Use New Avenues to End Journalism Death Spiral
When Philip Meyer, holder of the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina, begins to suggest the end of traditional journalism, his words must be taken seriously. He grew up in the mainstream media and became a respected academic looking at the news media by using both quality and financial models. Now he has an essay on Saving Journalism in the Columbia Journalism Review.
He writes in part:
If we are to preserve journalism and its social-service functions, maybe we would be wise not to focus too much on traditional media. The death spiral might be irreversible. We should look for ways to keep the spirit and tradition of socially responsible journalism alive until it finds a home in some new media form whose nature we can only guess at today.
He says we might have to turn to a nonprofit model and he cites the Pew Charitable Trust for starting civic journalism, the Center for Public Integrity doing investigative journalim and National Public Radio with its solid journalism. He also suggests a need for certification to help separate “genuine and pseudo-journalism.”
However, most provocative to me is him mentioning the death spiral.
