Journalism

The information in both book chapters this week was rather outdated. A good compilation of reasonably current information about all U.S. news outlets, including online ones, is provided in the annual State of the News Media report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

According to the section of this year's report about online journalism: "The Web -- and a converged multimedia news environment -- seem more clearly than ever to be journalism's future."

Among the details:

Somewhere around two-thirds of Americans are now online, and the online U.S. news audience is more than 100 million.

The Web clearly is drawing news viewers away from television, in particular. We do still go to TV news for major events, such as Katrina. But increasingly, we don't only go there -- we also go online.

For more routine uses of news, the Internet is more and more likely to be a source, particularly for people who work in offices.

The most widely used online news sites include ones provided by traditional mass media outlets. They include CNN (more than 22 million users a month), MSNBC, The New York Times and USA Today, along with several newspaper chains (Gannett, Knight-Ridder, Tribune Company, all in the top 10).

Some non-traditional outlets also are popular, including Yahoo! News and AOL News (both in the top four of usage, along with CNN.com and MSNBC.com), as well as some fast-rising newcomers, notably customizable services such as Google News.

A majority of major news sites are profitable, including as many as 80 percent of sites affiliated with U.S. newspapers. In some cases, they are reporting online profit margins as high as 60 percent (though most are smaller).

Local television faces a tougher time, and many stations continue to operate their Web sites on a shoestring budget, relying heavily on syndicated content.

Some outstanding journalism is being produced online. Several sets of awards recognize this work, including those announced a few weeks ago by the Online News Association.

There also is an enormous amount of energy emanating from "citizen journalists" of various sorts, including bloggers and "grassroots" news producers. These potentially complement mainstream online news products, but also fundamentally challenge them economically and journalistically.

Despite the positives, there is cause for concern on a variety of fronts. The report's authors summarize the situation this way:

"If the innovative edge for online media is to come from great media institutions with their resources and experience, the signs so far are disappointing.

"The content they offer on the Web, while improving in volume, timeliness and technological sophistication, remains still significantly a morgue for wire copy, second-hand material and recycled stories from the morning paper.

"That jibes with evidence that despite growing profits and audience, most news organizations were limiting resources in 2004. They seem to be taking a pay-as-you-go approach to the Web, and since online ad rates and margins lag those of the old media, there seems little prospect for robust growth of the journalism at their sites.

"Maybe the innovation will be left to citizens, entrepreneurs and bloggers who see themselves -- perhaps mistakenly -- as working in opposition to mainstream journalism. If so, the online trajectory is doubly problematic: The energy is coming from sources with a dearth of journalism essentials like verification and editing. Meanwhile, the economic base supporting the most difficult and expensive journalistic undertakings is eroding" (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2005).

One core question for both scholars and practioners in this rapidly changing media environment is: Who is a journalist?

It turns out to be a harder question to answer than it at first appears.

My article on professionalism was one stab I took at it.

The sociological notion of professionalism has several dimensions, including:

* Cognitive, which consists of both a body of knowledge or techniques that professionals apply in their work and the training necessary to acquire the knowledge or techniques.

* Normative, emphasizing the service orientation of professionals.

* Evaluative, which relates mostly to comparisons between professionals and laypeople, notably along dimensions of autonomy and prestige.

All of these are problematic for journalists making claims of professional status for their occupational group.

Online journalists present additional challenges to the notion of professionalism.

* What knowledge or skills define the journalist? Do online journalists possess that knowledge and apply those skills?

* Online journalists have the same overarching norm of public service, but they also face some particular challenges stemming from the nature of the medium.

* Autonomy also is potentially difficult given the intense financial pressures in online newsrooms (some of which may be easing as profitability goes up). Prestige has been hard to come by -- most journalists in traditional newsrooms have generally distanced themselves from their younger, less-experienced online counterparts -- though well-publicized awards help.

What do you think?

Is professionalism an artificial and self-serving construct anyway?

Who gets to define who's a professional and who's not -- and what possible difference does it make to anyone else?

Is a self-conception as a professional limiting for a journalist? For the journalist's audience?

Is professionalism -- which has clear elements of elitism -- in some ways antithetical to democratic functions?

Is it antithetical to the nature of the Internet, in which everyone is potentially both producer and consumer?

Is there any social value in the notion at all?

In what ways is the notion of professionalism, especially as it applies to journalists, likely to change as participatory media continue to evolve?

Will journalists become less professional? Will the notion itself be defined? How?

