Can Traditional Journalism Adapt
By Weston Loving
From when Gutenberg first invented movable type to the advent of the internet, journalism has adapted to fit society’s wants and needs. While this is similar to many older professions that have had to change with the times, journalism is struggling to find its place in the digital age.
In this new age, people can now voice their opinions and ideals without having to go through the channels that were previously necessary. Now, instead of being hired by a newspaper, a person can build an audience online with members being spread throughout the world.
There are many other incentives to working online as a writer, including job availability and competitive pay. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers have lost over half of their employees since the beginning of the twenty-first century, while internet publishing jobs have increased almost fourfold, (bls.gov). This can be attributed not only to the changes that are going on in the industry, but all the way down to the pay that journalists receive for their work when they publish online versus what they receive in salary from a newspaper.
If newspapers want to begin being taken seriously in this digital age than they must begin to offer competitive pay that is comparable to what newer internet publisher start-ups are offering. Once again, the pay at these internet publishers is almost four times what is being offered in the traditional newspaper industry, (bls.gov). However, the pay issue is only the beginning of what is happening to the traditional news industry.
Other than the shrinking job market, the industry also faces an influx of untrustworthy people who have gained massive followings providing alternative viewpoints on popular news and even news that seems unimportant.
These online news providers, such as Infowars, Breitbart, The National Enquirer, and the Palmer Report, are damaging the reputations of reporters and the news media in general through unreliable and mob-raising reporting. Stacking on top of this, all of the aforementioned news publishers are in general biased and use subjectiveness to rile up the uneducated masses who follow them.
However, subjectiveness and bias may be what ends up saving the traditional news industry, if it is monitored in a controlled setting. This setting must be to allow journalists to be subjective in their reporting while also providing both sides of an argument. This starts with providing two journalists to every possible story, one from each side of the aisle. This would also help to increase the amount of jobs available in the traditional news industry and more than likely increase compensation as jobs like these become more valued. While this is a specific solution to a broad problem, there are many ways to move forward, and even more issues to solve than have been mentioned here, and this aspiring journalist is looking forward to see what changes will be happening in this industry.
