The American Journalism Review's article, "The Quality Control Quandary," got me even more depressed about the future of journalism than I was during lecture today. Although several of the sources quoted in Carl Sessions Stepp's piece seemed either optimistic or neutral about how news is becoming increasingly web oriented, I can't say I feel the same way.
Sure, more editors does not necessarily ensure better editing. But, in most cases, it increases the chances at errors getting caught.
This opinion is not groundbreaking. In fact, it seems that most people in the field of journalism agree. So why is it that editors are the first to get fired?
It comes down to priorities, as all business decisions do. But these priorities seem to be leading journalism into a bad direction.
It's not just the fact that fewer editors means those who survived round 17 of job cuts have to work twice as hard, but they have to work twice as hard as their initial twice as hard because of the demands of readers. With the Internet, we want more, faster. Poor editors! How the heck are they supposed to get anything done other than the bare minimum? If journalism continues like this, stories will be press releases, not watch dog-esque, hard-hitting news.
Although editors do not determine the depth at which reporters delve into their stories, if cuts are being made so willy-nillyly (sorry about the fake words I’m using), who’s to say the cuts won’t transfer to the reporters? In fact, it already has.
At the very least, the huge demands made on the speed at which we receive news is making reporters focus less on asking probing questions, and more on asking “who,” “what,” “where,” and “when” and “how.” Who cares about “why.”
Regardless, we must be careful not to blame consumers. Just because there’s an increasing demand doesn’t mean the demand was entirely brought about by the consumers. Much of the demand was created because online news agencies thought they could do it all.
If they stuck with in depth stories or tip of the iceberg ones, perhaps there would be less stress overall. Niche news seems to be the most realistic bet for our evolving world.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree. Job cuts will degrade the quality of journalism. As you wrote, journalists are not asking the hard questions. Instead, they are getting the "unbiased" facts, but fail to make connections or drawing any conclusions. Personally, I want the articles I read to do more than just restate the facts. Because reporter don't have time to adequately investigate and write stories, readers are suffering.
ReplyDelete