Journalists and technology

I've been wondering for some time how the profession has been absorbing the massive changes that have been buffeting the news biz of late—from external (read: financial, audience) pressures to internal (read: technological, cultural) changes, to a whole lot that fall somewhere in between, a veritable 360-degree squeeze.

When I left the industry for grad school in 2006, even with the recent demise of Knight Ridder and the increasing troubles for newspapers, a print-first attitude was pervasive—after all, old habits die hard, and the print version remains the cash cow in many places. And yet, since that time we seem to have reached a tipping point, a sort of inflection point at which the legacy media realize that the problems with audiences and the Web-first necessity and the social networking phenomenon and the citizen-empowered environment—taken together, this train has left the station, and there's no looking back to ink-and-paper only for help.

But what's striking is that anecdotal and survey data now seem to tell us that the hand-wringing over technology and its impact on their livelihoods—that fear and anxiety that used to grip the newsroom—is beginning to fade. Perhaps the most interesting account of this came in the State of the News Media 2008, released earlier this month by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Read the full report on a 2007 survey of journalists here, and a key section on technology is below:

The journalists here do not sense that the Internet has become all-consuming or that new technology has become the core of what they do. That is evident in the fact that majorities of both print and broadcast outlets say their organizations’ main focus is still the legacy media.

And that is borne out in how journalists spend their time. A good portion of those surveyed still work only or mostly on the original product. Around a quarter spend no time on the Web product. (This holds true for journalists at both the national and local levels.) The multimedia work also appears to be going on more at a national level. National journalists are more than three times as likely as local to devote half or more of their time there (19% versus 6% of local). And it is perhaps a harbinger of the future that national print journalists are the most likely to be multimedia. More than a of quarter of them (26%) spend at least half of their time producing Web content. This was true of just 9% of national TV and radio journalists.

Nor did we find evidence, as some might have expected, that journalists resent having to split their time. Those who do straddle technologies tend to see it as a good thing. About half say it has improved their work, twice the number that has doubts. This could be self- selecting. The doubters may have resisted or even taken buyouts. But, one way or another, the profession is becoming more accepting. ...

And that connects to another change — the decline in concern over journalistic cynicism. In 2004, roughly four in ten said cynicism of the press was a valid criticism. That number has now dropped down to three in ten. Technology, while posing profound economic problems, seems in some ways to have alleviated the concerns about disconnection and isolation, key elements of what many considered the credibility crisis of the a decade ago.