Here is my latest Bull on Journalism…
The Missouri School of Journalism yesterday issued a press release entitled ”
Citizen Journalism vs. Legacy News: The Battle for News Supremacy
I like this ‘battle’ notion because it plays right into my own concept of the Gutenberg printing press vs. the Monks.
Now the Monks are annoyed.
The peasants are not only learning to read and write, they are burying the Church and it’s hand-crafted scripture.
Good!
So The Church (Missouri in this case) is striking back.
The work of the Peasants is not ‘adequate’.
“We’ve done the research’, the Vatican on the Mississippi declares, ‘and it is not acceptable’.
“While many of the blogs and citizen journalism sites have done very interesting and positive things, they are not even close to providing the level of coverage that even financially stressed news organizations do today,” said Margaret Duffy, associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. “Not only do these blogs and websites lack the staff to adequately cover stories, but most citizen journalism managers do not have the financial resources and business experience to make their websites viable over time.”
Well, they would be annoyed.
“Citizen Journalists’ don’t pay $50,000 a year to attend the prestigious University of Missouri Graduate School of Journalism.
They are not ‘certified’.
They are not in the ‘priesthood’.
They are peasants who have the temerity to try and take the exalted and refined positions that their graduates have paid a fortune to have.
The Pope Associate Dean of the school was speaking Ex-Cathedra when she declared:
She believes it is critical that democracy have an effective journalistic presence. With many newspapers and broadcast news outlets struggling financially, she is concerned about the future of journalism.”A strong democracy depends on vibrant, robust news coverage with informed citizens and voting public,” Duffy said. “If news media have to cut back and are unable to provide the same level of coverage for their communities that they did in the past, citizen journalism may need to step in. That is why it is important to examine what these websites need to do to improve and survive.”
Do you understand how important this is?
All of Democracy may be at risk here! Of course, the peasant Citizen Journalist “may need to step in”, so says the Associate Dean. MAY NEED TO STEP IN!!!!!
Oy!
The really telling clue as to how totally out of touch with the real world the University of Missouri Journalism School is
is in their comment that “A strong democracy depends upon a vibrant, robust…news coverage with informed citizens and voting public”.
She is concerned because traditional newspapers and TV stations are going broke.
Well, let’s get a few things straight:
First, Journalism is not in trouble.
Not with 260 million blogs and people uploading 23 hours of video to Youtube every minute.
Journalism has never been stronger.
What is in trouble is not journalism – it is business. The Journalism Business.
The newspaper businesses.
The TV businesses.
They are in trouble because they have not adapted to the new technologies and the new reality.
They are still running things the old way. Ex Cathedra. “We speak the truth. You sit down, shut up and pay for it”.
What is more of a ‘free press’? One ‘journalist sent to Iran (who does not speak Farsi) or 10,000 Iranians with cell phones uploading what is really happening 24 hours a day.
Hey, it’s a lot harder to manage, but it’s real journalism.
Not one white guy’s opinion of what is happening in a country he knows virtually nothing about.
THAT is what the Dean here is defending.
And it’s tough to defend.
But it is the only business they know.. or knew.. because it it dead.
And good reason.
The irony here, of course, is that for years and years places like The Missouri School of Journalism extolled a FREE PRESS.
Now they have one.
And they can’t stand it.
9 Comments
Deborah Bonello July 15, 2010
This are old findings put in a new way. I agree and disagree with you Michael – I think that the availability of technology is changing the media landscape. BUT people like you wouldn’t be in business if all you had to know how to do was switch the camera on. You’re sort of shooting yourself in the foot by arguing that pure citizen journalism is the future. That’s the raw stuff, but you know as well as I do that breaking news is one thing, storytelling is another – if it wasn’t, no one would want to take your classes, right?
The future is part citizen, part pro.
Michael Rosenblum July 15, 2010
Hi Deborah
As you can see from today’s blog (I think), one of the main points I made to RFE in Prague was that their responsibility (and every journalistic organizations) was and is to train the tidal wave of content that this new cheap and easy to use technology is going to unleash. That is certainly what I do. It is like a year after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. The machine is great, but now we have to teach the whole population to read and write. Its a substantial job. Not every former peasant is going to turn into Montesquieu but they should all have the opportunity to try, and they should all be literate in the new medium as a matter of course.
Nino July 14, 2010
“Of the 260 million blogs in the world today, 99% of them might not survive the shake out, but even 1% would mean 2.6 million blogs that ultimately are profitable.”
