Some random mental masturbation about the on-going discussions about the future of journalism:

• Why is it that the people involved in developing the Web 2.0 applications/Web sites that are transforming the media landscape tend to sound a lot more optimistic about the future and value of newspapers than people who are actually working in or talking about newspapers? (Examples here, here, here). I mean, after all, if Web 2.0 is sweeping away old media, shouldn’t the people who are leading the way be saying “Ours is the new way” more than anyone else? Do they really believe what they are saying, or is it just a case of them being gracious winners?
• So much of the discussion about future forms of journalism talks about the big, “glamorous” aspects — the investigative reporting, the political news, etc. I agree that they are the most important functions of journalism. Yet, if the model of journalism done mostly by big news organizations collapses, those won’t be the things that will be lost, because they are of such visibility and significance that somehow, someway, somebody is going to keep doing them.

  What will be lost, however, are the less glamorous, but almost as important, stuff in the daily offering from the local newspaper — stories about upcoming local festivals, high school sports, features about people in the community, etc. People are interested in these things, but if you ask them for a list of things they would pay an independent journalist to write about, these probably won’t be at the top of the list. “Want to read about” doesn’t equal “will pay for”. I mean, we have sites like Politico and FactCheck, but how many DumpvilleGirlsSoccer.coms do we have? And if you don’t think people are interested in Dumpville girls’ soccer, then you’ve obviously never sat by a phone on a newspaper sports desk during the high school spring sports season.

• There seems to be so much disdain for journalists and what they represent (establishment, old-school, bias, spin, etc.), so why the heck is everybody grasping for a title with “journalist” in it? Why does someone have to be a “citizen journalist” or “i-reporter” instead of just a guy who took a picture of a political rally and sent it to his friends or tweeted about seeing a traffic accident outside his house? Oh right, because “journalist” sounds a lot more legitimate than “guy passing along news on twitter”, just as “sanitation engineer” sounds a lot nicer than “janitor”, which sounds a lot nicer than “crapper cleaner-upper”. All this talk about democratization of journalism and other high-minded ideals, and yet here we are, spewing out terms that exist basically to inflate someone’s ego and attribute more importance to an action than it really warrants. Throw in the irony of associating oneself with those one scorns by adopting their title, and you’ve a pot bubbling over with hypocrisy and base human qualities like arrogance and the lust for recognition (ok, maybe that’s going a bit overboard, but you get my point).
• The common wisdom going around seems to be that it’s a good thing that journalism is shifting away from a model of monopolies to a model where everyone is a player. Part of me believes that, but then, part of me thinks, “Are monopolies really that bad?” I mean, Google has basically become a monopoly in its field (OK, you can kind of count Yahoo! too, but that’s still basically only two players).

  I like the idea that everybody has the means to publish and participate in journalism, but is that benefit also creating a new media landscape where journalistic work becomes devalued by the glut of information available and what revenue there is becomes so fragmented that few would be able to muster together enough support to do this full-time or to pursue the large-scale reporting projects that monopolies would have the clout to do? Yes, we could possibly replace the clout of monopolies with the combined clout of networks, but for that to happen, you must first build a network of some size and then get a significant number of the members in that network to collaborate on the same project, which are not necessarily easy tasks, especially if you have to do that on every decent-size project. There are so many moving parts that need to work in unison to make it happen.

  Think about China’s Olympic preparations. One reason it was able to build impressive facilities and put on a grand show — and do it so quickly — was because, as an authoritarian government, it didn’t need to go through propositions and referendums to ask its citizens for permission to spend money for this project. You can debate the pros and cons of the style of government, but you can’t argue with the result of the project.

• Does good journalism equal good business? If you are giving people what they want, does it follow that you will find enough revenue to support your operation? I would like to think so, but I lean more toward the belief that quality of the work and sustainability of the work are two separate things and not necessarily in a directly proportional relationship. Does “good journalism” = “what people want to read”? I think so. Does “good journalism” = “what people are most interested in reading”? I don’t know. Does “good journalism” = “a big enough interest for people for you to generate enough revenue”? Or for that matter, does “what people want to read” = “what people are willing to pay for”? Better yet, ask yourself this: When’s the last time you sent money to somebody for developing a good freeware application?
• There’s a lot of talk among journalists and media critics about “objectivity” being a false ideal and that perhaps it’s preferable to have biased information sources who make their biases clear. Yet, every time I see readers weigh in on the issue of bias in the media, their complaints are always about not enough objectivity. Is this a case of the practitioners out-thinking themselves and misleading themselves in terms of what it is that their audience want? Personally, I don’t buy the “clear bias” argument. Allow me to illustrate:

Person A: I firmly believe that 2 + 2 = 4.

Person B: I firmly believe that 2 + 2 = 7.

Person A: I know I’m right and person B is wrong. Here’s why. (proceeds to present pages upon pages of evidence, math theories, and long-winded formulas and convoluted equations).

Person B: I know I’m right and person A is wrong. Here’s why. (proceeds to present pages upon pages of evidence, math theories, and long-winded formulas and convoluted equations).

Person A: Person B’s argument is flawed. Here’s why. (more equations and theories).

Person B: No, person A’s argument is flawed. Here’s why. (more equations and theories).

Person A: Here are five people who agree with me.

Person B: Here are five people who agree with me.

. . .

So, if you didn’t know what 2 + 2 equals and don’t have a firm grasp on advanced theoretical mathematics, based on what you were just presented with, how would you decide? Is information presented in this fashion useful in helping you figure out what 2 + 2 is?