Old Media’s View of “New News” Is Old News

From Matthew L. Schafer

Len Downie, Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and former executive editor of the Washington Post, spoke Wednesday about what he and others have called the “new news” of the 21st century.  Downie’s speech was part of the James Cameron Memorial Lecture, a lecture honoring the former British journalist.

Downie, who is no stranger to journalism, spoke to the rise of news collaborations, as well as consolidation in a rather favorable light.  Citing the crisis of the journalism business model, Downie highlighted university and traditional news media partnerships, public media collaborations, and for-profit local television partnerships.

“A growing number of American television stations also are sharing local news reporting.  At more than 200 stations around the country – from Los Angeles and Kansas City to Philadelphia and Miami – their local newscasts are produced by other stations in the same cities,” Downie said.

After Downie spent much of the speech surveying the current media landscape, he then cited online news aggregators like The Huffington Post and Digg.com for hurting traditional journalism.  Downie called these popular 21st century inventions that pool news, as well as gather news, “parasites.”

“Though they purport to be a new form of journalism, these aggregators are primarily parasites living off journalism produced by others,” Downie said.  “They attract audiences by aggregating journalism about special interests and opinions reflecting a predictable point of view on the left or the right of the political spectrum, along with titillating gossip and sex.”

However, Matthew L. Shafer writing at lippmanwouldroll.com writes Downie misses the point by oversimplifying the cause of journalism’s decline and focusing the remainder of his speech on funding sources to sustain journalism, as opposed to critically examining other factors to fall, in hopes of finding the key to its resurrection. 

Indeed, there is no need to continue to fund journalism if the return is fewer journalists reaching smaller audiences.  Instead, journalism need to completely reevaluate note how it gathers news (which it does exceedingly well), but how it presents the news it gathers (which the blogosphere does exceedingly well).
What journalism needs now, is not to curse “new news,” but rather reevaluate its old news traditions.  (It is important to note that this is not to say that some have not been attending to this already.)  Instead, the Post’s Downie is playing the roll of the–now cliché–ignorant traditional media mindset.

Downie’s traditional journalism, while better funded than the “new news,” refuses to innovate at any grand level–only to wonder why their audience is melting away.  Logically, where there is a gap, someone will fill it.  In this case, that somebody is Digg, Politico, Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, and Reddit among others.
Read more here.