All about the news

Journalism - does it have a future?

I have to say I really liked this year’s Andrew Olle Lecture by The Guardian’s editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger. 

It was titled “The splintering of the fourth estate” and if you don’t feel like listening to it (above), you can read it in full here.

So what was it about? Rusbridger himself summed it up on Twitter as “Before you decide whether, as a news organisation, to beat or join social media, first make sure you understand it.”

He made this observation, which I have to say is true of many in the industry: 

But first we have to understand what we’re up against. It is constantly surprising to me how people in positions of influence in the media find it difficult to look outside the frame of their own medium and look at what this animal called social, or open, media does. How it currently behaves, what it is capable of doing in the future.

So how does one understand social media?

Firstly, I think, journalists have to go beyond being fearful of it, slamming it as the irrelevant playground of the unwashed masses, and reacting to it rather than being proactive and having a bit of fun with it.

As Rusbridger said:

But a failure to experiment is more dangerous than trying new things.

I do think there’re lots of problems with today’s media - and that will be the subject of another blog post when I finish reading Nick Davies’ excellent book Flat Earth News - and of course, The Guardian, unlike other newspapers that have to answer to shareholders, can experiment more as it owned by the Scott Trust.

But there’s no harm being optimistic about the future of the news media industry and trying to figure out how to make it financially viable while remaining true to its ideals.

Note: True to the spirit of the lecture, The Guardian has posted the text on its “Comment is free” online opinion section, where it has attracted more than 100 comments. A fair few of them are critical but well-written and worth a read too.