Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University, has posted the speech he gave at South by Southwest (SXSW) on Saturday on his blog PressThink. He explores the ongoing bloggers v journalists argument, suggesting that journalists are under five sources of stress, put “right into the face of professional journalism” by bloggers.
One: A collapsing economic model, as print and broadcast dollars are exchanged for digital dimes.
Two: New competition (the loss of monopoly) as a disruptive technology, the Internet, does its thing.
Three. A shift in power. The tools of the modern media have been distributed to the people formerly known as the audience.
Four: A new pattern of information flow, in which “stuff” moves horizontally, peer to peer, as effectively as it moves vertically, from producer to consumer. Audience atomization overcome, I call it.
Five. The erosion of trust (which started a long time ago but accelerated after 2002) and the loss of authority.