The internet has changed journalism. We can now reach out, grab whatever news we want, with few impediments and low (or no) costs. By picking the news we want, from the news sites we want, we can pander to our own interests and live within our own filter bubbles (see my recent post on filter bubbles). This has dramatically affected the business model for journalism: how can a newspaper make money when most of its readers would rather search online for a source that gives out equal information at a lesser (or no) cost?

Clay Shirky describes this as a “revolution.” He equates the changes journalism and newspapers are facing to the same changes that the book industry faced when subsumed by the printing press in the 1500’s. Their business model is no longer viable, and when asked what new model will help the newspaper industry survive, he states: “Nothing. Nothing will work. There is not general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.” However, he goes on to note that books did survive the printing press, and after a variety of experiments, they prospered. What journalism and the internet need now is experimentation to find the new models that will work.

Dean Starkman sees this too (rather starkly, if you pardon the pun). In his article ‘The Confidence Game,’ he lays out the arguments of Shirky and the other believers in “future-of-news” (FON) consensus. They see a future where news organizations will be less important as, instead, news will be “assembled, shared, and…gathered” by readers. The industry will become flat, crowd-sourced, with no plan, extensive freedom, and large networks that will find ways to publish the news for free (think Wikipedia for the daily news). Starkman (again, starkly) disagrees. He flatly notes that to get journalists to cover the news and write about it, especially for the minutia of day-to-day coverage, you normally need to pay them

Wikipedia works great as a crowd-sourced encyclopedia. It covers knowledge of the past. But it is not on a deadline. And the daily news cycle absolutely has a deadline. If you could write the news on your own time, when you got around to it, after your daily job, and when you were no longer in the mood to have a beer and watch TV, crowdsourcing might work. But to drive traffic today, you absolutely must be timely, and crowdsourcing is not always a timely option.

Another problem with the ideas of the FON believers involve substance in a news piece. FON believes that news can be something as simple as a tweet or facebook post. These social media tools are great, but they don’t have substance. They are like reading a headline – but when I normally click on something, I want to see the details of an article backing up the soundbite (well – the written equivalent of a soundbite).

Finally, I need a sense of general neutrality in my news. Crowdsourced news seems to open itself up to easy application of the filter bubble. The writing may become biased and the author not even realize it. While this may happen in mainstream journalism as well, because of training and journalistic ethics, it is at least moderated. Other news organizations simply aggregate news stories already out there and spin it with a new biased headline. I want to know that the news I am consuming is not inherently biased.

So how is journalism to survive? By both trying new things and trying old things. Some organizations can adapt and will probably continue to limp along, or even get back up and get moving. Think of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal and their paywall mechanisms. Other organizations will spring up and find new ways to present the news and earn revenue (think of Vox, Quartz, or Slate). The bottom line – the FON believers are wrong: some news organizations will continue to survive to cover the news, pay journalists, and tell a story. But they are also right: some new journalism will spring forth and find new ways to make money and tell their stories in the internet age.  And I will continue to get my news by paying for some of it (the Economist) and some for free on the internet (the Washington Post)