“Imagine a world, one easily conceivable today, where governments, businesses, lobbyists, candidates, churches, and social movements deliver information directly to citizens on home computers. Journalism is momentarily abolished. Citizens tap into any information source they want on computer networks. They also send their own information and their own commentary; they are as easily disseminators as recipients of news.”
This accurate prediction looks like a definition of the so called “web 2.0” era. It has been formulated in 1995 (yes, 12 years ago!) by Michael Schudson in The Power of News. His point was that in such a world, professional journalism would necessarily reappear to give legitimacy to information sorting it among noisy environment.
The issue of the future of the press industry is even more rising in a French media landscape undergoing heavy reshuffling.
In May 14th issue of L’Express, Jean Marie Colombani, the editor of the French daily Le Monde, explains his vision of the press future in the short-mid term. According to him, his fellow journalists should not worry that much about the expected decline of newspaper sales. The future lies in the web. That does not sound to be original piece of thought, but in France, coming from the editor of an established paper, it’s just revolutionary.
Web 2.0 challenges the current business model of most media industries, and especially the press. Since information is now a few clicks away from any laptop computer or cell-phone, there is no more point to spend money to get a newspaper. But when you buy a newspaper, are you paying for the raw material used (paper and ink) or for the service provided by journalists, that is checking sources of information and confronting them (either from a partial standpoint or not, here is not the point)? Can this mission be fulfilled through the Internet? Yes, and according to me the need for professional journalism is even more obvious in overcrowded information landscape.
Whereas the rest of the world seems to be anticipating the current shift in the press industry, french press moguls are trying to withdraw from the industry. On the one hand, the Financial Times has been pushing its online edition for years, making it a worldwide reference for financial information (it doesn’t compete anymore with printed financial press, but with RSS aggregators like Yahoo Finance). On the other hand, French press stakeholders are reluctant to acknowledge the decline of the historical information channel that is newspaper.
In a report to the French minister of cultural affairs, Marc Tessier, the president of France Televisions (the French publicly owned TV group), suggested to create an “Internet Press” label, to distinguish professional journalists as credible and legitimate source of information. I’m sure this measure aiming to save a declining business model would be counterproductive. Bloggers don’t claim to be journalists. Professional journalists own assets that bloggers don’t have: multiple and checked information sources, financial support of their company to conduct deep investigations, and the only acceptable label that is the name of the newspaper and its legitimacy. In the current noisy media landscape, they are now responsible to keep and reinforce this historically built legitimacy.
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