Journalism as a hobby

While the future of journalism sat in the basement class G34, journalism was officially announced to be dead. This was done by by Wired editor Chris Anderson who was interviewed in the Spiegel magazine. Let's see what he said:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let's talk about the future of journalism.

Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word journalism. I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those wos mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like 'horseless carriage'.

Strong words. Then again, Mr. Anderson is paid up to $50.000 to say these things in the front of all the biggest media executives and editor-in-chiefs in the world.

If you continue reading the interview, you will notice that Anderson has lot of the same points as Dean Gillman had at our dinner. Traditional media is not providing news for the elite people, such as Anderson and Gillman. Judging from the declining circulation numbers, newspapers aren't doing it for the ordinary folk either.

I personally believe there is going to be massive changes in the way we are informed about the world (see, I didn't use any of the forbidden words). The industry is, as Professor Suro described, in cacophonic state and needs a completely new paradigm.

The change will probably come outside our industry, outside the big media companies. It might be Google, it might me General Electric. My favorite bet is either Wal-Mart or Nestle: they will buy out media companies because they want to print content on the serial boxes. So you still get your NY Times delivered to the breakfast table.

I would like to continue Professor Suro's metaphor. He stated that the problems that media is facing right now are as difficult as "trying to change oil to a car while doing 70 on the highway". If you think about the paradigm shift we need, it's more like getting rid of the need to commute and survive without cars. Replace the word "cars" with "journalists" and commute with "journalism" so you'll get the picture.

Anyone living in LA knows that this sounds insane. But that's what we are basically doing here. Good luck everyone.

PS. My 5 cents for the new bloggers: if you want your blog to be found, it's always a good idea to mention (geek) celebs and companies. Let's see how it works from USC site :)