Final post

Phil Rogers recently visited my Broadcast class to talk about his career in journalism. The first thing he wrote on the whiteboard was, “Change your major.” From that point on, we spent the two hours discussing where the future of journalism will head.

I immediately thought of my guerilla media class – where we have learned just how journalism can take many forms, challenge direction and enact progress.

Rogers explained just how unprepared the newspaper industry was when it came to new forms of media. Papers had to accept the Internet, the bastard child to the news business. The Internet was a second thought to the print version of news, but today, has become the main venue for news. Instead of just writing a story for print and throwing it online, newspapers have begun to accept that online is the focus. Unfortunately, this came after Craigslist. Because Craigslist, the news industry has to find a new way to gain revenue. How can newspapers make money from the Internet?

Newspapers can profit through many forms and challenge direction through new models. For example, an iTunes model can help profit by selling news. But would people pay for their news? Well, maybe so. Just as a person would pay for an organic apple, would they pay for a higher quality of information? Then again, would you pay for anything on the Internet?

From our class and Mark Manion and Abby Goodrum’s Terrorism or Civil Disobedience: Toward a Hacktivist Ethic, we discussed how the Internet began as a freedom, forget the system, mentality. Micro-charging, or charging for articles or news outlets, just as you would a 99 cent track on iTunes, is a nice solution, but that is not how the Internet began. The Internet began as an open source, from students who wanted free, unadulterated information. Could charging work for something that originated for the sole purpose of being free? Probably, not. Unless Internet patrons change their information mentality.

I’d like to think I could be wrong. That maybe micro-charging is the perfect model. The best way to see this will be in the upcoming months with Facebook. The social networking site hopes to charge its users for using the site, but according to the many Facebookers I know (almost everyone), charging sounds terrible, but it’s also second-nature to log on.

As the economy looks sadder than a dog with a tail between its legs, media does have a chance to rebuild. The media are only beginning. The media are only learning their options and rebuilding.  I’m not changing my major. If anything, I know how to adapt. Adaptation requires some alternative acceptance and flirtation with a computer.

ALT

Most large media advances were made before my earthly start – but my Lord, I remember Compuserve. My parents were convinced that Compuserve was it. Dial up was the future, the way. My mother, sister and I squinted in front of a elephant screen for hours waiting for pages to load with photos. We wanted to print The Spice Girls.

LA Times

It cracked me up to read Dan Gillmor’s From Tom Paine to Blogs and Beyond, because he remembers the astute Compuserve, among other media megastars.  Gilmor addresses just how much has changed since the advent of mail service to todays open sources. While he maintains the U.S. mail system is what helped fuel America’s hunger for news, I’m not sure that’s the truth. The mail system did more than just send copies of newspapers; it allowed for an exchange of wealth beyond printed texts through many other businesses. Newspapers did, indeed, profit greatly from the birth of the U.S. mail system, but that was not the main and only reason for profit.

Clearly, profit was the result and the reason for expansion. A question we’ve discussed in class, and I presume we may encounter often, is what makes something alternative and what makes something explode. I mean, really take off and become popular. So popular that everyone knows about it and maybe you or me, “the discoverers of all things undiscovered and cool,” are left without any credit.

I felt like I discovered High Places, a bi-coastal band with a penchant for pepper-shaking noises, but now I see their tour dates have grown in the past six months – that scares me. Yeah, I should get over it. I don’t want to though. I thought I was entering a new world of melodies. But I ask, am I doing a diservice by not mentioning how fantastic High Places is to everyone I meet? Should I link post a video? Fine.

Right now I know, as long as  Rolling Stone steers clear of High Places then I’m happy. Pitchfork may have dipped her toes, but MTV better stay far away, please.