By Lara Levin
Student Writer
Tom Rosenstiel (pictured), director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, presented students and faculty with a portrait of the 2009 news media at a Sept. 2 presentation at USC Annenberg titled “Fighting for Survival: The State of the News Media 2009."
Within the media landscape, the big players of cable, online, network and local television, newspapers and magazines are constantly at war for the attention of the American public. While cable and online media sources come out on top, citing significant audience increases in 2008, battles still lie ahead for these outlets.
“Journalism’s challenge is not fundamentally an audience problem,” Rosenstiel said. “It is a revenue problem.”
Research shows that revenue is down drastically in print media, with a significant increase in cable advertising but a minimal increase in online ads.
“Audiences are migrating online, but advertisers are not,” he said, attributing this trend to the general ineffectiveness of many online advertising techniques in the context of the ways in which audiences access information online.
“The way we read a newspaper or watch a broadcast is dramatically different from the way we interface with information online,” he said. “Online we are hunter-gatherers, not having a relationship with just one news organization. And while a search ad may be complementary to this type of online activity, pop-up and banner advertisements present an intrusion for audiences seeking information.”
While the revenue presents a challenge, a new and dynamic information model presents an opportunity for individual journalists. Rosenstiel described this model as a rapidly flowing stream of information, and journalists that are able to insert their content into this stream will be the most successful.
“You don’t need to work at the L.A. Times anymore to be a significant journalist in L.A.,” he said.
With this new model in mind, professional journalists have lost their status as the only gatekeepers. “We may have a gate here, but the fence is torn down on both sides.”
What Rosenstiel described as the “trust me” era of journalism in which journalists served as gatekeepers has been replaced with a new era of “show me” journalism, in which audiences express their demands of journalists to openly divulge the source of their information and prove its legitimacy. Thus the role of the journalist has shifted to that of the “committed observer,” with the responsibility to be the eyes and ears for their audience.
Adjusting to new informational models and exploring new revenue models, today and tomorrow’s journalists have a formidable task in front of them, one that integrates both journalistic tools along with business sense in the media’s fight for survival.
Rosenstiel also participated in an open forum on Sept. 2 hosted by the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy in which he highlighted his findings and went on to speak candidly about the opportunity and eagerness that exist in today’s newsrooms and within the journalistic community.
He noted that while it may be a daunting task for individual journalists to create their own alternative news sites, there is a unique chance for them to become expert journalists in a particular area, creating “spectacular” outlets that might challenge and eventually elevate the quality of mainstream media.
