Journalism is Declining?
According to former Financial Times reporter, Tom Foremski, traditional journalism is on the decline, and online content providers are to blame. Google, Yahoo, Ebay, and many others, have figured out how to use servers to generate pages of content combined with highly targeted advertising. This has cut the cost of selling a product or service significantly. As a result, these large media companies are growing rich off the money that used to pay for online and traditional media professionals. Of course, he backs none of this up with actual figures showing drop in demand for media professionals, but he brings up an interesting topic of discussion.
I'm unclear of the mechanism that Foremski is referring to. I think he is saying because it relatively much cheaper for online media companies to provide content, there is no longer an incentive to pay media professionals to ensure the quality of the content. Thus, the shrinking of the media professional class will lead to a drop in quality of content.
This seems to have some validity as many online companies are plunging into the media space and many media companies are plunging into the online space, both with almost reckless abandon. However, I believe this experimental phase, characterized by wild scrambling to find the next solvent niche, will eventually end.
The real question that Foremski should be concerned with is what value do media professionals bring to online ventures. Media professionals lowered the cost of information to firms so that for every time a firm wanted to put a new product out, they didn't do have to do an expensive nationwide survey every time to find out if it was worth putting out. But with the Internet, a firm can garner almost instant feedback from the consumer without having to consult anyone. Did I mention that process was free?
Foremski is currently working on a new business model that includes media professionals. Good luck.
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