Future Of Journalism

rhysweatherley writes: "This year's Andrew Olle Lecture was presented by Eric Beecher of Text Media, and deals with the current and future state of "real" journalism, including the impact of the online world on traditional journalism (not all of it good). It is a good insight from one of the media's insiders in Australia. More information on the Andrew Olle Lecture series can be found here." I thought this was interesting. A little different than the usual Slashdot fare, but good reading nonetheless.

Comments

Propoganda article

[ideut]

The article begins by berating the way that "The news business used to be a craft, but now it has turned into a manufacturing operation". The authour makes a distinction between "commercial" journalism and "serious" journalism. He seems to think that serious journalism is incapable of self-financing, and must be funded as though it were a charity. However, he manages to come up with several examples of privately run quality journalism, not least the wonderful Economist.

I would accuse him of being too easily distracted. True, the media business is enourmous and pumps out a lot of sterile crap. However, just because lots of people are willing to pay for commoditised snippets of information, and lots of companies will provide that information, the market for quality journalism is no smaller. You just have to know where to look.

The authour is worried that it is hard to turn a profit from modern serious journalism because everybody expects information to be free. Well, printed media has relied on advertising and tie-in promotions (rather than cover price) for a while now anyway.

Ultimately, though, the authour is trying to protect his job. ABC is funded by the ozzie government. ABC's budget is currently being reviewed. This article is a piece of propoganda trying to protect ABC's budget. Much as I hate the idea of state funded broadcasting, the BBC is so damned good that I happily pay my licence fee. What do ozzies think of their state media?