Online reporters think journalism on the ‘wrong track’
Spotted on reporter.net is this survey from Pew Research’s project for excellence in journalism involving online reporters.
More than half (54% vs 45%) feel that journalism as a whole is on the ‘wrong track’ – compared to 62% of print journalists who were asked that question a year ago.
Meanwhile 57% think the Internet is changing the values of journalism. And given that they make their money online already, it’s not a huge surprise that 82% are either very or somewhat confident that a profitable business model can be found online.
When asked how the Internet is changing values, 45% cited lower standards and less careful reporting. “The focus is more on getting the news out before checking its accuracy, and this is weakening journalism’s credibility,” wrote one online editor quoted in the report. “A reversion to checking and double-checking is needed, especially since mistakes can last forever online.”
Actually as last year’s TNS Digital Worlds study alludes to, even though more and more consumers are getting their news online, the need for quality hasn’t gone away. ‘Online news’ had a global high trust value of 39% (just ahead of newspapers), but ‘blogs’ had a rating of only 10%. For consumers as a whole (and I appreciate this is different once you break it down into different demographics), they still want information from what is seen to be reputable sources.
User-generated content seen as having low value
The encouraging point about the study is the high commitment online writers themselves place on original content that they’ve done the legwork in producing. Six in ten (63%) ranked original reporting as the most important information on their site, four times as much as any other type of information.
At the same time, information produced by their users (e.g. UGC) came in at the bottom, alluding to the fact that resources such as CNN’s iReport aren’t always seen as having the highest worth within online news organisations – despite the fact that user generated stories can and do of course break through to the main site.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing or indeed surprising. It points to the fact that online reporters pride themselves on their professionalism and ability to produce good and well researched content, and that whatever we may say about the different mediums such as print, the future foundations of journalism are solid – maybe it’s not on the wrong track after all.
By comparison, if you or I upload a story onto a news site, it’s obviously going to be of a much more variable quality. Sometimes it will be more informative than what a professional journalist produces, but all things being equal, the person who does this as a full time job and not a hobby will do it better.
Image – Online newswire model by ‘noodlepie’
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