Editor & Publisher

E&P: Coping With the Uncertain Future of Journalism (Bailout, Holidays, Health Insurance & All …)

By Maegan Carberry ⋅ October 23, 2008 ⋅   Email this post ⋅  Digg This ⋅  Share on Facebook ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

In today’s Editor & Publisher I discuss the thing I’ve been brooding about since I got back from my road trip: How in the world all my pals and I are going to make it through the next five years in tact. (Solidarity, strength in numbers.)

“With this on my mind, I began engaging a number of friends and colleagues on a subject that weighs on my thoughts constantly: Is what happened to classified advertising happening to editorial content, and if it is, are we building the skill sets we’ll need when an aggregator and revenue power house like Google jumps into the market and becomes a primary generator of original content?

What will the rules about ethics and transparency be in such a scenario, and in the meantime - as reporting beats are routinely eliminated - are we all really just becoming opining, mini-aggregators? (For the record: Decidedly I am, my MSM friends are not.)

‘I don’t think anyone in journalism today feels really good about their futures, whether they work at a small market paper or even if they’ve embraced new media,’ says my 25-year-old friend who has worked for a major national daily and is now a content producer for a top political news site. ‘Everyone jokes, covering up real fears about how we’ll all be laid off from old-school papers and about how professional online news won’t actually take off like we hope it will.’” |   Read more here.