Is journalism in crisis? - With the decline of newspapers, it is important to encourage and nourish independent journalism and media

It’s a cry you hear often from journalists in the West, and it’s easy to see why.

  • A 2010 study in the UK estimated that between 15,000 to 20,000 journalist had lost their jobs since 2001, and the cuts have continued over the last two years.
  • In the UK, the cuts have not just been at newspapers as the BBC has been forced to cut thousands of staff, many of them in its news departments. Its funding has been frozen and it has had to absorb the costs of funding World Service, which used to be funded directly by the British government.
  • A 2010 study found that between 2007 to 2009, newspaper circulation dropped precipitously in many developed countries, including down by 20 per cent in Greece, 18 per cent in Japan, 17 per cent in Canada and most dramatically by 25 per cent in the UK and a staggering 30 per cent in the US.
  • A recent report by the professional networking site, LinkedIn, found that of 30 industries, employment in the USdecreased most in newspapers during the recession.

Fonte: aljazeera.com

We are moving rapidly from an era of an oligopoly of content providers to an oligopoly of content controllers: new choke points. This is not media consolidation in the traditional sense, where a few huge conglomerates used economies of scale to dominate journalism by dominating the local and national agendas. This consolidation, to a very few companies plus increasing government intervention, is even more dangerous — and information providers of all kinds are finally starting to grasp what’s happening.

Dan Gillmor, Professor, Cronkite School of Journalism. 2012 will be the year of the content-controller oligopoly.

Nieman Lab is running an interesting 2012 preview series by asking prominent journalism observers what they think the upcoming year will hold. 

Gillmor believes the open Internet — where content, creativity and innovation has flourished —  is being constricted by choke points that include:

  • Search Engines
  • Wire-line Internet service providers
  • Mobile carriers
  • Apple
  • The copyright cartel
  • Government

Click through to read what he means by each. It’s a very real — if sobering — analysis of our future ability to find, create and share information with one another.

(via futurejournalismproject)

The newsonomics of Anton Chekhov - Nieman Journalism Lab

Glorying in the past, hating the present, and fearing the future: Why are newspaper companies’ attitudes the inverse of Silicon Valley’s?

“Three Sisters,” like most of Anton Chekhov’s plays, smells of decline. His works, set in the decaying Russia of the late 19th century, offer an odd resonance to our time, a time of doubt, loss, and pessimism. Watching “Three Sisters,” performed locally last weekend, inevitably invited thoughts of the struggling news industry — as too many things do.

I was first struck by this Chekhov quotation in the theater program: “Russians glory in the past, hate the present, and fear the future.” It’s not easy to find that exact quote on the web, but it certainly sums up much of the playwright’s work and his assessment of the national character into which he was born in 1860.

That thought also seems to say too something about news industry today. Those halcyon days of monopoly dailies weren’t as wonderful as the rose-colored rearview memories recall. The present is an unending struggle — the near future, at least, looking as bad or worse than today.

(via Nieman Journalism Lab)

Why does the future of news have to be us versus them?

The future of news, and of journalism as a whole, isn’t something anyone has a really firm grasp on — as traditional players continue to be disrupted by the web and social tools like Twitter, and new entrants like The Huffington Post. Huge reports on the state of the industry written by journalistic institutions are filled with questions, but very few answers. Now a writer at the Columbia Journalism Review has taken aim at what he sees as the real culprit: “future of news” visionaries like Clay Shirky and Jeff Jarvis, who he says are hurting the industry more than they are helping. But is that really where the problem lies? I don’t think so. (via GigaOm)