Journalism: Is the industry in-flux or not?
Today, the journalism industry is in-flux. Journalists are in a challenging position, in which their credibility is at stake. Journalism for many years was seen as a medium where the news lives. It became the number one source for people to seek the truth. In recent years, the journalism industry has experienced many changes that has placed various obstacles for journalists and their efforts in reporting news and stories. These changes have affected the industry’s credibility and its opportunities to expand as a business.
For years newspapers were considered one’s only access to information. Today, one is able to access information on current events by the click of a button.
This advancement of technological devices has led to a reduction in employment opportunities within the journalism industry. Why? Because people do not feel the need to rely on journalists. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from the years of 2001 to 2016, the newspaper publishers industry has lost about half of their employers. On the other hand, internet publishing companies have experienced an increase of employment within those years. This shows that print journalism is not benefitting from the introduction of things like the internet and social media.
In “What a Kansas professor learned after interviewing a ‘lost generation’ of journalists,” Deron Lee argues that the smaller the journalism industry becomes, the “less diversity” there is. According to the Newspaper Diversity Survey, within the years of 2001 and 2018, there has been a decrease in women and people of color working within those spaces.
In a survey conducted by Lee, in the year of 2014, three quarters of the 1,686 women working within the newspaper industry that were interviewed, expressed doubt of seeing journalism as a long term career for themselves. This shows that in recent years, the space for diversity is diminishing. In this case, the less diverse journalists working within those newsrooms fighting to express their perspectives, the less diverse stories are told. Therefore, issues surrounding people of different backgrounds and walks of lives are left in the shadows. This raises the question on what can be done to expand these newsrooms, in order to prevent the lack of diversity within journalism. The answer is money. How do we get it? The answer is advertisement.
The reduction of employment within the journalism industry has forced journalists to seek alternatives to protect the state of journalism. For instance, through the use of advertisements, journalists have been able to fund their right to report news. This is done by news outlets promoting advertisements that are under the disguise of a fabricated story. In “Medium, and The Reason You Can’t Stand the News Anymore”, Sean Blanda asserts, “the methods used to fund modern journalism simultaneously undermine truth in the news outlets”. This shows that because of technology and social media, journalists at times feel the need to submit to advertisers and their techniques for selling. In this case, these methods that are “purposefully made to deceive the reader” (Blanda) are placing journalists in a bad state. Although, advertisements provide journalists with the ability to fund their efforts to communicate information, they are defunding their credibility.
