NDM News: The future of journalism

1) Go to the Nieman Lab webpage (part of Harvard university) and watch the video of Clay Shirky presenting to Harvard students.

2) 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).

3) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this?
The example he gives is about the Catholic Church and how they manipulated the system in order to protect their priests from being uncovered about abusing children. Accountability journalism comes into play when journalists hold those responsible for their actions and it forces them to admit what they've done, take responsibility and change their ways all in the public eye.

4) 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.)?
We can link what Shirky says to business as what hes talking about when he says 'but it was an accident' means advertisers had no other choice but to go and settle for newspapers because they weren't going to make there money elsewhere even if they didn't believe in the stories that were being published. One of the main reasons why the newspaper is in decline is because naive and optimistic businesses thinking they were monopolies over invested in moving forwards, for example the creation of the ethernet cable and UI's.

5) 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?
Audiences are no longer waiting to be handed the news stories or activley go and view a news site, most people are following on from what other people have told them to view via social media, this leaves news companies struggling to reach a declining audience. Social media like twitter which was specifically mentioned plays a big part in creating and spreading news stories to share even more so then some news websites.

6) 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 talked about it in a way that businesses use viral marketing to promote a good or service, that spreading that story via social media or E-mail to the same group of people whom the story affects could have caused the story to go viral much more quickly and may have reached unintended audiences, for example another religious group which could have caused them too investigate, similarly although unrelated the death of Jimmy Saville swept across social media and once they'd learned of his acts more and more celebrities were being uncovered by police, so was this the doing of the media audiences or accountability journalism.

7) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls?
One of the main points that stood out to me is what Shirky said about preventing an audiences ability to 'act as a publisher' although i agree with what most of Shirky is saying about not putting news behind a paywall i don't agree with him saying that because audiences have mostly unrestricted access to news that they shouldn't be able to publish themselves their view and own news stories, however there does have to be some middle ground because we can't t really expect the news industry to survive when were doing there jobs for them. He also argues that if all newspaper sites choose to go behind a paywall the this would cause audiences to suffer because of the power the news institutions would have as they would have the chance to collude and set prices and the rest of the industry would follow as people would pay for news because they see it as a necessity.

8) What is a 'social good'? In what way is journalism a 'social good'?
The idea of a social good in my opinion links to citizen journalism because Shirky also went on to talk about social production which means a group of people who come together and do something for themselves. This separated them from the normal mass market.

9) 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 says the newspapers are irreplaceable and that if you tried to come up with an idea of an organisation which could replace a newspaper it would most likely end up looking like a newspaper so the problem is not with the design of it and how it works to deliver news but more of how it operates in modern times. He says we have to agree the newspaper industry is of course irreplaceable but something needs to be done and one way he suggests is purely through experimentation, however a lot of companies are reluctant to do this as they don't want to take the risk.

10) 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?
The NY Times and the Guardian are both extremely important, just because we live in a privileged society to be able to afford to view news and access it where we like doesn't mean we have to influence other people to follow our ways and get rid of the newspaper. Not even half the world have access to the internet and this can be seen not only in poorer nations but also in the UK where there is a digital divide among different age groups, just because everything else is progressing at a fast rate doesn't mean everyone else has to keep up. If newspapers were to dissappear next week across the world or even in the UK; billions would be affected and would be without news. If major institutions like the Guardian and the Times were to stop print production then others may stop too because they see these large institutions as leaders.