Soon the network of all factual information will be universally accessible and self-correcting. The earth's data set will be completely transparent.
Institutions will cede their function as gatekeepers of data, and fact will lose value as a commodity. Journalists will be able to focus entirely on illuminating relationships of information. When it no longer has the responsibility to determine fact, the fourth estate will be more powerful. There will be a new faith in interpretation.
Current institutions won’t give up easily. People like Drudge and Huffington will exploit the dislocations as the landscape resettles. But the journalism that will prosper in the marketplace of ideas will be the same as it always was. It will be driven by honesty, integrity and clarity.
Ultimately it will be more graceful. Journalists may dismiss aesthetics as soft, but communication is always a human enterprise. The rise of the machine doesn't mean that journalists, or humans for that matter, are obsolete. Instead we're free to do the things that only humans can do; learn, choose, and act.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The State of Journalism in 194 (Overly-Determined) Words
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1 comments:
I feel encouraged when I read your words Arlo. I wonder if your brain is more wired to a creative use of technology because you work in a more creative world. I just spent a couple of hours with a friend, late of the Wall Street Journal, who simply could not say anything optimistic about newspapers. Yet I pick up the latest edition of the Journal and the stories are good and the online is starting to hum. Maybe we've all been too creaky or cranky in our reaction to change?
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