5th
“A Scenario for the Future of News” response
In his article, “A Scenario for the Future of News,” Jeff Jarvis portrays how he believes journalism will evolve as the use of technology grows. Some would see his message as a doomsday attitude toward journalism; however, he predicts that journalism will become more “collaborative,” rather than “controlled by a single company.” Some would say that his prediction describes a shift toward civic journalism, where communities will come together to create the news. This could be highly positive for society, because this shift would counter individualism and network monopolies. If journalism had to become more specialized out of need with less people in the field, then perhaps journalism will shift back to where it should be in quality. As journalism moves away from major networks to a more distributed concept through freelancers, bloggers, local networks, and smaller papers, then journalism will be more democratic and thus freer to act as the government’s fourth estate and skeptic.
Jarvis is not saying that journalism is dying or even hopeless; rather, he is simply explaining how journalism will and needs to shift back to something that is less of a business model, and based more on telling fact and truth. When individual reporters, writers, and bloggers, are not bound to major networks, they will be able to contribute with fairer pieces, rather than simply following a monopoly’s agenda. As long as people do stupid things, journalism will exist. I do not think journalism will die anytime soon, perhaps our mindsets about what journalism is will have to shift with the evolution in journalism. If we look at journalism throughout history, one of the simpler concepts started where people gossiped in pubs and coffeehouses back in Europe. Some would say that is not journalism, but indeed, it acts as a forum for spreading communication the same way a newspaper does now in modern times. As usual, people are afraid of change, as it is the unknown, and are therefore pessimistic about the future of journalism. Rather than dread the future, perhaps we should simply look at how journalism is shifting and prepare for that, especially for those of us entering the career field.
