Newspapers: The future of journalism

Blog tasks

Go to the Nieman Lab webpage (part of Harvard university) and watch the video of Clay Shirky presenting to Harvard students. The video is also available on YouTube below but the Nieman Lab website has a written transcript of everything Shiky says. 


Play the clip AND read along with the transcript below to ensure you are following the argument. You need to watch from the beginning to 29.35 (the end of Shirky's presentation). Once you've watched and read the presentation and made notes (you may want to copy and paste key quotes from the transcript), answer the questions below:

1) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this?
--> He states that journalism is accountable of supplying all different types of media platforms news as they often use them to give them the source of the news which would lead to it being much more difficult to relay the news off to people. He also mentions how journalism is able to focus on multiple stories and is a way all types of audience can get what they want.

2) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)?
--> He mentions how advertisers that are more common and broad are being shown on the newspapers due to most popular advertising companies now being with big internet companies such as Google and their Ad Sense company which is a factor that paper companies consider to go to a 'digital front' business approach so that they can achieve more ad revenue.

3) Shirky talks about the 'unbundling of content'. This means people are reading newspapers
 in a different way. How does he suggest audiences are consuming news stories in the digital age?
--> He suggests that people are now consuming the news using social media and the news more than any other method and that less people are reading newspapers that consist of large amounts of news so are now reading small bites of news they see while channel surfing and scrolling through the internet.

4) Shirky also talks about the power of shareable media. How does he suggest the child abuse scandal with the Catholic Church may have been different if the internet had been widespread in 1992?
-->He suggests that journalists wold not have been as incentive as they are with the newspaper industry as stories such as that would not be followed or could not be in the interest of the journalists due to them knowing the work would be plagiarised. He also suggests that there would have been a significantly larger amount of backlash against this than thee already was due to more people being able to voice their opinions on the matter at hand.

5) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls? 
--> He suggests that the news that is reported for reasons being that people will be mis-informed by not receiving quality news as people are not willing to pay to see the news so suggests that the news should be free so people can get informed and get different point of views from different publications. Also the paywalls make people have another reason to not read the news other, further killing the industry.

6) What is a 'social good'? In what way is journalism a 'social good'?
--> A social good is something that is available to everyone and is something that is expected as absolutely necessary to people as it is needed in society, journalism comes under this as it is something that is done to aid the public and to be consumed by the public, therefore is a must and is needed for people to be informed and educated.

7) Shirky says newspapers are in terminal decline. How does he suggest we can replace the important role in society newspapers play? What is the short-term danger to this solution that he describes?
--> He suggests that the "irreconcilability of newspapers suggests that the next step needs to be vast and varied experimentation, not the transfer of allegiance from one institution to another." and that all the media platforms will essentially play hot potato with the news platform as it will be passed on from platform to platform as no one wants all of it.


8) Look at the first question and answer regarding institutional power. Give us your own opinion: how important is it that major media brands such as the New York Times or the Guardian continue to stay in business and provide news?
--I think it's very important that these brands stay to provide us news and accountability journalism. This doesn't have to be a model of just print but also spreading stories that bring those of corruption and misdeeds into the public light that are online. It's especially hard where the digital news landscape is just saturated with stories that won't see the public eye or aren't of any importance of making audiences consider swaying their political opinion. And swaying opinion is important as it makes people consider both sides of the argument which is a huge decline with echo chambers being in force everywhere. This is because advertisers and other institutions feed news and opinions that they think they agree with. but don't actually consider the 'opposing side', as institution feed them news that keep them on their platforms at all times.

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