8. When you hear people moaning
about the future of
journalism, remember…
• Journalism’s history was mostly like this:
messy, experimental, improvisational and –
quite often – not at all serious.
• People working in mainstream, established
newsrooms often don’t see what’s going on at
the grassroots.
9. Late 20th century was unusual
• Plenty of advertising in print
• So much in 1990s they thought they needn’t
worry about the internet any time soon
• Plenty of advertising in network (terrestrial)
TV
• This produced a stability which persuaded
journalists that they had always worked in a
well-resourced environment
11. • Words + pix
• Reading/watching habits will change because
people are on the move
• Open sourcing
• User/reader’s frame of reference is wider
because of instant comparison
• Data comes alive
News media re-invent where
digital creates news possibilities
12. There’s a pattern here
• Disruption
• …is followed by regeneration
• But not always immediately
• And in the gap between newsrooms close and
jobs are lost
• People always notice the loss before the
regeneration
13. Stop worrying and enjoy digital
• Be clear about what journalism is for
• 4 tasks which still require skill and practice:
– Verification
– Sense-making
– Eye-witness
– Investigation
14. What could still go wrong
• Words are needed for ideas at length
• Local/hyperlocal: very hard
• TV hasn’t yet hit its digital crunch
• Metadata: already very dangerous
(particularly to journalists)
15. Remember what “experiment” means
• Most fail
• What happens is not what is predicted
• Even if it is predicted, it won’t happen on
schedule
• Established companies and organisations are at a
disadvantage
• Experiments produce winners and winners get
bigger
• Look at history: this is what happened in the past
16. What will distinguish winners?
• They have ideas about what journalism is for
• Lean and mean
• They scale carefully
• Pragmatic, flexible and confident with back-end
tech
• Combine aggregation and origination
• They organise for high-quality experiment
• That usually means very good tech back end +
data