Coveragewatch

Journalism has changed drastically. I used to think journalism jobs were like funeral home jobs – that there would always be a huge need for them. Just as people never stop dying, news never stops happening.

However, the world has changed drastically since then. Sure, there have been huge changes in technology. But there have also been huge changes in what investors / boards want from a media organization. They want huge profits. A newspaper can make money but it might not be enough money according to the investors. So they will sell the paper. Money seems to be more important than reporting.

The show 60 Minutes used to be considered a service that CBS offered. In the beginning, it didn't make money. And no one expected it to. They looked at it as an important vehicle for information. Then, all of a sudden, lots of people wanted to sponsor the program and one day it started making money. At the time, one of the 60 Minutes staffers said something like, "This is the end of journalism as we know it." The fear was that once news shows became moneymakers bosses would always want them to make money. They'd then have to start doing more and more sensational stories to grab the audiences sponsors wanted to see. And, perhaps this has happened -- news directors do worry about entertaining people with news. And this does affect what ends up on the air. News directors may not do this consciously, but they are indeed guided by what they think people want to see, not what they may need to see.

I graduated in 1994. Things have changed a lot since then. I think the biggest change is the Internet and the citizen journalism movement it helped create. I like the idea that everyone has a voice and everyone's voice can be heard. The downside, though, is that not everyone has something relevant to say on every topic. The citizen journalism movement certainly offers more perspectives and a venue for people who don't work for big media organizations. Sometimes that's great. Sometimes citizen journalists break important news. But sometimes the movement just creates an overload of information that is almost impossible to navigate. Old-school journalism may have filtered out too many people. But some might say citizen journalism doesn’t provide any filters. I'm all for different perspectives. I think the problem is that it's hard to tell who is credible and which stories were actually produced with journalistic standards in mind. That goes for both old-school and new-school journalism.