crikey

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From a speech given by the CEO of News Corporation:

Then there are the bloggers.

In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for - something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.

Andrew Keen in his book The Cult of the Amateur cites Hurricane Katrina as an example when: “reports from people at the scene helped spread unfounded rumours, inflated body counts and erroneous reports of rapes and gang violence in the New Orleans Superdome – all later debunked by mainstream news media”.

Citizen journalists, he says, simply don’t have the resources to bring us reliable news. They lack not only expertise and training but access to decision makers and reliable sources.

The difference, he says, between professionals and amateurs is that bloggers don’t go to jail for their work – they simply aren’t held accountable like real reporters.

Like Keating’s famous “all tip and no iceberg”, it could be said that the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insight.

As Robert Thomsen of The Wall Street Journal says: “the blogs and comment sites are basically editorial echo chambers rather than centres of creation”.

“and their cynicism about so-called traditional media is only matched by their opportunism in exploiting it”

One of the best known comment sites in Australia matches this identikit.

It started as a moralising soapbox; boasting about its lack of standards. Positioned as an underdog, it lectures mainstream media every day.

In the blogosphere, of course, the mainstream media is always found wanting.

It really is time this myth was blown apart.

Blogs and a large number of comment sites specialise in political extremism and personal vilification.

Radical sweeping statements unsubstantiated with evidence are common.

One Australian blogger who shoots first and checks facts later is proud to boast that his site is “Not wrong for long”.

Mainstream media understands, most of the time, that comment and opinion is legitimised by evidence.

Opinions, however strongly held, draw their legitimacy from the factual accuracy that underpins them.

Many of these sites and bloggers say their radical new approach is a modern form of participatory democracy.

But as Andrew Keen says, amateur journalism trivialises and corrupts serious debate – it degenerates democracy into mob rule and rumour milling.

Most online news and comment sites don’t generate enough revenue to pay for good journalism.

Good journalism is expensive.

[Groupthink] recently announced it will spend 1.75 million US dollars on a new investigative journalism unit to produce original content.

But it is not being funded by subscribers or advertisers, it’s being bankrolled by philanthropy.

Earlier this year an argument was mounted for public funding of quality journalism. The argument is that as traditional media revenues dry up, there won’t be enough money to support the kind of important journalism our society needs.

Our job is to tell many people what few people know. That takes lots of resources – newsrooms of two and three hundred people. If we can’t afford them, important stories won’t get told.

It might mean that those in power and those with influence can avoid the scrutiny and accountability that keeps them in check.

...

The future of journalism won’t depend on bloggers, comment sites, Google or Yahoo.

It will depend on how well newspapers like the three I’ve just mentioned adapt to the digital age.

Absolutely central to this will be:

the skills and integrity of the journalists

their passion and curiosity

their capacity to understand their readers

and their willingness to serve them.

Which brings me finally to the future of journalism being the journalism itself

Demand for news – in print and online – is much larger than it was for print on its own.

In the past year, the Beijing Olympics, the Obama’s election, the GFC, the bushfires, the British expenses scandal and Michael Jackson’s death have all shown how large the audience can be for big stories with huge consequences.

I believe the appetite for quality news and information will grow dramatically.

People will pay for it if it is good enough.

By good enough I mean that it will have to be:

well researched

brilliantly written

perceptive and intelligent

professionally edited

accurate and reliable.

This is not the territory in which aggregator sites or amateur bloggers will do well.

This is the natural terrain of the well trained, professional, experienced, clever journalist.

Oh, yeah, you capitalist hog? Would that you crackheads could produce well researched, brilliantly written, perceptive and intelligent, professionally edited, accurate and reliable journalism! Maybe then people of good will wouldn't have to beat their brains to a zapping pulp day in and day out for no money to find anything remotely resembling actuality to share with their fellows, you posturing fuck.