As it turns out, journalisms future is not tied to a topic or a storyline. The recent shrinking number of journalistic jobs, as well as attacks against fake news media, has left some outlets wondering whether there is any future for journalism in general. While online is certainly an excellent alternative to traditional news, the high-profile series of recent mass dismissals at media powerhouses once touted as the future of newsrooms has exposed the fragility of journalisms brave new world.
As we move forward into the 21st century, various types of journalists and media outlets will continue to evolve to respond to digital journalism trends. New technologies, platforms, and tools are certain to emerge in the years ahead, and the best journalists will find ways to incorporate the new technologies into their repertoires, or to explore new journalistic niches. Tech is a word when it comes to the future of journalism: Storytelling formats such as podcasts are growing, and being able to adapt those technologies for the modern news cycle will make the strongest journalists stand out from the rest.
In a recent survey by Telum Media, journalists from around Asia-Pacific believed that social media and digital skills would continue to gain prominence over the coming years. While iPhones equipped with professional microphones and tripods may be replacing newsrooms and satellite trucks, many in the newsroom think that all of the fast-paced technology changes are augmenting, not radically changing, the journalism experience.
If expert opinions are what people want out of the news, then enterprise journalism is going to be the future for democratized enterprise news. The media companies that thrive are those that find the experts sources that produce the news, not vice versa. Journalism that meets a particular need, such as investigative reporting, will likely continue, but the trained person who is the reporter of news will decline in prominence in the next 10 years, as democratization of the news undermines the journalism as we know it.
Even in a dramatically changed world, reporting, at its most basic level, is still about finding things and telling people about them; journalism is still about building upon this, adding context, explanation, context, and whatever else an audience may need in order to make sense of what is happening in the world, and in order to have a means to be an informed, involved citizen. Too often, reporting about the phenomenon of fake news fails to illuminate the critical issues -- the values embedded in the new tools and infrastructure, for instance, the ways the information society as currently constructed is exacerbating social and economic vulnerabilities, the ways we could be taking action to improve things, and, perhaps most importantly, the tensions between the interests of the corporate media and those of the audience journalism is supposed to serve. Our Trust in Digital Publishing 2021 report found that 46% of readers are willing to pay for good journalism, but also explores why there is a need for transparency, and what readers views about the news are really like.
Sixty-one percent of respondents also think most inaccuracies are due to bad journalistic practices such as shoddy reporting, bad fact checking, or lack of expertise, and want news organisations to put greater emphasis on accuracy, not just the speed to print.
