If there were an ashram for people who worship contemplative long-form journalism, it would be the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. This March, at the Sheraton Boston Hotel, hundreds of journalists, authors, students, and aspirants came for the weekend event. Seated on metal chairs in large conference rooms, we learned about muscular storytelling (the Q-shaped narrative structure—who knew?). We sipped cups of coffee and ate bagels and heard about reporting history through letters and public documents and how to evoke empathy for our subjects, particularly our most marginal ones. As we listened to reporters discussing great feats—exposing Walter Reed’s fetid living quarters for wounded soldiers, for instance—we also renewed our pride in our profession. In short, the conference exemplified the best of the older media models, the ones that have so recently fallen into economic turmoil.
Yet even at the weekend’s strongest lectures on interview techniques or the long-form profile, we couldn’t ignore the digital elephant in the room. We all knew as writers that the kinds of pieces we were discussing require months of work to be both deep and refined, and that we were all hard-pressed for the time and the money to do that. It was always hard for nonfiction writers, but something seems to have changed. For those of us who believed in the value of the journalism and literary nonfiction of the past, we had become like the people at the ashram after the guru has died.
Right now, journalism is more or less divided into two camps, which I will call Lost Media and Found Media. I went to the Nieman conference partially because I wanted to see how the forces creating this new division are affecting and afflicting the Lost Media world that I love best, not on the institutional level,...
Complete access to this article will soon be available for purchase. Subscribers will be able to access this article, and the rest of CJR’s magazine archive, for free. Select articles from the last 6 months will remain free for all visitors to CJR.org.
Heavens, not ANOTHER article about how "bloggers" are all young, and mostly not paid, and recycling others' hard work. Please look a little bit further for your sourcing next time you tackle this topic. We are not so young (a couple in the near-50/just-past-50 range), paid (our ad sales continue to grow), and writing/reporting ALL original material, with the occasional link only provided if it's something so incredible it's news all its own, at our community-level news website. I'm the editor and I worked in "lost media" for 25-plus years. Made my own pathway out (although we didn't start our site with that intention - it evolved because there was an aching community need for up-to-the-minute news, information, and discussion). You touch on this briefly but I strongly urge anyone else who fears their old-media days are numbered (mine probably weren't but I just didn't want to stay in that festering situation any more) to look at the options with promise and hope, not dread and fear. So many community-news sites are not only helping citizens become more informed, educated, and involved, but also are creating more of an appetite for news and information that can be provided by other sources too, including those that previously were here but hadn't quite evolved. P.S. Don't bother getting into "found media" if you're afraid of hard work. It's 24/7. And it's by far the most fulfilling thing I've ever done, professionally.
Posted by West Seattle Blog
on Wed 21 May 2008 at 02:31 PM
Is the esteem of the industry so low that we get to read several thousand words on how journalism's future will be guided by unpaid, unedited and totally self-directed keyboard addicts?
The entire argument on Lost Media and Found Media may sound tasty today, but there's less structure to it than a Wheat Thin. The success of the Found Media is dependent on aggregators finding a way to make a profit -- something that doesn't seem to be in the cards yet. Whatever margin that's available now is due mainly to the low- and no-cost supply of content, and those brazen, pioneering young things of the Found Media are going to have to find money for rent, kids and health insurance someday soon.
And, despite the best of intentions, things done for the glory of being on the cutting edge tend to wane, as we've seen one (and arguably two or three) digital revolutions turn into, well, not much. We are running fast into an age where that Lost Media is losing ground, although it's easier to credit a conjured-up Found Media movement than realise the public isn't buying your product because they don't feel they need it. And it's not all being captured by what's being presented as the Next Best Thing in journalism; instead of asking "how many hours do you spend on the Internet" for a survey question, ask "How many blogs do you read every day? Please tell us which ones are your favorites." Think you'll really get more than three percent of the audience actually able to tick off the Huntington Post or Daily Kos (especially without being prompted)?
The business is changing, and we have to adapt to what the consumer wants. Do you really think that's going to be a product dominated by, to be honest, amateurs with no real goal beyond today?
Posted by psemerson
on Wed 21 May 2008 at 05:38 PM
Stop whining. Start innovating.
Every reporter, editor and news exec should repeat that like a mantra every morning and every evening. Why alleged newspaper leaders think they can do better by making their product increasingly irrelevant is beyond imagining.
Cutting staff and shrinking newsholes for short-term financial gain is no strategy. Less does not equal more. And old does not equal new.
Newspaper execs talk like the record company executives who still think they are selling CDs, not music. Market news, not paper. Give people a reason to buy the paper/visit the website/watch the video/listen to the audio/interact online.
I get the fear and uncertainty. I scored my first professional newspaper byline in 1993. I have bled ink.
But the world is changing. Deal with it.
Posted by Sean Carr
on Thu 22 May 2008 at 12:16 PM
I once wa-as lost but now am found, was blind bu-ut now I see...
But what I see is media folks of all kinds clamoring for a more nuanced, less polarized discussion. More at mediarepublic.org.
Posted by Persephone
on Fri 23 May 2008 at 01:27 PM
Let's face the facts. I'm not being cynic but its true. We all have to deal with the fact that web-addicts ARE in fact taking over what you may call the "Lost Media". It's time to accept that journalism has not entirely been shaped by it's writers, its also been shaped by its readers. If the audience wants entertainment and entertainment is web based than writers must mold to fit that requirement. Unfortunately, this is the way it must be done. One cannot spend their days moping about change, its a "if you can't beat them, join them" situation. The "found media" is actually not that bad. Bloggers can provide some writers with some type certainty that articles are being read. Whether they like what is written or not, is another story, but hey it comes with the job. The world is changing you either mold with it or you'll find yourself in an uphill battle.
In the end, accept it..you really can't ignore the digital elephant in the room.
Posted by Y.T.S. on Mon 9 Mar 2009 at 02:26 PM