A few weeks ago, comedian John Oliver devoted some time on his HBO show Last Week Tonight to talking about the depressing financial state of journalism. It was, really, a love note to newspapers, and many of my journalism friends shared it with laughter and tears both.
Oliver noted that newspaper reporters very often do the investigative journalism legwork, while TV stations – or online sites like The Huffington Post - simply cite these reports.
“It’s pretty obvious without newspapers around to cite, TV news would just be Wolf Blitzer endlessly batting a ball of yarn around,” joked Oliver, who went on to note that because of people’s increasing unwillingness to pay for news, the newspaper industry is in an increasingly dire state.
“We’ve just grown accustomed to to getting our news for free, and the longer we get something for free, the less willing we are to pay for it. And I’m talking to you, the person watching this segment on YouTube using the WiFi from the coffee shop underneath your apartment. (Ahem.)”
While I completely agree with Oliver’s assessments about newspapers’ increasingly tight squeeze between that proverbial rock and hard place, the other problem is that people increasingly seem to believe that the news should come to them, without them having to actively seek out information.
I still remember a contentious meeting with local residents about a proposed transmission line. The gentleman from ATCO picked me out of the crowd, and said, “We had an open house a year ago; I know this young lady was there and reported on it.”
His implication was clear – the news of this transmission line was put before the public well in advance. Why had everyone waited until the project was underway before expressing their dissent?
The news is out there – whether it’s on a local, provincial or national scale. The question is, do people want to be informed about it, or would they rather complain after the fact about missing key information or missing out on an event they would have liked to attend?
Of course, there is a lot of mistrust of mainstream media out there; typically, journalists rate just over politicians, airport baggage handlers and telemarketers in surveys about trustworthiness of different professions. And it’s true, we don’t always get it right – everyone has different views of subjects, and interviewing two or three people will only give you a couple of angles into complicated topics.
But every journalist I know strives to be accurate and fair. And I know what it takes for them to do a job not just adequately, but well. So I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and continue to give my favourite news sources the small monetary sum they ask to provide me content online, so that there exists someone to ask questions, to uncover information, and to write the story.
Or we can embrace the end, and wait for the day where news sites just offer funny cat videos, because, you know, traffic.
