In theory:
Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.
In practice:
In the 1990s, Mr. Cohen chronicled, in person, the horrors that accompanied Yugoslavia’s dissolution. Today, correspondents doing such work can find their time being sucked away by the profusion online of viewpoints and images and tweets from the scene, which multiply and demand attention. But keeping abreast of the Internet chatter is not the same as bearing witness.
- Anand Giridharadas (via Andrew Stroehlein)
In the field:
Last week one of my newspapers asked me to go to Tanzania. The cost was going to be $1100, about $500 of which was simply the flight. With the pound now running so low against the dollar this would be a hefty investment for a newspaper that paid in Sterling. Thanks very much, they said, but that’s too much.
When I was younger I dreamed of being a foreign correspondent; it looks like I made the right career choice, since it’s hard to see how the profession can survive the tidal wave that Shirky is tracking. It’s actually not hard to see what will replace it, but that’s not something that I want to talk about, since it makes me want to lie down in a dark room.