The way I leave comments on people’s blogs generally mirrors the way I used to participate in class discussions in college:  usually I don’t have much to say, other than to support or argue some particular aspect of the post or other comments, but on rare occasion, my comments are more like a post all to themselves.  One of those occasions was this evening, and I would like to expand on it further, in my own blog.

Someone on twitter linked me to a post from the blog over at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.  The post is called Media’s Fall and Rise, and it’s an interesting comparative analysis of the two prevailing attitudes toward journalism these days: that it is either on its deathbed or that it is in the process of being reborn from its own ashes.  To understand my response, give it a read.

Here is the comment I left:

I think this quote is key:

“I think that in this urgent conversation, we forget … [that] a writer is not a photographer is not a copy editor is not an editor is not an ad salesman. In “traditional’ journalism,” those things hung in a kind of balance. Maybe imperfectly, but functionally.”

I have noticed that in the “new journalism”, one is expected to not only write, but also shoot, design, and advertise their work. While this is fine for those who are multi-talented, it makes it far more difficult for someone who only wants to focus on one or two aspects of journalism, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Being multi-talented is good, but it has its costs. If you have to spend time designing, shooting, and advertising as well as writing, none of them will be done as well or as thoroughly as if your job was only to do one of them. In requiring this multi-faceted approach, we are also in effect choosing quantity over quality, both in skillsets and the material produced.

I suspect that what is going to happen, at least in the short run, is that while the *quantity* of material produced will go up, the quality will go down. When you require a writer to learn to take photos, you take time away from his development as a writer, and as a result, he is not as good a writer. You may get a lot of Dean Koontzes this way, but no Hemingways or Capotes. Likewise, a photographer who is also expected to write may end up with abilities more in line with a small-town photojournalist than someone like, say, James Nachtway.

I’ve seen this happening with myself. In college I focused on photojournalism, but I also took significant courses in written journalism, documentary video work, and design. Sure, having all those under my belt to varying degrees makes me more “employable”, but I also feel that in splitting my attention between such varied disciplines, I have not been able to give any one of them the attention they deserve.

My response to the original NYT article is similar, in that I feel we are trading away “slower”, higher quality journalism in favour of increasingly immediate and increasingly low quality journalism.  We want our news, and we want it now, basically.  There’s a famous joke that goes something like “I can make it fast, good, and cheap.  Pick two.”, and I feel it really applies to this situation.  The public want journalism that is fast, good, and cheap, but unfortunately, the trio of those three is just as rare in journalism as in the rest of life.  If you want well-written, well-shot articles, and you want them fast, you’re going to have to pay a premium to send a quality journalist team to do the job.  If you want your article ASAP, but don’t have the funds to send someone good, you might be able to settle for someone who is already on site, like a local journalist.  You’ll get your article and shots, but it likely won’t win a Pulitzer or be something you want to stick on the front page.  If you want it to be high quality but cheap, you will have to spend some time trying to find a high quality journalist who is willing to work for a discounted rate if they have a more flexible deadline.

Unfortunately, in a world where we are saturated by constantly updated media, consumers tend to care more about price and speed than quality.  As the article says,

“The skills that once commanded $4 for every shiny word are far less valuable at a time when the supply of both editorial and advertising content more or less doubles every year.”

The media market has essentially become saturated with the journalism equivalent of the amateur photographer; they’re decent writers, but they’re no Norman Mailer (the same thing has happened, to a lesser degree, to photojournalism), and the bulk of the population, it seems, hasn’t noticed the drop in quality.  As a result, it’s harder and harder for quality journalists to charge what they’re worth for their skills in reporting or photography.

My worry is not that journalism will go away – I agree wholeheartedly with the article that  journalism is in no way dying – my worry is instead that if our culture eventually gets to a point where it no longer appreciates quality journalism, the field will lose what soul it has left.