| You're right: journalists will determine the future of journalism. I think the more relevant question is whether journalism is where we will get the news in a few years. At the moment, it seems to me like we're finding new, social (in the W2.0 sense) methods of distributing information that are "good enough" to destroy the business model for news. "Good enough" doesn't mean their information is equal or better compared to the information that journalism yielded. Of course, most of this social news is still based off "MSM" news, but I believe that, as their availability decreases, their necessity as a base will aswell. I think that sometimes there is a tragic logical error in some of the 'future of journalism' discussion: "The News business model is done. User's won't pay for the news any more. Ads don't scale. The hurricanes themselves won't pay, either. Thus, we have to find a new business model." This last statement is always there, especially in the RFS and the entrepreneur's discussions following it here. But it is not a necessity. I guess it is a part of a healthy capitalistic mindset to see every industries downfall as an opportunity, but I get the feeling that some of the internets peer production developments escape this pattern: Wikipedia will not produce business opportunities for encyclopedia business, OpenStreetMap will not help NAVTEQ. Of course each of these examples produces a periphery of new businesses, consulting opportunities and the usual post-processing stuff, but in their core they have de-economized industries. So I get wary when I hear people talk on how to monetize post-news news. You really won't. Go write a blog post about some of your local communities problems instead. |