The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: Opinions

CHRIS ANTHONY

Lately, I've started to feel as if I'm caught between feuding factions.

It's as if I'm living two separate, contradictory lives, like being both a Sunni and a Shiite. Or a Democrat and a Republican.

Problematic?

As a newspaper journalism major studying new media, I am being torn in two directions.

I've embraced the ink-stained ways of traditional print as well as the tech-savvy nature of new media. Unfortunately, they have yet to effectively embrace each other.

I've sat through many a rant from Grady College professor Conrad Fink about bloggers and the Internet butchering journalism. But I've also had Scott Shamp, New Media Institute director, tell me that I'll be joining a "dying industry" if I do go into newspapers.

And to top things off, many newspapers and news organizations, such as The Associated Press, are butting heads with new media juggernaut Google and other aggregators over the use of news organizations' content. Newspapers say Internet aggregators are "stealing" news gathered at great expense by newspapers.

The two fields seemingly are at odds. So I wasn't surprised when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd fired a terse "Friend or foe?" at Google CEO Eric Schmidt in her column "Dinosaur At The Gate."

However, I believe the two forms of media don't have to be mutually exclusive. They can be mutually beneficial.

Google already directs millions of people to newspaper Web sites. And social media are fast becoming a major disseminator of news content.

Don't believe me? Check out the numerous links to newspaper Web sites littered across my Facebook and Twitter pages.

Many major newspapers are now utilizing blogs as a new way to disseminate news. And journalists I follow on Facebook and Twitter push tons of content through those two social media.

The problem, of course, is money. And that's where the newspaper industry is failing. Advertisers are going elsewhere with the dollars on which newspapers depend.

Sure, newspapers may be a dying medium, but the craft of journalism is not a "dying industry."

As Google discovered, the editorial process at newspapers is much more intricate and calculated than many people imagine. He told Dowd, "We learned in working with newspapers that this balance between the newspaper writers and their editors is more subtle than we thought. It's not reproducible by computers very easily."

Journalism is essential to our society and will survive in some form. But the current business model of newspapers surely can't last much longer. With online competition becoming more prevalent, newspapers need to find a way to be compensated for their content.

Can readers be convinced to pay for news online? Check out what the music industry did with the advent of Napster and other file-sharing programs.

Facing difficult times, the industry recovered through the "micropayment" system instituted in programs such as iTunes. Old media and new media in the music industry have found a workable solution.

That system might work for newspapers. It might not. Either way, newspapers need to create a viable business model for the Web, or they will suffer the consequences.

Meanwhile, I'm just doing what I love - writing, editing and playing with really cool technology. I shouldn't have to feel like I'm sleeping with the enemy just because I love both.


- Chris Anthony is a page designer for The Red & Black and a senior majoring in newspapers.

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