One year on the Web is like seven years in any other medium,â a newsroom leader named Kevin P. McKenna told Laura Italiano in âGimme That On-Line Religion,â her 1996 piece for the Columbia Journalism Review about the popeâs journey into cyberspace. Itâs a marvelous quote for many reasons, one of which is that McKennaâs job title at the time was âeditorial director for the New York Times Electronic Media Company.â It wouldnât take long for those last three words to become superfluous.
More important, the quote conveys a key reality for the media business: Change never stops or slows down. One year is always seven years; time speeds on without a moment when transformation ends, the work is complete, and you can put your feet up. Consider how quaint McKennaâs comment feels now. Back then there was âthe Webâ; now we have Twitter, Facebook, Clubhouse, NFTs, and whatever form of information-sharing pops up next. And note that, when Italiano wrote her article, it was astonishing, as she reported, that 343 emails had been sent to a generic address connected to the pope. Now weâre five years past the time a fake story about the pope endorsing Donald Trump registered nearly a million engagements on Facebook.
Time speeds on without a moment when transformation ends, the work is complete, and you can put your feet up.
As shown in this collection of pieces from the CJR archives, digital technology continuously shakes up media in at least three ways. First, there is the business of journalism. Itâs hard not to feel a little wistful reading Edward R. Murrowâs entreaty from the 1950s: TV news, he argued, had become an âendless outpouring of tranquilizersâ aimed at pleasing advertisers. He didnât hope to âturn television into a 27-inch wailing wall where longhairs constantly moan about the state of our culture and our defense,â he continued. âBut I would just like to see it reflect, occasionally, the hard, unyielding realities of the world.â
Now the problem is the opposite. The vagaries of algorithms push the news business to become an infinite wailing wall, crowding out in a different way the reflection and sincerity that Murrow sought. Emily Bell, in 2016, described media companies as ships sailing along with, or against, the pernicious winds cast down by the gods of social networks. More recently, prestige journalism outlets have shifted toward subscription modelsâwhich seemed, at first, to take us in the direction of quality and originality. (Why else would someone give you their money?) But as itâs turned out, there are still reasons to worry. Good information is becoming more expensive, while bad information will always be free.
The second profound force is the mode of distribution. In 1958, Murrow had vastly greater influence than any journalist today; the media industry has since splintered. First came the rise of cable news. Then came the Web, which dramatically reduced startup costs for publishing. Social media followed, shifting power from newsrooms to individuals who could use Facebook and Twitter to build their own brands. And now we have newsletters, where people can turn those brands they built one tweet at a time into profitable fiefdoms.
Alissa Quartâs essay is a keen look at that phenomenon. An expert used to be someone with a credential, she observed; now an expert is anyone whoâs claimed the crown. The same could be said about journalists. You used to need a credential to call yourself a journalist, and you certainly needed one to make it your lifeâs work. Now you can just put the title in your Twitter bio. Which model is better? Quart was wise not to tip the scales. Things were a lot simpler and smoother when Murrow called his correspondents and colleagues to set the agenda of the CBS Evening News. They are a lot more complicated and interesting now that Norah OâDonnell, his distant successor, has to pore through hundreds of Substacksâany one of which might get more attention than she does on a given day.
And third, there is the work itself. Every year, the skills required to be a successful journalist change. You have to competently report and write a draft, as has always been the case, but now you must also understand how to present your story on social media, optimize it for search, and perhaps transform it into a newsletter. Moreover, the act of reporting has evolved; journalists must navigate the vast, choppy ocean of information (and rumors and lies) that is the internet. Journalists have learned to sleuth the dark Web and find secrets buried in online data. They reverse-image-search to fact-check the origin of a photograph. They meet sources not on park benches, but on Signal. When Margaret Sullivan interviewed Philip Meyer, the father of âprecision journalism,â for CJR, in 2001, he argued that all journalists needed to get over their phobias of math and machines and learn how to use a computer. Weâve finally done that, at least. But if you want a journalism job in five years, itâll sure help to understand artificial intelligence, too.
Itâs easy to read these pieces, particularly Murrowâs, and feel a certain defeatism. But thatâs the wrong emotion for the moment. Better to feel excitement and curiosity about whatâs to come for the media industry, and what has yet to be built. That journalism is a profession in constant reinvention is intimidating; itâs also what makes what we do beautiful. Bell wrote energetically about three new media entrants: BuzzFeed, Vox, and Fusion. At the time, they all seemed similar, and similarly promising. Two are now worth about a billion dollars, and one is totally gone. Media is a roller coaster: the downs make you queasy; the ups are thrilling; the ride is never boring. âIâm not doubled over by âthis computer stuffâ just yet,â Italiano concluded. But, she added, âI am smiling.â
TOP IMAGE: Journalists in El Salvador, November 1964; Susan Meiselas/Magnum
