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combatserver writes:
"While The Guardian and The New York Times reported on the NSA targeting of data leaked by popular mobile apps, independent sources produced highly-detailed articles--accompanied by source material--that paint a much broader picture of NSA capabilities and intent. Recent restrictions imposed on journalists--a result of corporate influence, editorial decisions, and threats against journalists--combined with the ease of establishing a website, might be driving a new era in journalism.
The Intercept recently announced a shift towards independent reporting with the creation of their own news outlet, free of the constraints imposed on journalists by 'Big Media' and governments. Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill have joined forces to provide the world with an alternative, perhaps blazing a path towards a fundamental change in how news is reported and distributed. SoylentNews can play a significant role in this shift towards journalistic freedom--we share many common core-ideals, and can give voice to independent news sources.
The Big Question: How will 'Big Media' and governments react to this shift in journalism?"
(Score: 1) by dmc on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:33AM
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IMO, the problem isn't the platform but the paycheck. Thanks to the intarwebs, most people can publish whatever their heart desires and reach, at least potentially, a global audience. But the crucial difference between this publishing platform and the platform that "Big Media" provides is the fact that the latter pays its writers and editors to produce content.
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My theory is this isn't actually so much of a problem. Perhaps post-intrawebs, we simply don't benefit from keeping the journalism industry as it was. Perhaps 90% of the historical journalism industry can be more than adequately replaced by individual unpaid 'hobbyist' journalists. How many news sites like this one and slashdot that accept user submissions and have 10,000+ users exist? If even 1% of those spend just 1 hour a week doing hobbyist level journalism, that might be most of what a large percentage of society need. Sure, it's good to have some well-funded next-gen Woodward-and-Bernsteins that can afford to do real time and resource consuming primary research. But I'm not even sure much of that is really necessary in a world where you have an occasional Deep Throat or Edward Snowden spill dirty secrets to a global audience of hobbyist journalists. And for the mainstream stuff, it makes perfect sense to have things like weather reports and daily crime reports simply available online where hobbyists can digest the raw data into replacements for their traditional newspaper counterparts.
But that said, we do need to spend more time focusing on how people can make a living in the radically new and still changing information age. Myself, I'd like to see a future world where technological advance allows the majority of traditional jobs to become obsolete, and the resulting minority of jobs split amongst more workers that work for their paycheck fewer hours a week. I think historically before technological advance, the idea of working 60 hours a week to obtain a fairly meager existence was normal. At some point we decided that 40 hours/week was more reasonable. I think it would be awesome (and actually likely possible) if someday in the not so distant future most of society could 'make a living' only working 20 hours a week at a grocery store or fast food restaurant or as an entertainer, and then spend another 20 unpaid hours a week on hobbies such as journalism or non-saleable artistry etc. That's my positive vision for the future. I may not live to see it, but I do believe if we grow up as a human race it is entirely possible.