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October 31, 2010
Australian journalists are not known for their critical reflections upon the practice of journalism, nor for their acknowledgment of the decline of quality in journalism associated with the emergence of the internet and the new media. If they ignore the criticism sit is mostly to shoot the critics. Critical arguments about journalism have been only open to practitioners and journalism academics - a closed circle of gatekeepers.
Annabel Crabb in her The end of journalism as we know it (and other good news) at the ABC's is a text version of Crabb's AN Smith lecture in journalism, delivered on October 27, 2010 at Melbourne University. It is a serious look at the state of journalism, how journalism is adapting to the changing technological environment, and the future of journalism as emerging opportunities. Crabb describes the new media landscape thus:
It's what happens when the damn system is democratised. News journalism as we have known it in the past - a sort of daily feeding-time in which news is distributed to a passive audience at a designated hour and in the order selected by the zookeeper - is over, or well on its way to being so. Audiences are splintered, but demanding. They want new news, and if something complicated has happened, they want instant analysis. Commonly, they want an opportunity to express their own views - not only on the event itself, but on how it has been reported...This loss of control is such a hallmark of the new media. And that's true for everybody it touches...For journalists, the loss of control is about the loss of centrality.
She rightly points out that journalists are just not necessarily, automatically at the core of the media landscape any more.
She adds that journalists:
are - belatedly, and for reasons entirely unassociated with Government-led deregulation or any of the other usual reasons - contestable. The community of news and commentary is getting stronger and more populous. We are just not necessarily, automatically at the core of it any more. And we are open to criticism - some of it savage, some of it worryingly accurate - like never before. Our passive, profitable audience is disappearing. In newspapers, which is where I come from, the panic is about advertising, of course. And how to monetise content online.
That is an accurate description. I agree with her when she points to future opportunities---what lies ahead is not a blasted heath. It's a building site.
Crabb then goes onto talk about information being free and this is where things start to go askew. She says:
And 10 years later, what do we have? Leading news websites, and an audience which has been trained to expect this stuff for free. Which has had the unintended effect, to some extent, of devaluing the actual product - and I use this bald term intentionally. Thanks to the expectation - inculcated by us - in readers that they should enjoy unmetered access to the work of most major newspapers, we journalists are in rather a novel industrial position...Why is my intellectual property suddenly worthless, while the guy who invents hilarious ring-tones is still entitled to the customary presumption that his day's work warrants some kind of commensurate recompense? The answer is that journalists have already ceded the field. We've already given our stuff away....Free information is usually free for a reason. Mostly, it's free because it's a press release, or an ad, or it's been nicked from TMZ.com, or because it's so incredibly banal that even its creator can't bear to look you in the eye and shake you down for cash. Free information, ladies and gentlemen, tends to be crappy information.
This is disingenuous as Crabbe is being paid by The ABC to write commentary on political events and that money comes from the government and public taxation. Unlike many I support the ABC's innovation around The Drum and Unleashed.
Secondly, it is the old advertising based business model that is on the skids and that causes Fairfax problems. If a newspaper goes behind a pay wall--as Murdoch is doing--- that is fine. I'll subscribe if the content warrants it. The trouble is most journalism is now of such poor quality and of such little use---eg., The Australian's reportage on the national broadband network --that this kind of partisan opinion does not warrant me paying money to read it.
Thirdly, Crabb's criticism of free information is based on the repudiation of free and knowledge. She does not consider the possibility of free as knowledge in a digital world. So much for Wikipedia or Project Gutenberg. Or the body of work propduced by photographers such as David Meisal?
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Crabb says:
That equates bloggers with the publicity industry! Such a sneaky putdown.