are newspapers dying???

When Janet Cooke told the story of ‘Jimmy’, an eight-year-old boy in a low-income neighborhood of Washington D.C., who was addicted to heroin, she thought she would get away with it. And she did. She even won the Pulitzer Prize for the moving story that appeared in Washington Post on Sept. 20, 1980.
It took months for the editors to find out that “Jimmy with velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms” did not exist. He was her creation. The Pulitzer was taken away from Cooke and she was sacked.
Examples of fabrication, plagiarism and using composite characters in journalism are many. Many have committed these and got away like Cooke did. And in an age, where Internet has empowered the readers with fact-checking abilities, it is imperative that journalists should be more careful than ever in order to retain and in some cases, regain the credibility.
“We have to bring humanity back into journalism,” said Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com at a panel discussion on ethics and journalism at The New York Society for Ethical Culture Wednesday.
Research shows that trust in the media has declined. People are beginning to trust a fellow citizen’s comments or reviews more than that of a journalist. And with online medium gaining ground and many of us choosing to click the mouse instead of buying newspapers, it has become very essential that we tread carefully and be thorough with our research and facts and establish that we don’t mess with facts, that we have the correct information. This means a lot of work but the age demands it.
When I visited my brother and his family in Detroit, I got up in the morning and went downstairs expecting to find the newspaper. I did not. Alter, I was told they did not subscribe to any. They preferred to read news online.
Many feel that newspapers will soon become extinct and that they already are an endangered species. With Internet changing the media landscape, it is increasingly becoming a challenging task for editors and reporters to retain their readership and maintain credibility, while transitioning to online format.
What this means is that newspapers, in order to survive and thrive, have to change form and change content. Breaking news is most suitable for the online media. What I can read the previous evening online, I would not want to see it on the front page of the newspaper that I buy in the morning because it is stale news. I believe the newspapers have to veer toward public service journalism and focus more on analytical and in-depth reporting and come out with solutions. This is just one of the examples.
There are many sides of the story now instead of just focusing on the two sides that we are supposed to as journalists. Any story can be told in a million ways and that’s precisely what the bloggers are doing. They give a million more perspectives. So, as creators of information, we have to learn more, read more and be receptive to a lot of different, maybe conflicting views. We have to be innovative. And the first step toward doing that is that we have to view blogging or the online medium as a collaborative force and not an adversary.
The managing editor of Time magazine, Richard Stengel, who was another panelist, said blogging and pod casting signifies the flowering of a new kind of journalism. When everyone can be a fact-checker, the responsibility to be accurate and truthful increases manifold, he added.
“The key to survival is how to reckon to all that,” he said. I could not agree more. As a student and a journalist, I am worried about my profession and I feel concerned when others tell me that they don’t trust us.
I believe and I agree with Jarvis that instead of newspapers getting frustrated with the whole deal of saving their papers, it is essential that media organizations redefine their relationship with the public. Citizen journalism, as some call it, has become a trend and people are now increasingly posting their comments, reports and even videos on the web. The Internet is vast and unlike the television industry, it is not regulated. Nor does it knows boundaries or is limited to countries.
I know at this moment my thoughts are coherent. I was talking with my roommate the other day and his comments made me think. He said in an age where small kids are hooked on to the Internet, the possibility of newspapers continuing in the future looks bleak. Surely, there was some truth in that statement but I don’t believe the newspapers will ever die. Because we survived the television and the radio, I am hopeful we will overcome this crisis too.
I still buy my newspaper, at least one. This way I hold on to my faith in my profession and I contribute to the survival.
We have seen so many changes already. With journalism becoming “functional journalism”, I am afraid the real issues will never surface and ethics are slowly being kept aside to keep the revenues. I am scared of an age where newspapers will completely forget their loyalty to the citizens and will only become a medium for propaganda and trade.
But I am hopeful. I chose this because of the passion I felt for writing and reading and I am sure there are enough who care. I urge all of us to think and be more responsible because it is crucial for us to continue.
Internet is a friend and let us all embrace it and work out a way for both to exist. Blogging is good but it lacks the discipline. Bloggers are not accountable. They can contradict us but as professionals, let us be the watchdogs and help people know the truth. Blogging can help with presenting various viewpoints and as a source of story ideas for us….but let us work toward a new future where newspapers are at every doorstep.