Journalism resources informations

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Journalism: from the bottom rung

IN JULY of this year, I gave up my treasured BlackBerry, a cosy circle of friends, a good job and a flat in London to move to Cardiff and study for a postgraduate course in Broadcast Journalism.

After three years of working as executive assistant to entrepreneur and Dragon’s Den star Peter Jones, I left to pursue my old dream of becoming a reporter. The abiding response was that I was slightly mad. Why journalism? A dying and difficult profession surely, killed by the advent of the internet and citizen journalists. More importantly, it doesn’t pay much.

It is hard work, and there’s no doubt it is getting harder as access to information becomes easier. My fellow trainees at Cardiff University are entering an industry which has been rotted by lack of investment. The local newspapers that used to be the training ground for reporters are closing continuously. Even the industry paper, the Press Gazette, no longer rolls off the press. ITV teaches its reporters operate their own cameras. Local radio news bulletins are produced by skeleton crews of one or two staff. The buzz words are multi-platform, multi-skilled and multi-careerist. But missing in all of these multiples are money and time.

http://waleshome.org/2010/02/journalism-from-the-bottom-rung/

More on Journalism In Digital Times

By bicyclemark

“It would be better to have a society with newspapers and no government, than one with government and no newspapers.” - Thomas Jefferson.

Robert McChesney and John Nichols are two people that have taught me alot about how the global media works and doesn’t work. Their writing has accompanied me throughout my journey as the independent and admittedly unorthodox type of journalist that I try to be. So when they talk, I take it seriously. Last week they were guests on Radio Open Source to talk about their vision of the future of journalism in a digital age. I’m now listening to this program for the third time, still trying to decide what they’re telling us and how I feel about that vision.

Ultimately I recommend anyone and everyone out there listen to the program so you get the details directly from them and not from me translating it the way I understand it. But I’ll just go over the part I like best and I feel its close to the “third way” of funding journalism in the future, that I’ve been looking for.

According to McChesney and Nichols, the idea is that a free press will not just happen naturally, if there is no funding for citizen and community media, the government should take steps to make sure it can exist and compete with commercial or any other media. To do so, they envision every citizen getting 200$ (in the US case) in federal money to put towards a non-profit non-commercial media outlet of their choosing, every year.

http://citizenreporter.org/2010/02/more-on-journalism-in-digital-times/

World Journalism in Crisis: Buzz Special

THE GLOBAL journalism debate, regarding the issue of crisis in the industry, took place yesterday at the Humber Lecture Theatre. Speakers gathered in person and via video-chat to express their views and challenge the opinions of others. Writes Teo Beleaga

Overwhelmingly, as two journalists never cover the same angle of a story, ‘Is world journalism in crisis?’ speakers offered a multitude of answers from the most daunting and off-putting to the most optimistic. Some argued in favour of the crisis, some argued against it, and some had the courage to state the irrelevance of the matter in terms of the industry’s evolution.

http://cutoday.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/world-journalism-in-crisis-buzz-special/

We Need Government Funded Media

What it would have cost us to publicly fund independent media that would have prevented the invasion of Iraq wouldn’t amount, in a year, to what we spend on a month of occupying that country.

Diverting the cost of a month of war to a year of giving substance to our “freedom of the press” would mean that the last time someone asked you about the Teabaggers’ genius in being smart enough to talk dumb enough to persuade everyone to be racists would, in fact, be the LAST time anyone would ask you how a creation of the corporate media manages to get coverage from the corporate media.

But what do I mean by government-funded independent media? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Aren’t we better off with a completely worthless and counterproductive corporate media system than with government-controlled media? Maybe, but I said publicly FUNDED, not government CONTROLLED. And the choice is between that sort of communications system or nothing.

http://pubrecord.org/special-to-the-public-record/6851/need-government-funded-media/