Charlie Beckett, director of Polis (a journalism institute at LSE), yesterday picked up on my description of Ed Roussel’s vision for journalism.
Charlie sympathised with trainee reporters’ despair for journalism’s future, but said that he broadly agreed with Roussel’s thesis, calling outsourcing a “a logical outcome of digital technology”.
In my opinion Charlie’s “logical outcome” — getting rid of hard-news reporters at newspapers in favour of syndicated wire content — carries a dangerous risk of reducing the quality of newspapers. Although the news agencies produce reliable and concise news copy, it can be sterile, devoid of character or grace. Newspapers need reporters, experts in their field, to provide insight, analysis and, to an extent, grace and style, to what makes up the bulk of their product. For example, although Reuters and AP do a decent job of reporting in Zimbabwe, Chris McGreal, the Guardian’s Africa correspondent, has delivered a number of incredible stories in the last year, using his knowledge and contacts to provide exclusive, unique reporting that is not delivered by the wires. Newspapers need good, qualified and knowledgeable hard-news reporters to give their product identity and edge. It is their lifeblood.
Roussel would probably argue that McGreal’s reports are a ‘premium’ product, and don’t fall into the outsource category. But how did McGreal get his knowledge and expertise? He had years of experience working his way up the ranks before become a star journalist. Newspapers need to invest in their straight-news reporters. Cutting away core staff will just result in a shrinking pool of star reporters. Roussel’s product plan falls off the shelf.
To see what happens if organisations stop investing in hard reporting, look to the British local and regional press. Years of cutbacks and mergers (mostly so that the big newspaper groups could pay larger dividends to their shareholders) have resulted in newspapers operating with shoestring teams, and a degradation of the expertise and local knowledge — hard reporting — that has made local journalism so successful in the past. Bob Franklin of Cardiff University has called this the McDonalisation of journalism:
“McJournalism guarantees predictable journalism not quality journalism. Readers get the papers they expect: McJournalism offers few surprises.”
Outsourcing core reporting and subbing staff may sooth some of newspapers industry’s pressing budgetary headaches, but it can only produce drab, predictable and uniform products. Roussel is right that newspapers will only survive by going upmarket, and stop trying to be everything to everyone, by offering premium products that people will pay for. But cutting reporting staff and resources will only lead to the death of quality journalism. For a glimpse of what Roussel’s outsourced vision, what Beckett calls the “logical outcome of digital technology”, will look like, just click here.
Filed under: credit crunch, journalism training, the future of media
Hi Ben,
that’s (another) great post. I don’t disagree with much of your analysis, I certainly don’t disagree with the idea that good reporting can lead to great reporting.
But allow me at least to question a couple of your phrases. What is ‘hard reporting’? I think there was much less of that in the past than you think. Most of it was just ‘routine’ reporting and did not lead to Nick Davies or John Pilger type journalism.
The Metro is not a reduction of the Guardian or Telegraph, it is a separate product created out of a low-wage, low-content concept aimed at people who would not have bought a ‘proper’ paper anyway.
You can’t say that we must protect thousands of pointless jobs in the hope that a few of them will go on to produce worthwhile journalism. I want to put resources in to great journalism not routine reporting and now, thanks to new technologies,we can do that. There has always been crap – like the Metro -for the last few decades most of mainstream media has been crap. And those were the jobs that journalism students went in to (although in the past there weren’t journalism students). Bob Franklin is a nice guy who does good work but the idea that ‘good journalism’ was protected by the old system is laughable. Until the Internet came along people like Bob spent most of their time slagging off what we now call Mainstream Media. Suddenly, with the ‘threat’ of New Media, traditional journalism has turned into this marvellous thing that the Left feels obliged to defend.
I hope that Ed Roussel and The Telegraph thrives and continues to offer jobs for talented people like you. But what makes you think that it a) owes you that prospect or b) that there isn’t a better prospect somewhere else? (Those are real questions – I don’t know the answer either).
regards
Charlie
Another way to interpret the scenario envisaged in the original debate would be to say that what newspapers need are dedicated subeditors – who are probably the ones responsible for the “grace and style” you desire. The sub came into his (mainly) own when the telegraph became a reliable communications device; reporters and agencies could wire copy and subs could stitch it together in the appropriate style. Why not do that again? After all, a fact is a fact is a fact.