fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

Pew’s annual report about journalism’s prospects for 2009 is due out on Monday. According to an Associated Press story: “The state of journalism is bleak, but an annual study of the industry suggests all hope should not be lost.” 

The story goes on to address some emerging business models to make journalism profitable online. Among those ideas are non-profit outfits (such as MinnPost) and other distribution models that relies on catering to a reader’s niche interest a la iTunes for news. (Read the whole the story here)

For the 2008 study, click here. 

In other news, Pew has an interesting story about the changing face of the Washington press corps, the group of journalists responsible for communicating the going ons of our national leaders. What Pew found was a dramatically depleted press corps for mainstream media outlets (regional bureaus for newspapers have been especially hit hard) but at the same time more and more newsletters for specialized interests (climate change, ag policy, etc…) are emerging. There’s also been a dramatic increase in the number of foreign corespondents covering Washington. 

From the Feb. 11 story: 

“…as the mainstream media have shrunk, a new sector of niche media has grown in its place, offering more specialized and detailed information than the general media to smaller, elite audiences, often built around narrowly targeted financial, lobbying and political interests. Some of these niche outlets are financed by an economic model of high-priced subscriptions, others by image advertising from big companies like defense contractors, oil companies, and mobile phone alliances trying to influence policy makers.”

This trend is probably best explained by the emerging economic model that describes the fragmenting audience interests that are affecting every mass media outlet be it newspapers or cable TV: Long-tail economics, as coined by Wired’s Chris Anderson (link for his blog). 

The question is what does this mean for our governing model? As interests become more specialized and the things we pay attention to more narrow, this poses a huge question mark for the way (and size in which) our government operates. Think about the congressmen and congresswomen in Washington who can virtually operate without consequence because there is no one there from their home state to effectively cover them on behalf of the voters instead of a special interest group. 

Journalism might be in midst of one of those once-or-twice-a-century paradigm shifts, but so is government. It looks as if our symbiotic relationship with the government will do more to change journalism than any advertising model will.