Journalist, a trade in the process of disappearance?

The revolution of the information forecast by Twitter, Digg and consorts raises the question to know what the journalism of tomorrow will resemble. I would like here to show why one speaks about crisis of the journalism and how this one will redefine the journalistic profession and our manner of consuming information.

That which one calls “crisis of journalism” is closely related to the development of Internet like media. Indeed, the reader spends more and more time to inform itself on the fabric and less and less by the traditional press. This tendency has as a result significant drops (about 5-15%) of the advertising revenues of the large newspapers, whereas those represent more half of their sales turnover. A tendency which is still accentuated by the economic conjuncture since publicity Internet, much less expensive, makes it possible the companies to save invaluable sums of money.

The need for a report is posed then: journalism is in difficulty. And the internal problems with this branch will continue to worsen. Leading causes: the democratization of the information which produced Internet, the accessibility increased to these media (cellphones, Kindle, etc) and the best structuring of information, thanks to the tools of microblogging or of referencing of blogs.

This type of journalism recently crossed several big steps for its recognition: with the appearance of Web sites shelterers of articles produced with all the corners of the fabric like Digg or Wikio, its during French, the journalism of blog is seen mediatized at the sides of professional journalism and thus enters in direct competition with this last.

This mediatization makes not only easier the search for information, but it also makes it possible to the reader to subscribe with the editors of information (journalists) which they like, which is completely impossible with the traditional mediums: one buys a newspaper and not an article. Thus, the consumer is identified less and less with a newspaper but always more with a certain number of writers.

Moreover, the Web is much better than journalism paper to classify the articles (generally by popularity). Moreover, with the development of the social networks and of what Jeremiah Owyang calls the “social colonization” of the Web, the contents “are socialized more and more”: it is possible to know which likes what, which says what on what with GetGlue, which reads which with Twitter and soon of knowing which read what in a generalized way. One comes to a social information retrieval (such friend reads that, therefore that must be interesting) much more relevant than Google research and sometimes even more relevant than the selection of articles of a newspaper.

Moreover, one also arrives at a personalization of information. Gradually, the consumer decides not only who it wants to read, but also which type of subjects it wants to see the author treating and belonging to sound stream news.
Concretely, which the journalism of blog proposes, it is to add one, two or two hundred pages at your favorite headings if that sings you. Who would refuse that? Not large world I imagine. We thus enter a new era: that of personalized and socialized information.

In this context the concept of newspaper makes direction less and less: one will less and less read a newspaper, but more and more a journalist in particular. However, the future is far from being written in this field: a newspaper is not only one bunch of articles, but has a tradition, a leading line, a graphics, to which the reader is attached. It is also a manner of posting the world to which you belong (rather intellectual, literary tendency in the case of the World p. e.g.). Thus even if journalism migrates on Internet, the famous daily newspapers will certainly not lose their assistantship and it is even the opposite which is likely to occur: an increase in request.

Causes: accessibility to information, facility of sorting and choice and multiplicity of the contents (written, video, etc) which are as many factors which will make soon Internet media dominating in the journalistic universe, following the example the EC what is television today. Indeed, journalism Internet integrated qualities that only television had before: audio-visual contents, choice of the very easy program, etc, without counting that journalism Internet was professionnalisé, with the setting in line of various daily newspapers and the appearance of bloggers covering quite specific subjects often related to their profession.

Thus a type of journalism appears which with the characteristic to be produced by authentic specialists, since at the time when they write, they take part in the universe which they develop. Thus, they have information of point much more quickly than the traditional journalists and they are also better capable to interpret them.

These arguments are without counting the structural constraints which weigh on the journalistic profession: in addition to the receipts in reduction, the journalistic branch is the place of many repurchases: many small newspapers pass under the direction of great press groups and thus become increasingly subjected to the logic of profitability, with like immediate consequence the reduction in the wage bill of the newspaper.

In this context of changes, the occupation of journalist will be increasingly more difficult to practise, even if the current location should be relativized, to some extent due to the economic crisis. The groups which will leave this transitional period best are the original media, which have a trademark (the connected Duck, So Foot, etc), not very prone to the competition of other actors, as well as the regional media. One has to for better and for worse expect a replanning of the remainder of the journalistic landscape - as a reduction in the number of journalists .