“SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let’s talk about the future of journalism.
Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don’t use the word journalism.”
A great opening gambit from Chris Anderson, editor in chief of US Wired and author of ‘Free’, in an interview with Spiegel Online’s Frank Hornig.
Turns out he doesn’t use the word media or news either – “I don’t think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century.”
Anderson goes on to discuss how he gets his information and the move by the public towards ‘social filters’ rather than professional filters for news:
“We’re tuning out television news, we’re tuning out newspapers. And we still hear about the important stuff, it’s just that it’s not like this drumbeat of bad news,” he says.
Which leads him to the role of journalists:
“In the past, the media was a full-time job. But maybe the media is going to be a part time job. Maybe media won’t be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby. There is no law that says that industries have to remain at any given size (…) The question is not should journalists have jobs. The question is can people get the information they want, the way they want it? The marketplace will sort this out. “