{"id":1046,"date":"2008-06-21T15:45:03","date_gmt":"2008-06-21T14:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1046"},"modified":"2008-06-21T15:48:51","modified_gmt":"2008-06-21T14:48:51","slug":"is-online-journalism-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/06\/is-online-journalism-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Is online journalism better the more local it is, and what does that do to growth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fleet<\/a>T<\/span>his isn’t my question – but it’s what a bunch of trans-continental, anglophone types will be pondering across this month’s Carnival of Journalism<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don’t have a lot of time or interest in geographically-based, local journalism (see Local Schmokel<\/a>). I subscribe to the New Yorker<\/strong><\/em> despite the listings. <\/p>\n

There’s nothing local about our online Carnival of Journalism<\/strong>. And the ‘localness’ that defined British journalism ended in the 1980s, when Fleet Street<\/a><\/strong> was abandoned as the physical and social centre of UK national newspapers.<\/p>\n

Whilst the Washington Post<\/em><\/strong> (LoudounExtra<\/a>) has attempted to localize its online journalism, Rupert Murdoch<\/strong> has decided that the editorial future of the Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/strong> (perhaps the world’s most geographically specific publication) is at the national and international level.<\/p>\n

And as for growth, well it’s shrinking revenues, content and jobs that everyone’s fighting these days. Craig Newmark<\/a><\/strong> has ended up serving local classified markets in the US and supplanting the role of newspapers as a local market for information on services.<\/p>\n

Enthusiast-produced content will continue to flourish online, and localities may well have their advocates and chroniclers. But issues and interests unite us more effectively than ZIP and postal codes.<\/p>\n

Online journalism is better the more interesting it is, and interest generally implies richness (intellectual, emotional, social, etc.). Whether that richness comes from the super-exertion of a passionate individual or from the professional work ethic of a salaried journalist is really not of great moment to the end-user.<\/p>\n

Passion, however, is its own reward. Pay-cheques traditionally require things like subscription and advertising. In the future, journalism may well survive as information advocacy. It’s already heading there with some NGOs. And yes – in the future – all journalism may be not-for-profit. <\/p>\n

So people will take it where they can get it. This environment is what Charlie Beckett<\/strong> calls networked journalism<\/em>. It’s here. And in confronting it, some of us may wish to die on our feet, but to the survivors I suggest we get used to walking on our knees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This isn’t my question – but it’s what a bunch of trans-continental, anglophone types will be pondering across this month’s Carnival of Journalism. Personally, I don’t have a lot of time or interest in geographically-based, local journalism (see Local Schmokel). I subscribe to the New Yorker despite the listings. There’s nothing local about our online […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}