Newsrooms are delightful studies of chaos. It’s a high-pressure
world where the timid are quickly discarded. Add online demands
to the mix and the mind boggles. Once journalism was about who,
where, what, when and why. Now it’s the power of Twitter and new
media. The worlds of media, content, branding, and messaging are
changing so rapidly that it’s not unrealistic to think a startup could
appear tomorrow and rewrite all the rules again by the end of this
decade. That kind of change requires adaptability, a willingness to
collaborate, and near constant innovation. In much of the traditional
media, newsrooms are being squeezed, local coverage diminished, and
serious journalism abandoned. But this void is starting to be filled by
independent reporters and innovative and collaborative” pro-am”
and citizen journalism. They are using new media and new models
to do in-depth investigative projects, find untold stories, and engage
new audiences. Whether relying on contributions from readers, new
tools and technologies, or old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting, these
projects are redefining journalism. For the past three years, discussions
about the future of the news media have centered on the decline of
the so-called golden age of journalism and the descent into a chaos
characterised by splintered audiences, decimated balance sheets, and
the muscling-in of amateurs. Fearing that their halcyon days as the
guardians of information are numbered, many editors and journalists
have engaged in collective navel-gazing, asking themselves: What
went wrong? But is the future really so bleak? Is the decline a global
phenomenon? Are we moving into a new ‘golden age’? And what
does it mean for press freedom? This is a time of crisis. With news
organizations disappearing, the industry in disarray, a situation has
arisen in which field of journalism is simply preoccupied with survival;
many of the societal structures that customarily defend the press have
been disrupted.