Journalism

In December 2004, a mock documentary about the future of news began making make the rounds of the nation’s journalists and Web professionals.

There were high hopes in many quarters of the newspaper industry in 2004. The 2000-2003 recession was expected to give way to an economic rebound. Publishers expected advertising revenue to come roaring back as it traditionally does in the early stages of a recovery. Investors, who had bid up stock prices based on newspapers’ steady profitability and cyclical nature, were expecting their ship to come in. Editors, faced with deep cuts in 2001 and flat staffing and budgets since, were looking for reinvestments in news gathering.

Look into cyberspace and the picture for journalism seems fractured. There is real hope in the numbers of people who seek news online, particularly the young, a group that shows scant interest in traditional media. The capability of people to get what they want when they want it, and to manipulate it, edit it and seek more depth, could bring a needed revival to journalism. The economic numbers are also growing – and dramatically – each year. Yet look at the content offered in online journalism in 2004 and there are signs of frustration, lack of innovation and the caution of the old media applied to the new.

The networks face the classic dilemma of a legacy industry.

The challenge for cable news is that it has now reached adulthood.

For decades now, the world of news magazines has been dominated by three brands. Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report have been around for so long without serious challengers that the news genre has seemed the exception to the rule of the constantly shifting world of magazine publishing.

Most media analysis tends to focus on seismic shifts. Plummeting viewership. Skyrocketing profit margins. Grand scandals. Declining public trust. Radio is interesting in part because it tends to defy such characterizations. Its struggles and transformations usually occur just below the surface. Change is based on gradual progression, and, if we were to watch only the numbers, 2004 would be viewed as a year of seeming, even dull, stability.

As the immigrant population of the U.S. continues to grow, so too, apparently, do the ethnic media.