The Road to Extinction

A post published on the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur caught my eye last week. It is about the current state of business in the news industry. The post’s author, Alan Mutter, claims the new model will kill off any journalistic dreams that an entry-level journalist may have. Mutter is an established news industry professional who waxes poetic on the theme of the dying news industry and about “the good old days” fairly regularly. This post in particular, however, caught my attention because of its extreme backward-looking tendency.

In the new economic reality of the news industry, young journalists face practically no jobs in traditional news settings and freelance work is rewarded with exposure rather than pay. Mutter indicts the new paradigm, and rightfully so. The ability of organizations to take advantage of their worker has increased exponentially with the new model (or lack there-of). What troubles me about his post though is the tone of his appraisal; he comes off as a man in fear of the future.

We who have been dumped into this industry-wide purge and restructuring are not happy about it but must be resilient and a willing to adapt. Journalism will not be the same as it has been in the past. As Mutter states, entry-level journalists may have to work as baristas to support their craft but this is only devastating to someone who cannot come to terms with the future. Young talent in Hollywood has been struggling with this for years. This doesn’t mean that things in the newspaper industry are as apocalyptic as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

The news industry will not be expanding as it has in the past. Newspapers will further consolidate and the number of professional journalists will shrink, but they will not shrink into extinction. There will still be newspapers that research, report, and create content; they will simply be much leaner and focused on hiring only the best journalists. While organizations may bud they will most likely be aggregators of content that organize information differently to appeal to geographically specific (hyper-local) markets.

Considerable changes are taking place in the news industry and Mutter’s fear is understandable. As unemployed journalists find other work, in the media or elsewhere, and fewer students graduate with journalism degrees, the industry’s seizures will subside. While at the moment, there is little light on the horizon, the industry will eventually stabilize and journalists will reinvent themselves through experimentation and innovation.