Allt fast förflyktigas

Programmeraren Jonathan Glick var en av de som fick New York Times att ge sig ut på internet under nittiotalet. Resultatet blev The New York Times Online. I en intervju med Columbia Journalism Review reflekterar han över framtiden för nyheter på nätet. Slutsaten är att det kanske finns en framtid för nyhetesbranschen, men den kommer inte att se ut som den gör idag. Jag fastnade framförallt för följande meningar:

Having spent a lot of time in this industry, I’m not at all concerned that there will be the loss of investigative journalism. I actually find it very funny that people think that’s a risk. Only because it’s quite obvious when you meet these folks that they will do it for free. People kill themselves to get into journalism, and no one gets paid a lot of money anyway. So, this idea that you need this traditional newspaper model is completely false.

Now the bigger question is, “Do you need the brand of a newspaper to do investigative journalism?’ Well, maybe, but the track record on that is terrible. We’ve just gone through the ultimate proof test. We just fought a war that didn’t need to be fought and people were just unaware. So, if it’s the case that you need big media brands, what were they doing?

Remember that newspapers and the major television networks are the last content organization site that are composed of full-time workers. Hollywood, until the 1940s, was composed of studios. People were employees of the studios, and then over time they figured out that was not the best way to do this. We should have people just come together to make movies; then we have the best people for the best movie rather than the people who just happened to work for the studio. And the studios became funders, and the management agencies represented the talent, and the management companies packaged the products, and it became this much more complex ecosystem of players that put projects together and brought them alive.

My guess is that something similar will happen with news. And, by the way, in some small way it already has. It will just take a while for these businesses to get essentially destroyed and for that new thing to get built.

I think the odds of there being less investigative journalism in the world are zero. I just don’t think there is any evidence that that will happen. Just walk through your bookstore.