FICRY

...whether there be any news in it or not. - Henry Fielding

Just as record numbers of aimless liberal arts majors are getting duped into applying to expensive journalism schools (a year at Columbia will put you back a cool 60k, which is about 60k more than the average j-school graduate’s salary these days), the world of journalism is crumbling. This is not news to anyone, especially to those producing it.

A few weeks ago, CEO’s of major news organizations absconded to a clandestine meeting, the topic of which was kept under an ersatz veil of secrecy. The main issue on the table at this meeting was charging for online content, which is no secret at all.  For those of us who came of age during the golden years of the internet, the inevitable is coming.  Whether it’s subscription or pay-as-you-read, free online news will soon join Napster in the grave of internet things that were just too good to be true.  The real question everyone is asking is: will it work?

To be sure, the gang of major news corporations will carefully plan their coup of free online news.  They all try to make it seem glamorous.  They all try to thwart readers from simply moving to a different news source by cooperatively implementing the fee-based system on the same day, at the same time. They all claim that it’s worth it.  And for some, it will be, but for most, I suspect, it won’t.

The real crux of this issue that the media has not yet grasped is that free online content is simply a scapegoat for a much larger issue.  New as we know it has changed. It’s a model that worked once upon a time, when communication was cumbersome and facts not easily verifiable, but has since become archaic. What we have now, the chaos of cognitive input we are subjected to on a daily basis, is collectively generated information on the one hand and entertainment on the other.

Jefferson is often quoted as saying that between democracy and newspapers he’ll take the latter. What he should have said was that circulating information is necessary for democracy.  We need information to make (not to be circular here) informed decisions as a society,  Merely being printed no longer invokes the authority the written word once had, and the idea of the journalist as an authority on information is at least losing the gravity it once held. Even if a journalist manages to eek out a story that is comprehensive, objective and true, it is no longer relevant in a world where Monday morning is old news by lunchtime.  The incredible machine that is taking the place of the journalist is the continuous, albeit entropic, global information convergence and conversation. Reputable, factual, timely and interesting news is now necessarily participatory. It is gathered by the informal collective of twitterers, bloggers, facebookers, aggregators and you-tubers. It is in a constant state of update, of fact checking, of hyperlinked related information, of relaying first hand accounts, of varying opinion and active discourse. The news is no longer given; the news is simply happening, and it’s happening, unlike traditional reported news, at nearly the same speed as the events themselves.  News as collective information is little more than a conversation.

This is a reclamation of information by the people. Every choice we make from the mundane of what to eat for breakfast to the profound of whom to cast your vote for depends on the information we receive.  A fair and just society founded on equality cannot remain so unless the people have unhindered access to information. Access to information is a right and the blogosphere has emancipated is from the filter of the newspaper.

So when you buy your online articles, if you buy your online articles, know that it’s an expense not far from your monthly Netflix fee. If you want actual information, join the conversation, by adding your comments below. As for the coming deluge of journalism school grads? Well, somebody’s gotta make my coffee.

By Erik Jorgen Jorgensen, Featured Contributor, FICRY.com

Source Article Here.