The Future of Journalism: Blog tasks

 Part 1: Clay Shirky lecture

1) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this?

Because accountability journalism is shirking and he mentions that these changes to the print industry are irreversible rather being cyclic by going in circle and waiting for the next go around.

2) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)?

He states that advertisers were being forced to overpay for the services they receive because there weren't many alternatives for reaching people with display advertisements and the example was Xerox PARC.

3) Shirky talks about the 'unbundling of content'. This means people are reading newspapers in a different way. How does he suggest audiences are consuming news stories in the digital age?

He says people read newspapers in a different way because readship falls every year because readers dont go to the time you go to the story because someone tweeted it or put it on facebook or said it to you and even so the audience is now being assembled not by the paper but by other members

4) Shirky also talks about the power of shareable media. How does he suggest the child abuse scandal with the Catholic Church may have been different if the internet had been widespread in 1992?

5) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls? 

6) What is a 'social good'? In what way might journalism be a 'social good'?

7) Shirky says newspapers are in terminal decline. How does he suggest we can replace the important role in society newspapers play? What is the short-term danger to this solution that he describes?

8) Look at the first question and answer regarding institutional power. Give us your own opinion: how important is it that major media brands such as the New York Times or the Guardian continue to stay in business and provide news?

Part 2: MM55 - Media, Publics, Protest and Power

Media Magazine 55 has an excellent feature on power and the media. Go to our Media Magazine archive, click on MM55 and scroll to page 38 to read the article Media, Publics, Protest and Power', a summary of Media academic Natalie Fenton’s talk to a previous Media Magazine conference. Answer the following questions:

1) What are the three overlapping fields that have an influence on the relationship between media and democracy?

2) What is ‘churnalism’ and what issues are there currently in journalism?

 This often leads to a greater use of unattributed rewrites of press agency or public relations material, and the cut- and-paste practice now known as churnalism.

3) What statistics are provided by Fenton to demonstrate the corporate dominance of a small number of conglomerates? 

4) What is the 'climate of fear' that Fenton writes about in terms of politics and the media? 

Four successive Prime Ministers admitted to The Leveson Enquiry that they were ‘too close’ to the big media players because the political stakes were so very high. In this climate, political parties, the police and other institutions are reluctant to investigate wrong- doing in the news media, hinder the expansion of large media conglomerates, or introduce new regulation of news organisations and journalistic practice.

5) Fenton finishes her article by discussing pluralism, the internet and power. What is your opinion on this crucial debate - has the internet empowered audiences and encouraged democracy or is power even more concentrated in the hands of a few corporate giants?

Most recently the notion of media freedom has been applied to information pluralism on the internet, and claimed as a democratic gain.