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By Sally Baxter<\/a> Pity the poor journalist.<\/p>\n For every pompous hack filing his or her daily lecture to the nation, there are countless others trying to do more and more every day with less and less.<\/p>\n At the same time, if they\u2019re smart, they\u2019re trying to get a handle on the shape of the future. Which way, Journalism? And, not unimportantly, will it pay?<\/p>\n And will it be worth the constant nit-picking and sometimes outright abuse on social media that seems to go with the job these days?<\/p>\n Is the good ship of the traditional publisher going down or is it just shifting course?<\/p>\n And what, in the future, will distinguish a professional journalist from the many competent amateurs already out there with their blogs and their wonky charts?<\/p>\n Journalism academic Jay Rosen recently identified five distinct power shifts between writers and publishers which may give a hint of the way forward.<\/p>\n Not all of us can be technology bloggers Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg\u00a0(the subjects of his article)<\/b>,<\/a>\u00a0but their story highlights how niche journalism is developing well beyond the traditional specialist publication model.<\/p>\n Rosen observes correctly that modern readers simply have less of a need for publishers. Traditionally, news was bundled together into a single package which tried to include something for everyone.<\/p>\n Put the package online, says Rosen, and the bundle falls apart.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s the rub. As consumers we are no longer prepared to wade through all the bits we\u2019re not interested in to get to the few stories we do want and the telly listings.<\/p>\n An exchange on Twitter between Australian blogger Greg Jericho\u00a0(Grog\u2019s Gamut)\u00a0<\/b><\/a>and Marcus Priest of the Australian Financial Review encapsulates Rosen\u2019s point, and the dire predicament of traditional publishing.<\/p>\n Jericho commented to fellow blogger Paula Mathewson\u00a0(Dragonista\u2019s Blog)<\/b><\/a>\u00a0that he\u2019d like to see the AFR return to a pay-per-view model so he could read just its political coverage.<\/p>\n You can read the full exchange\u00a0here\u00a0<\/b><\/a>\u00a0(thanks to Matthew Lee for Storifying it).<\/b><\/p>\n Priest\u2019s defence of the traditional bundle is robust but can\u2019t alter the fact that a growing segment of news consumers \u2013 like Jericho, like me \u2013 no longer want it.<\/p>\n Encouragingly perhaps, Rosen thinks that puts writers in the ascendant.<\/p>\n As he sees it, it\u2019s simple economics. People will pay for something which is scarce. And that\u2019s no longer \u2018news\u2019 which, we all know, is with us 24\/7 in a bewildering array of formats, nor the ability to distribute it.<\/p>\n What\u2019s scarce is good journalism which serves its community.<\/p>\n And there are readers \u2013 like Jericho, like me \u2013 who will pay for it. Just find out how we want it, and give it to us just that way, as I\u2019ve said before (Does journalism die not with a thunderclap but a tweet).<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n In the Netherlands there\u2019s now an app for that. It\u2019s called DNP and its readers subscribe to specific journalists who edit and market themselves. Seed money included around E25,000 raised through crowdfunding.<\/p>\n According to DNP managing director Jan-Jaap Heij, the journalists don\u2019t have to invest anything, not even a start-up fee and revenue is split at around 50 per cent each between journalist and host.<\/p>\n Heij says the venture started out with 11 people and now has about 200 lined up to join. More details at\u00a0Journalism.co.uk<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>(and thanks to Margo Kingston for the link).<\/p>\n In Australia independent journalists, like Kingston,\u00a0are also seeking a paid model online, primarily through subscriptions and donations to cooperative websites.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a model which readers seem to be growing ever more comfortable with, but will it be enough to allow good journalism to survive?<\/p>\n Returning to the scarcity principle, it won\u2019t survive on opinion alone (everyone\u2019s got one, remember) and the trouble with good journalism is that it\u2019s expensive.<\/p>\n In the past the burden of cost was borne by the publisher, who could count on the squillions of dollars coming in from the long-dried up rivers of advertising gold.<\/p>\n Priest was right, if out of date. The publishing bundle supported the writers who attracted people like me and Jericho, invested in training their successors and shouldered the burden of costs when eager journalists fell foul of the law.<\/p>\n Will reader contributions ever be able to cover those sorts of costs?<\/p>\n To quote Kingston, who is building\u00a0Australians for Honest Politics<\/b><\/a>\u00a0on a crowdfunding model, \u201cTime will tell\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n And what about access? New Model Journalists are demonstrating their worth in good old fashioned research of publicly available information. But research raises questions and good journalists need to be able to ask them.<\/p>\n Crikey\u2019s Matthew Knott touched on this problem when he reported the office squeeze being felt by the Canberra press gallery, as it struggles to accommodate the smaller online players like\u00a0The Hoopla\u00a0<\/b><\/a>(another example of New Model Journalism). His full article (I don\u2019t think it\u2019s behind the Crikey\u00a0paywall) here:<\/p>\n
\nFebruary 24. 2013
\nSource: SallyBaxter\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n