Rob Fishman's blog on the Huffington Post is called "Old Dogs, New Media: Why J-School Apps Are Up." His comments about J School and "new media" and the demise of the current industry model are achingly familiar:
Of course, no one should blame Columbia for teaching the old ways. As has been painfully evident over the past year, no new model for journalism yet exists. Where one can fault the J-School -- and by extension, journalism as a whole -- is in its superficial embrace of "new media," understood at 116th Street as a crash-course in web design as an addendum to the regular curriculum. "New media" -- those chilling words that induce in anyone over 30 a bone-chilling sweat -- is like the Emperor's new clothes: we all pay lip service to Macromedia Flash, .html coding and RSS feeds, but no one has any real conception of how they might "save" journalism.
Jeez, it sounds a whole lot like what I've been saying—and hearing from fellow grad students—at school these days. Replace the word "Columbia" with the appropriate institution's name ... .
But Fishman doesn't explain why grad school applications for journalism schools are up. And neither can I. I can tell you my reasons for applying — I decided that a practical degree made more sense than one based in theory (I started in Communication and bailed), and figured I'd get more writing and editing work if I have a journalism M.A. after my name. Not a particularly uplifting narrative, is it?
So, if any journalism graduate students are reading this, tell me: Why did you apply to a graduate program in journalism, given the imminent demise of the reporting industry?
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Fair Use and AP
The Associated Press is attempting to enforce fair use tenets by tracking illegal use of its content and will "pursue legal and legislative actions" against its improper distribution.
Industry commentator Art Brodsky sees this as an ill-thought-out attempt to stop aggregators from using AP content without adequately reimbursing the content provider. He says the days of news organizations (i.e., newspapers) being the gatekeepers of information are over. The Internet has made that model obsolete.
Brodsky questions that fair use is even the issue here. Rather, he sees AP's announcement as yet another fight between the old, centrally controlled media model and the new, distributed network model. It's an economic fight, a fight for control, but it's not truly a legal battle, he contends.
This is highly reminiscent of the tussle between Gatehouse Media and the Boston Globe/New York Times over news aggregation and we know how that ended—with a whimper. (See my Jan. 30 post, "Fair Use vs. Coporate Greed," below.)
Rather than invent a new business model, the news industry seems to be fighting over the limited revenues available to Internet content providers, but no one seems to know how to address the central problem: if content is free, who can afford to provide it? The problem with establishing a legal precedent with regard to what's digital copyright infringement and what's not is this: users are impatient with anything that stands in the way of accessing information on the Internet quickly and for little—or no—cost. When providers make access costly, either in time or actual money, users will go elsewhere or do without.
Case in point: One of Brodsky's links took me to the Washington Post's site, which I could view only if I signed in. Since I didn't want to jump through their hoops (and it was FREE!), I never did look at that link.
Addendum: Read Maureen Dowd's take on it all.
4-21-09 Techdirt talks about Google and iParadigm's case.
Industry commentator Art Brodsky sees this as an ill-thought-out attempt to stop aggregators from using AP content without adequately reimbursing the content provider. He says the days of news organizations (i.e., newspapers) being the gatekeepers of information are over. The Internet has made that model obsolete.
Brodsky questions that fair use is even the issue here. Rather, he sees AP's announcement as yet another fight between the old, centrally controlled media model and the new, distributed network model. It's an economic fight, a fight for control, but it's not truly a legal battle, he contends.
This is highly reminiscent of the tussle between Gatehouse Media and the Boston Globe/New York Times over news aggregation and we know how that ended—with a whimper. (See my Jan. 30 post, "Fair Use vs. Coporate Greed," below.)
Rather than invent a new business model, the news industry seems to be fighting over the limited revenues available to Internet content providers, but no one seems to know how to address the central problem: if content is free, who can afford to provide it? The problem with establishing a legal precedent with regard to what's digital copyright infringement and what's not is this: users are impatient with anything that stands in the way of accessing information on the Internet quickly and for little—or no—cost. When providers make access costly, either in time or actual money, users will go elsewhere or do without.
Case in point: One of Brodsky's links took me to the Washington Post's site, which I could view only if I signed in. Since I didn't want to jump through their hoops (and it was FREE!), I never did look at that link.
Addendum: Read Maureen Dowd's take on it all.
4-21-09 Techdirt talks about Google and iParadigm's case.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Colbert and the demise of newspapers
Colbert "interviewed" the Newspaper Association of America's lobbyist and managed, in five minutes, to express why print is dying:
1. the general public doesn't seek knowledge, but wants to be diverted and entertained
2. people want speedy gratification/entertainment
3. they want what news they tolerate learning about for free
4. the news industry doesn't know how to change its business model.
Take a look.
1. the general public doesn't seek knowledge, but wants to be diverted and entertained
2. people want speedy gratification/entertainment
3. they want what news they tolerate learning about for free
4. the news industry doesn't know how to change its business model.
Take a look.
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