KAYJATTA

PAGE ONE: THE DEMISE OF THE PRINT MEDIA

 

The print media has been in decline for the past several years, largely due to the emergence and growth of online (web) news. Major daily newspapers such as the Rocky Mountain News and the Philadelphia Daily have collapsed, some have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and others such as the New York Times have resorted to mass layoffs to stay afloat.

 A combination of technological advancement in communication, aggregation, and declining advertisement revenue are responsible for speeding up the crisis in the newspaper industry. With the internet and the proliferation of mobile devices such as the I-Phone, I-Pad, Notebook and Net book computers as well as social media such as Twitter and face book; dissemination and consumption of news has become greatly decentralized and diversified. The example of Brian Stelter, the twenty one year old at the New York Times is an epitome of the new direction the media is taking. With an increasing number of people being tech savvy and well connected socially, news generation, dissemination and accessibility is incredibly high. Many of these consumers of news turn to the convenience of the web for news; and for no surprise at all, the advertising dollars follow them there. “Brian Stelter is a robot assembled in the basement of the New York Times to destroy me”, said David Carr. While this statement may sound like a joke, it is a stark illustration of the confrontation between the old and the new media represented by Stelter and Carr respectively.

As the media technology changes, along with consumer preference for news, we are forced to reconsider the meaning and ethics of journalism. The cases of New York Times’ Judith Miller misinformation scandal over Weapons of Mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war, the Jason Blair (of the New York Times) scandal over plagiarism and stealing content from other newspapers, and the Wiki Leak scandals over the diplomatic cables have raised serious ethical questions about reporting and the role and nature of reporters. Wiki Leaks founder, Julian Assange, in answering a question from the New York Times’ Brian Stelter defined journalism as “a tool to a goal and that goal is justice”. But Assange, despite his long history of trouble with the law, is also believed to have stolen sensitive content for publication in Wiki Leaks. The Wiki Leak publications were not made with journalistic objectivity and good faith, but they also shattered that age-old power imbalance in the print media. The so-called “New York Times Effect” is suddenly under severe strain as news generation, dissemination and accessibility decentralizes.