The outlook for journalists: optimism and realism

I don’t think that much of Roy Greenslade’s optimism about journalism. Yes in some ways journalism is thriving, but people worrying about who will pay for investigative journalism, and any journalism other than industry/niche interest type news, have a good point. Some of the comments on his post were very interesting though – I particularly liked this one.

In the long term I am optimistic; a new model of how to pay for words will eventually rise from the dust.

In the short term though I think the next decade or so will be bleak. There’s no sign of that new model arriving for some time to come, or anyone with any idea of how it’s going to work.

I still feel there is lots of cause for optimism for journalism, particularly on transparency (not just in the news media but generally) and ‘networked’ journalism (though I’m sceptical that this will be useful for large numbers of stories, it will potentially work in some important ones). But troubled business model is what makes my doubt remains. If no-one can be paid to find out the things that someone doesn’t want you to know, who is going to find them out? I don’t know if we can rely solely on hobbyists, enthusiasts, or those who don’t need to earn a living or have enough spare time to investigate things on their own behalf.