It’s not you, it’s me: Cali j-student on the future of newspapers
Journalists should stop looking at outside industry pressures when talking about the death of newspapers, and start looking at themselves, writes j-student Mihir Zaveri in independent student press paper The Daily Californian.
Journalists should stop looking at outside industry pressures when talking about the death of newspapers, and start looking at themselves, writes j-student Mihir Zaveri in independent student press paper The Daily Californian.
"Here is the truth," he writes, "It’s not you, it’s me. It’s not Craigslist’s fault for taking classified advertisements away from the domain of print. It’s not the blogosphere’s fault for writing and spreading news for free. It’s not the market’s fault for turning journalism upside down … It’s not even the sales reps’ fault for not selling enough ads to keep newspapers afloat. All of that stuff is on us, the journalists. It’s our fault. Our job was to report the news, and we did that. But we got complacent, and we stopped evolving, and soon the concept of a news article became far removed from what you, as a person, valued. Now we find ourselves in an awkward position where an indispensable component of democracy is slipping away, and we’re scrambling."
Our profession's biggest sin, according to Zaveri?
"It’s clear to me that a number of people are out of touch with the core of journalism. Journalism isn’t a business, and a news article isn’t a product. Sure, advertising is a business, and it has been so intertwined with newspapers over the last century that it’s hard to think of journalism without advertising. But journalism isn’t advertising."
Instead, he writes, journalism is about informing people to make decisions and improving society as a whole. And, yes, Zaveri also has a few ideas about what can also be done to improve journalism as a whole. For more, check out his article.
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