Freelance Unbound

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Some interesting points have been made in the comments to my post about Why Paid Journalism is in Trouble.
Crucially, they falls into the trap of conflating the interests of readers with those of journalists. It’s worth looking at this in a bit more depth. (Quite a bit more depth actually. Sorry if I ramble on a bit.)
It’s a familiar trap. Journalists often decry the loss of newspapers and journalism jobs as being against the interests of readers, when in fact it’s mainly against the interests of the journalists.
If readers were that bothered about falling newspaper circulation, they’d buy more newspapers. But they don’t.
Current news consumption
Here’s what a lot of people do to get their news.

• They wake up to the headlines and a bit of comment on the radio (Today for one demographic, XFM for another and so on.)
• They listen to the radio in the car on the way to work
• They pick up a free paper to read, or skim, on the train or tube (Metro)
• They may drop by the BBC news web site on a break at work. (If they’re really into news)
• They pick up a free paper on the train or tube home (The London Paper or London Lite) to catch up on celebrity gossip.
• They listen to a drive-time show on the radio in the car on the way home.
• They watch a bit of the news on TV in the evening. Maybe.

And after all this, you think they should be buying newspapers? Or buying news magazines? Or tuning in to news analysis on the radio?
People don’t have the time or, largely, the desire.
And now they have a whole slew of other things to do that are more creative – Facebooking, YouTubing, Flickring. Not to mention blogging.
People now have opportunities to create as well as consume content, and their time is finite.
So what is journalism?
But journalists (which includes all interested parties, including academics) don’t think this counts as journalism. (And no, I don’t think YouTube videos of cute kitties do, either. But some of it does, especially long-form blogging and some microblogging.)
Why don’t they think it counts as journalism? Because it’s just not professional enough. Hmm. Yes – but perhaps in the sense of “not being paid a salary for”, rather than in the sense of “being illiterate and ill-informed”. Because illiterate and ill-informed can be found throughout the media, after all.
Journalists think they’re special though. And this is because, increasingly, they go through years of expensive degree-level education to prove it.
But journalism didn’t start that way. Journalism was about inquisitive people who liked a drink asking nosy questions. And then writing the answers down. It wasn’t a profession as such. It helped if you could write coherently. But mainly it helped that you could find things out. It’s the FleetStreetBlues argument in a nutshell: “Journalism is about finding stuff out and telling it to other people.” It also helped if you like a drink. Fleet Street was like that. As was politics.
Journalists are too self-important
But over the years, journalism has developed a very high opinion of itself. It thinks it’s vital to cover important events. It thinks it’s vital for a functioning democracy. It also thinks it’s vital to be provided by skilled professionals, a bit like doctors, or heating engineers, with qualifications and everything, to make sure it’s done right.
The argument seems to be that journalism is good for people, and they should consume it like medicine. Or bad things will happen. To, um, democracy. Like, er, the erosion of civil liberties and growing centralisation of government power. Like that hasn’t happened recently. Thanks to journalism. Yay.
Blame it on the readers
But what if people, ie readers and viewers, lose interest in that model of journalism? To the extent that it’s not viable anymore? And those highly qualified professional journalists have a problem paying the mortgage?
Do we say they are wrong? Do we say how stupid they are for losing interest in what we are offering? Or how short-sighted they are not to want to pay for it?
Well, yes. That is kind of what we are saying.
But if people don’t want what we have to offer, what does that say? That people are stupid? Or that what we offer isn’t as special as we thought?
To make this a little less painful, I’ll tread a middle way. People can be stupid, yes. Ten years of Big Brother proves that.
But not for rejecting what we in the media offer them. Not for believing that unpaid bloggers, say, can provide material as interesting as that of paid journalists. Or that YouTube offers just as viable a way to spend 15 minutes as an op-ed in the Times. And not even for being more interested in what their friends are doing than things happening in, say, Afghanistan.
A lot of journalists hate that, because they think there’s a moral imperative to appreciate foreign affairs, especially when there’s a war on. But actually it’s understandable. I’m often more interested in what my friends are doing than what’s happening in Afghanistan. I can’t help it. I’m a bad person.
The difference these days is that the web allows us to engage with people we know in creative ways online as well as down the pub. And that unfortunately eats into our other media time. And doesn’t help to pay our mortgage.
But is all this against the interests of readers? Not really.
What readers want
Readers have decided they want a minimal framework of news, however that’s provided, and to fill in the rest of their media time with a hybrid of online gossip and entertainment that doesn’t fit with the media’s idea of itself. That’s what interests them.
But even if they decided they wanted to engage with informed political and social reportage and comment, they wouldn’t have to go anywhere near traditional journalism.
Blogs can be journalism too
There’s a wealth of expertise in the blogosphere, from economics and politics to legal issues. Try Cafe Hayek or Knowledge Problem on the free market side, or Mother Jones on the left. For an insight into the ridiculous legal mess the US gets itself into, Overlawyered is your man.
But what about real, hard news, snarl the hard-bitten hacks who think blogging is just hot air (take a bow, Playing The Game).
Well, if you want to get the inside scoop on what’s happening in the NHS in the UK, for example, you could read NHS Blog Doctor [UPDATE: now discontinued (15 June 2011) it seems] or The Jobbing Doctor – insiders both. Or for the scoop on the police in the UK, go to the Nightjack blog, written by a serving police officer.
Oh, you can’t. Because it was shut down. Thanks to the Times.
Which is a great example of why readers need  professional journalists. Because professional journalists will do anything to get rid of the amateur competition, it seems. It’s in their interest…

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