New media exec: Too much ‘unnecessary negativism’ about journalism these days
June 19, 2009 at 9:53 am by Wayne GarciaOur sister paper, the Chicago Reader, and its excellent media writer Michael Miner has a piece about the (ta-dah) future of journalism, but it makes some good points to ponder, including this one:
EveryBlock cofounder Daniel X. O’Neil, speaking on the panel “Why the News Still Matters,” went this tweet one better. “I think there’s just a lot of real unnecessary negativism about journalism,” he told the 170 or so people in attendance. “Frankly, I think it’s going to be great. I swear to God we’ll look back ten years from now and we’ll all be making an insane amount of money and we’re going to look at each other and we’re going to say, ‘Hey, you were there that day! Remember, we all thought we were screwed?’ No, we’re not. Everything’s great. It’s literally impossible for the answer to the question ‘What happened?’ not to be valuable.”
Wow, the rosiest assessment ever. I believe I am going to be making an “insane amount of money” in 10 years. Just not in journalism.
And this assessment of Chicago news that is just as applicable in Tampa Bay:
When the future is fraught with uncertainty it helps to be young and brave and not afraid to starve. And something else might be essential. This sine qua non is naivete, a key ingredient of The New News: Journalism We Want and Need, a report commissioned by the Chicago Community Trust, just published by the Chicago Media Workshop, and distributed at the conference. It’s an earnest, ungainly attempt at a “snapshot” of online journalism in Chicago, and although the snapshot is fairly depressing the report doesn’t seem to notice this.
“Most of the online publications aren’t backed by an established organization,” it allows, “and function as a side project of an individual or group rather than a core mission.” Meanwhile, on the local MSM front: “It seems clear that there is less local news in our two leading newspapers today than there was 20 years ago.” Moreover, “Trends suggest online news publications are likely to supplement, not replace these news outlets.”
In other words, Chicago newspapers aren’t what they used to be, and online journalism is in no position to make up the difference. But onward and upward anyway. The report’s laced with gusts of ingenuous enthusiasm. For Charles Benton, CEO of the media-focused Benton Foundation, progress is a matter of journalists hooking up with their BFFs the politicians. “The question before us now, then, is, where do we want to end up?” he writes in The New News. “For it is through the far-seeing policy goals of the public sector that we can help guide the dynamic innovations and flexibility of the private sector.”
