Newsmakers now reach their audiences directly via social media, changing journalists’ perceived value
David Gordon is managing partner, Toronto at Cohn & Wolfe Canada
The declining circulation and financial success of traditional (or legacy) media not only suggests an outmoded channel of communication, but more significantly the declining relevance of the journalists supplying the content. It’s not just the employment prospects that are diminishing—the perceived value is as well.
Once upon a time, the value of the journalist was as the provider of information to the ignorant (the first newspapers were introduced in the 1600s). They came with bias and political slant, and served as the arbiter or gatekeeper of information they deemed the masses needed to know. Over time that role evolved toward less bias (note I said less), and journalistic integrity became the cornerstone claim of the profession.
Fast forward to today and social/digital media have eclipsed legacy media (print and broadcast alike) in the distribution of information. I do mean fast forward—Twitter is only seven years old. The world has become smaller very quickly. Civil unrest, war, births, deaths and sport field victories are in the hands of the masses well before the 6 o’clock news or daily paper, or even the hourly radio update, regardless of their move to digital platforms.
The accessibility of social media not only allows the masses to self-determine the news they are interested in, it is also allowing newsmakers (politicians, businesses and celebrity alike) to bypass journalists in favour of direct contact with their audiences, skirting editorial opinion and analysis. This includes Toronto’s beleaguered Mayor Rob Ford, who has launched his own program on YouTube, as celebrities and politicians alike vie for the greatest number of Twitter followers and corporations embrace micro-targeting and engage a full array of social and digital tools to tell their story directly to the audiences deemed important.
This reality has changed the business model of our traditional media, and can be easily noted in such stalwarts of print journalism as The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. Both outlets (among many others) prominently feature ‘most read’ or ‘most emailed’ lists of news stories. “All the news that’s fit to print” as determined by editors and reporters has been replaced by all the news deemed worthy by news consumers of clicking on. The newsroom’s role as arbiter has been taken over by bestseller lists. News has evolved into a commodity supplied to meet public-driven demand, with the tally of the volume of repeats replacing professional insight as the determinant of desirability and quality.
The reality is that journalists are ill-equipped to keep up with the democratization of news through social media. Though they try, it often leads to embarrassing results as stories are rushed to digital publication in their rawest form, without verification or sober review. An example is the horrific circumstances of the Boston Marathon bombing, where trained journalists reported numerous errors as they rushed to keep pace with the explosion of news commentary and reporting on social media.
While access to breaking news via social media (particularly local news) has easily supplanted the journalist as an instant information source, there remains a distinct need for journalists. That need is simply identified as integrity. While mass engagement with social media has broadened access to breaking news and the speed at which it is delivered, it has also highlighted issues of mistruths and errors.
Journalists need to avoid the pitfalls of trying to keep up with their untrained counterparts by speed to market, and instead assert their established strengths of integrity, reliability and accuracy in reporting not offered through social media. Successful delivery of these strengths results in trust, which at the end of the day may be the only defining point (and key to survival) for the journalist.
