap in media. The role of a journalist, to present the news and put it in context, will never change. If the role somehow does change, we won’t have journalists anymore. What is changing is the way the message is conveyed. There is where attention has to be focused.

OED Blog Entry:

A frequently updated web site consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary.

1997 J. BARGER Lively New Webpage in alt.culture.www (Usenet newsgroup) 23 Dec., I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis:..www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblog.html. This will cover any and everything that interests me, from net culture to politics to literature etc. 1998 Village Voice (N.Y.) 8 Sept. 33/3 Jorn Barger's Robot Wisdom WebLog..might not be pretty, but it's one of the best collections of news and musings culled from the Weband updated daily. 2000 Independent 23 Oct. II. 9/1 A weblog is simply a site where you post your thoughts whenever the muse strikes. 2002 Times (Electronic ed.) 14 Jan., There is a way to be stupendously well informed... Scour the highlights in..weblogs.