Since writing the professionalism article, I've been thinking more about how journalistic norms or ethics fit into the picture. I'm coming to think that to a large extent, they ARE the picture. See what you think ...

Lowery's AEJMC paper -- look for it next year in Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism -- takes a more concrete sociological approach by examining journalism as an occupation (not necessarily a profession) and looking at how bloggers, in particular, encroach on that occupation.

He argues that the way the production of news is organized underlies fundamental differences in content, tone, values and formats.

He suggests journalists are vulnerable to "poaching" on a variety of fronts, from the kinds of stories they cover to the ways in which they go about gathering information.

You might think about some of the excellent points he raises in the context of agenda-setting, a traditional media function; of the related notion of news framing; and of audience fragmentation, an issue also raised in the Web Theory chapter.

Does the Internet mean an end to a mass news audience?

Are we entering a communications era when anyone can and will both produce and consume all content forms? (We saw similar issues raised in the readings about entertainment half a semester ago.)

Does the balance of power inherent in the creation and distribution of news products actually shift ... or just give an illusion of shifting?

Where does that power lie (past, present or future)?

What are the implications for journalists and journalism, in particular? How can or should they adapt?

Does everyone become a provider of niche information ... or should journalists abandon that portion of their turf to bloggers and the like?

Are those roles competitive or complementary or ...?

In this new media environment, do the news media continue to tell us what to think about?

Do they continue to set the frame in which a story is to be understood?

How are those roles changing?

The "MSM" (MainStreamMedia, mostly commercial ones) have many faults. But they also serve as a cohesive force, particularly one connecting us with local communities.

Is that force being diluted by online media forms -- or simply replaced by newcomers such as meetup.com or wikinews.org or various citizen journalism sites?

Are we being globally connected but locally disconnected? If so, so what?

Here's a different sort of agenda-setting question: What happens when the media agenda is dictated by users of that medium (though, for instance, hit logs)?

Is news judgement being replaced by popularity poll?

Is what the public is interested in equivalent to the public interest? So who gets to define "public interest," anyway? What, if any, role should journalists retain?

Boczkowski has a somewhat different approach to this issue of "producers" and "consumers" in an online world, as well as to how professional journalists shape the news product.

In his in-depth ethnographic studies of three online news operations, he looked at how organizational structure, work practices and perceptions about users shaped online content.

He offers a challenge to technological determinism by grounding his consideration of technological change in social practice, as well as in perceptions of both self (the journalist in these cases) and others (the users ... or at least the "other producers").

Loved the chart ...

 Org
structure		 Perception
of
consumer		 Work
practices

Effects:
Multimedia,
Interactivity

NY Times

 Dominant
print
presence
in online operations		 Technically
limited
consumer

Newsroom
tasks
configured around gatekeeping

Low multimedia

Low interactivity

Houston Chronicle

 Limited
print presence in online operations		 Technically
savvy
consumer		 Newsroom
tasks
configured around gatekeeping

High multimedia

Low interactivity

New Jersey Online

Almost no
print presence in online operations		 Technically
limited
consumer		 Newsroom
tasks
configured around
alternative to gatekeeping

Low multimedia

High interactivity

(Boczkowski,
2004)

What do you think?

Which aspect -- multimedia or interactivity -- is more fundamental to online journalism? Which accords the more significant differentiation from, say, print product?
Which aspect is better suited to notions of professionalism?
Which is more open to encroachment from non-journalists? To what effect?

Considerations of multimedia and interactivity bring us to the topic of convergence.

Various media forms -- and the social organizations that create them -- are coming together if not seamlessly. To borrow Pablo's term, "bits co-mingle effortfully."

My article in J&MCQ suggests that convergence is serving as a catalyst for the resocialization of print journalists. That is, they are not just changing the way they do things; they are changing the way they think about their jobs, their professions and their roles.

Here's the BEA presentation version of the points in this article ...

Some other things we might talk about:

How should journalism schools react to the various changes in the industry?

How else might journalism scholars study those changes?

Gatekeepers are one type of middleman. In general, how does interactive technology affect the middlemen -- what happens to the people who facilitated a one-way content flow when the flow goes both ways and the production process is open to all?

What do you think of the idea of journalists as sense-makers rather than gatekeepers -- a more overtly interpretive role?

Would such a role be appropriate? Valuable? How might it relate to Lowery's points in his piece exploring the occupational boundaries of journalism?

In general, what do we most need journalists for in today's media environment? What changes would be needed for them to do those things?
How important is locality to journalism in a globally networked world?
What else should we talk about today ...?