Oh, Pew!

Michael Hedges March 16, 2009 Follow on Twitter

American journalism experts continue to believe American journalism is in crisis because American newspapers are going bust. The Pew Research Center’s 6th annual Project for Excellence in Journalism State of the News Media report takes the whining to new heights. It’s been coming for a generation. It’s time to let it go.

The Pew reports stark details of American journalism, particularly of the newspaper variety. Revenues have fallen nearly a quarter in two years. Twenty percent of newspaper journalists working in 2001 have by now lost their jobs. Americans are going online for news and, largely, not paying for it. There are too many websites with news so the click-through ad rate has crashed.

All these trends are visible in Europe. And while European media operators, unions and journalism advocates flinch at dimming economic prospects this year and possibly next the irredeemable truth is that American news media, largely of the old guard, sucked on the same ‘irrational exuberance’ that plagues other business sectors. Laughing all the way to the bankers – who, too, were laughing – debt exceeded all reason. As salaries and bonuses reached the stratosphere, so did hubris.

Advertising revenue draining from newspapers, magazines, network television and local television is being sucked away by search engines, says the report. Nothing on the horizon trumps the quest for money, draining resources from audience and reader acquisition.

The Pew report, therefore, ventures into finance and ideas not tried. Give up on micropayments and non-profit status, it says. News organizations might try the successful cable TV business model by exacting a few cents from internet service providers which would be passed along to the public. It is, frankly, worth a hard look even though it bears paralyzing similarity to the European television license fee tax.

Other trends were noted, few bringing joy to traditional news media. Speaking specifically of political journalism, the rise of cable TV news has elevated minute-by-minute coverage, each minute containing a new ‘breaking’ headline. The same could be said of business journalism.

The report sees a power-shift to individual journalists as more people access blogs and social networking sites seeking to eliminate the middle-man gate-keeper of traditional news media. (See that idea here)

Neither the Pew report nor chief editor Tom Rosenstiel see impending doom for American news media. But the convergence of economics, the Web and postmodernism have forced news providers into a rush for change. “Imagine,” Rosenstiel writes, “ someone about to begin physical therapy following a stroke, suddenly contracting a debilitating secondary illness.”