WOW Michael, care to rephrase this one?
“might not survive” and “are profitable” in the same sentence?
With a 99% of your projected failure rate I’m sure they’ll be knocking your door down to take your video journalist classes; and projections are usually more optimistic than the real thing.
The facts remain Michael that there are too many “if” and “will” in all your projections, but when it comes to the “now” in citizen journalism all you have to show are failures.
Michael Rosenblum July 14, 2010
I would say that I am far more profitable than either Business Week or Newsweek, which is not bad. Also The New York Times, which showed a loss this year of $840 million and had to be bailed out by a Mexican investor or they would have turned out the lights. As for the ‘ifs’ and the ‘wills’ and the ‘failure rates’, I am far ahead of Thomas Edison in his search for the lightbulb. So far, so good.
Nino July 15, 2010
I’m sure you are Michael, the unfortunate part is that your fortune comes from those who paid you because they believed that citizen journalism could actually be profitable as you said it will.
Considering that you’ve been profiting from these people for years and with 240 millions of blogs in existence, and with your claims
of:
“WE ARE THE WORLD LEADER IN VIDEOJOURNALISM AND VJ TRAININGâ€
You must be very proud and have some very impressive list of your own student blogs doing very well in Citizen Journalism.
Do you? Can we see some of these blogs that are revolutionizing journalism?
And BTW, nice comparison, but I’m sure that unlike you Thomas Edison did not get paid by consumers by selling empty promises in order to support his own failures.
Michael Rosenblum July 14, 2010
The reality here is that newspapers and magazines are going broke left and right. Business Week was just sold to Bloomberg for $1. Newsweek cannot even find a buyer at that price. Newspapers are on the ropes. There is no mandate that the world ‘must have’ newspapers (and believe me, TV news is not far behind). They are businesses, not Holy Writ. They will go out of business. Citizen Journalism is vibrant and alive, even if it does not have the depth and quality that newspapers once had or offered. This is a kind of natural evolution of the medium. We may not like the direction in which it is headed, but be assured, that is where it is going. Of the 260 million blogs in the world today, 99% of them might not survive the shake out, but even 1% would mean 2.6 million blogs that ultimately are profitable. And that is a lot more content than all the world’s newspapers represent today by a very large multiple. We are in a transitional moment and a new world is being born. No one can know what it will look like, but it will be very different from what is dying now.
Nino July 14, 2010
“While many of the blogs and citizen journalism sites have done very interesting and positive things, they are not even close to providing the level of coverage that even financially stressed news organizations do today,†said Margaret Duffy, associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. “Not only do these blogs and websites lack the staff to adequately cover stories, but most citizen journalism managers do not have the financial resources and business experience to make their websites viable over time.â€
Michael, she is being very realistic, and most likely Margaret Duffy did not have to go very far to come up with her conclusion about citizen journalists, all she had to do was read your blog and you gave her all the answers. She is saying is the very same thing that we’ve been telling you for years.
For years you’ve been repeating the same thing over and over but soon or later words wil have to be replaced by results.
Few years ago when you mentioned the words citizen journalist on this blog you had at least 20 replies, todays there are none. Even the web sites for all those CJ supporters that you had are now gone and you haven’t shown any success story to prove your theory that CJ works. Even your CitizeNews site that according to you was going to be the Ebay of journalism no longer exists.
The problem is money, nothing works without it and there’s no money to be made in CJ. Without the green stuff it did not even work for your CJ web site so how can you convince people that CJ work?
It’s a fun and exciting thing to do when someone first starts but it doesn’t take long for the novelty to fade away when there are no incentives, and with the exception of a few kind relatives, nobody else really care of what a CJ does, or at least nobody who is willing to open their wallets.
If it’s a hobby might as well use your new acquired video skills on flowers and butterflies, at least you’ll have something pretty to show.
Rosenblum July 14, 2010
Hey Stephen
We’re in the process of rebuilding the site, not finished yet. Gimme a few days.
As for the blog topics, keep coming back, maybe you’ll find something more to your liking.
Meanwhile, see you at the new, temperate b-roll.
m
pencilgod July 14, 2010
The real irony here is that just as I was coming to terms with not liking your new look web site, your constant recycling of the same old tired themes has finally made it to the point where its just not worth me visiting your site… thanks and bye.
Still hope to see you at b-roll Michael. 🙂