Chris Brogan has a great post over at his blog where he makes a very important point about the differences between Journalism and Publishing:
First, let’s be clear: the pursuits of journalism and the pursuits of publishing aren’t the same.
Journalists seek to create compelling information that is helpful and news-worthy.
Publishing seeks to push more product, deliver higher circulation value, and create more value for sponsors/advertisers/money-holders.
Publishers need content creators of some stripe to do what they do. Journalists don’t need publishers, but publishers pay, so that’s a decent place to connect with an audience and be paid.
But never confuse the two.
Chris is RIGHT. There are the journalists/content producers and then there are publishers. Part of why newspapers continue a downward spiral to extinction is that the PUBLISHERS are still trying to stick to their old models of revenue and not adapting. They are getting rid of the journalists instead of reshaping their business plans.
Will journalism ever die?
The simple answer is no. Journalism in some form or another will always be around. Journalist will always be around. They will be reporting the news, highlighting heartwarming and gut-wrenching stories and being the storytellers for generations to come.
In Chris’ article he talks about how AOL is snatching up displaced journalist that have been let go from the newspapers and media outlets. Many think this is the whoring out of journalism, but it’s not it’s the evolution of the industry. Yes, some will end up writing smut and gossip and keyword ridden drivel, but others will continue to write and investigate the important stories yet to come.
And yes, may journalist are indeed becoming publishers. They are becoming self-publishers. With the growth of blogging, software like WordPress and services like WordPress.com, Typepad and Blogger are enabling journalists are no longer tied to the traditional forms of publishing, to share the news, their viewpoints and stories. What we are seeing is the democratization of both the content producing and publishing worlds.
Publishing as we know it gone, unless…
Unless the publishing giants can figure out how to monetize without constructing a pay wall and/or blocking Google from indexing these media Citizen Kane-esque megaliths are going the way of the dinosaurs – extinct, dead, gone.
But in the end…
In the end let’s make one thing perfectly clear. Journalist are not publishers in the old, dying sense of the term. Not even close.
