In the auditorium of the Thumel Business Center at the University of Baltimore I am sitting surrounded by social media enthusiasts, web developers, software engineers, business people, and various other up and coming professionals. Coffee has been poured, laptops are out, and the room is abuzz as people trade names and business cards. The group is quickly wrangled to order as Dave Troy announces we will begin the first session of BarCamp Baltimore momentarily. The topics had been decided just minutes before, picked by the crowd. And we’re off, the future of journalism.
The premise behind this session is to discuss the creation of a smaller, more flexible company that could out preform major players by giving a customizable user experience and perhaps offering media that is backed by people you trust. To build such a source of journalism wouldn’t be hard, it would just take a few people aggregating and offering in different ways. Ways more in tune to our rapidly changing society’s idea of media and need for the social factor.
But as I listened to this session, I began to make the connection between an audio book I had been listening to and the way journalism appeared to be trending. In ‘Outliers,’ by Malcolm Gladwell, he describes how in the 50’s and 60’s the old boys network of lawyers in New York City descriminated against Jewish lawyers, not extending jobs in their prestigious law firms to them. So these lawyers were forced to go out on their own and practice any law that came to them. During this time, it was socially unfashionable for lawyers to be associated with corporate takeovers, so the big companies didn’t handle them. However, these Jewish lawyers had to accept this work, and became very good at arguing this trade. Then the 1970’s came about and what was once socially incorrect became the standard. These Jewish lawyers suddenly had the skills desired by the professional world. I believe we could be seeing a similar trend right now with journalism.
If we look at the big media corporations they want to feed us the news in a way they think we are fit to receive it. But the world is changing, and our ideals will change faster than they are willing to. I believe eventually we, as a majority of society, will desire a more social and independent source of media that we can relate with. If one would jump onto this breaking wave now, they could ride out and create the new world of journalism as we will perceive it.
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Comments ( 3 )
You are absolutely right. Now is the time to become involved in the unpredictable but promising future of journalism, which is going to heavily involve citizen journalism and social networking media. There is no way around this, despite the fact that big business journalism is still resisting it on a whole. What is interesting about citizen journalism (blogs and the like) is that they offer highly specialized coverage of often local and targeted concerns. The move in the future will likely be away from the one size fits all (or at least many) “big issues” journalism and towards a pluralistic world of highly differentiated highly diverse journalistic options. This, I believe, will be both productive and healthy for a journalistic world currently dominated by a very few powerful forces (political parties, corporations etc) with very little meaningful differences between the news sources. There are some great interviews with top journalists about issues such as these http://www.ourblook.com/component/option,com_sectionex/Itemid,200076/id,8/view,category/#catid69 which I have found useful.
Bill added these pithy words on
Jun 21 09 at
3:34 pm
Many business models are breaking down because the old normal doesn’t work. This will present opportunities. Huffingtonpost.com is a great example of a new product that came out of the blue.
In the meantime, the chaos will not be fun or pretty for many. It will be toughest on the old guard. Young talent will adapt and change to fit the new normal. The key is to go with what will be sustainable.
ecogordo added these pithy words on
Jun 21 09 at
11:03 pm
I think that you meant outperform instead of out preform.
I’m glad to read so much buzz about Gladwell’s books, he’s a visionary. Interesting article, however you didn’t mention the bankrupt and cash-strapped current media of printed newspapers and the heavy political bias of the major/national TV news channels.
How long after it’s inception will people adapt to this new journalism?
Brandon Layland added these pithy words on
Jun 22 09 at
2:07 am
