NOTE: This post ran in August 2009, and the new and old media continue to plunge onward. Cranky old legacy journalists are embracing valuable new tech tools, and young Web 2.0 types with mad skills are learning that good journalism entails more than linking. More new hybrids are sure to emerge soon, fusing the best of both worlds, with first-class content, design, and distribution. Many ideas, much disruption, more convergence. Print may be dying, but a golden age of the media is coming. It's a good time to be a journalist.
For those who don't follow the news and tech industries, a huge debate has raged in recent years over the fate of newspapers and the print media. (This Wikipedia entry gives a good overview of the future of newspapers, while this blog post by journalism professor and media consultant Jeff Jarvis in BuzzMachine -- "NewBizNews and Hyperpersonal News Streams" -- looks at possible new business models for online media.) Many journalists have moved forward, but some still seem mired in the past. Long before some publishers were even aware of Web sites, the transition from print to digital media began in earnest in the early 1990s, when the commercial Internet started taking off. At that time, I worked as a dorm director planning cross-cultural and other educational events at Stanford University. On Sundays, I noticed that tech-savvy students of all backgrounds (gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic class) started their day by checking their e-mail accounts in the computer room, rather than reading newspaper comics or sports pages. A talk by New York Times tech writer John Markoff, the co-author of Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, filled our dorm living room with students. Another talk by a prominent newspaper editor drew all of three people.
(Above, The House of Blogs After Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.com, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)
All sure signs of the digital era, a media and cultural convergence that continues to grow. Aside from technologists and journalists in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs, few mainstream media types back then noticed (although now they claim they did). Most editors and media execs looked bemusedly at you when you mentioned this thing called the Internet. (See this interesting take on the early days of newspapers on the Net, by former Rocky Mountain News online editor Robert Niles.) As for those college students who ignored the Sunday papers? They're running global companies and startups that are changing the world. And every publisher has finally gotten religion, although nearly a generation later. In their defense, it takes time to embrace the shock of the new. The technology for ATMs existed for years before the average bank customer felt comfortable using the machines in the 1980s. Insert plastic card, tap keypad.
(Above, Inside Wilshire One by Xeni, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)
Never feared the vast global technology shift -- the tech stuff is the exciting part. Rather, I'm scared for the soul of journalism, the aggressive coverage of important topics in the U.S.A. and globally. I fear the dumbing down of journalism, the dearth of diverse voices, the obsession with celebrity culture, the love of light and fluffy. Don't get me wrong -- I like light and fluffy too. All of us in the media are guity of pandering to the masses. I just want more serious, not less.
Wall Street Journal columnist David Wessel just came out with a new book called In Fed We Trust, on the role of the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis. You could argue that the Fed, after the White House, is the second most powerful institution in the world. But many millions more will search for stories on Paula Abdul's contract spat with American Idol than read about the Fed's dance with Wall Street powerbrokers. Sad. Moreover, I worry about the lack of diversity in the blogosphere -- a problem akin to the well-documented lack of diversity in U.S.-based TV, radio and print newsrooms. (See reports by the RTNDA/Hofstra University and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.) If the blogosphere remains a mono-cultural sphere, an exclusive soiree or frat party and not a street jam open to all, then blogs and online media will lose much heart and vitality. That debate would fill many dissertations, although not many books and reports by famed Web media experts even look at the issue. Here are some links:
(Above left, Paula Abdul - Greatest Hits by DQ, under Creative Commons license on flickr.com.)
All is not bleak, though. Dozens of diverse media sites have emerged in recent years. A lot of talented young digital and global journalists convene at WiredJournalists, a professional-networking site co-founded by Ryan Sholin, Howard Owens, and Zac Echola. 
More than 200 bloggers and citizen journalists from around the world can be read at Global Voices, which may be the most diverse online media outlet around. GlobalPost.com, an international news site launched by cable TV executive Philip Balboni and former Boston Globe foreign correspondent Charles Sennott, is growing quickly and read in more than 200 countries -- check out a powerful multimedia series called "Life, Death and the Taliban." (Disclosure: My blog, CoolGlobalBiz.com, is one of many featured on the GlobalPost site.) U.S.-based minority bloggers gather at the Blogging While Brown conventions, while women bloggers network at the BlogHer site and big confabs. At Wired Journalists, creatives like Chikodi Chima and others represent the future of multimedia journalism in the global economy. 
Chima blogs on TechTrotter, which he describes as "a multimedia exploration" of entrepreneurs and technology in developing nations. He recently filed posts from Brazil on everything from samba music to Sao Paulo slums. No self-absorbed blogger here, obsessing over his brand. Hopefully, many more promising journalists like Chima will step up to cover news of global impact. (A tragic reminder for those of us sitting comfortably at our desks: more than 700 journalists worldwide have been killed pursuing the news since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York.)
Years ago, I was lucky to glean advice from several old-school journalists who, unfortunately, will be in much shorter supply in the coming years, given the commercialization of the media and the death of much in-depth reporting: The late gay journalist Randy Shilts (photo left), author of The Mayor of Castro Street, And the Band Played On, and Conduct Unbecoming. Stanley Karnow (photo right), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 
Vietnam: A History and In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines. And the late Nancy Hicks Maynard (photo below), co-founder of the Maynard Institute journalism training nonprofit in Oakland, California, U.S.A. Each taught journalism skills at the highest level, and each imparted a strong sense of history and current affairs. The No. 1 lesson from these masters of the craft: Use your talents where they'll truly make a difference.
(Above left, Randy Shilts photo from Reporter Zero by filmmaker Carrie Lozano. Above right, Stanley Karnow photo from Library of Congress.)
With all the media cutbacks today, with so much fluff posing as news, with earnings trumping editorial, I hope the next-gen journalists don't waste their talents and sell out totally. Gotta stay optimistic. Youthful bloggers seem to be creating a new global journalism of hope and diversity that would make the early media pioneers proud. At some early juncture of their careers, at the crucible of today's cultural and digital media shift, the young digital journalists of the world face a tough choice: Kiss ass or kick ass? I hope they make the righteous move.
(Above, Nancy Hicks Maynard photo from Wikipedia and Chattershmatter.com.)
