The future of journalism

1) Go to the Nieman Lab webpage (part of Harvard university) and watch the video of Clay Shirky presenting to Harvard students. 

2) Play the clip AND read along with the transcript below to ensure you are following the argument. You need to watch from the beginning to 29.35 (the end of Shirky's presentation).

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

Clay Shirky claims that journalism is significant more specifically accountability journalism. This type of journalism lures out the accurate and correct new stories. He debates the film "spotlight" which focuses on the editor Marty Baron of the Boston Globe. He instructed a group of journalists to uncover accusations against John Geoghan, a disqualified priest blamed of assaulting more than 80 children. In the talk he said that without expert news coverage we could never have got an answers concerning this case.

4) 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.)?

Associations amongst papers and advertisers are not good on the grounds that beforehand advertisers needed the advertisement slot payments, this shows there wasn’t any platforms before this that adverts could be widely shown. Back in those days the internet wasn’t the mainstream platform for adverts to pop in, because not may people really used with so it wouldn’t reach multiple demographics across the globe. Clay mentions how advertisers were expensive as well as undeserved not by any means finding the opportunity to say "don't write about my industry". The subject matter he touched up on was the New York Times advert of Ford promotions.

5) 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?

Because of this digitally advanced era we can now access newspapers online and on multiple devices connection with digital convergence. Citizen journalism has increased and its users as opposed to producers that are pushing together the end content. Earlier content was printed for everyone while now we pick what we need to peruse and hence it is particular to our necessities.Cititzen journlism is so successful now because it adds a sense of realism about it because of the low production qualities that come with it.

6) 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?

 If the internet was created and available, the outrage including the Catholic Church certainly would not have the ability to be covered up buy figures with high authority. In any case, if the internet was common in 1992, individuals could share the genuine story all the more effectively and the sharing would simply continue going until those included or any other person so far as that is concerned.

7) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls? 

Shirky feels like there are limitation, he argues that the population need accountability journalism coverage however why might we pay for it. E.g, someone cloud be subscribed to The Economist nothing stops them sharing a story they have found on social media which would then get reposted and reused by other media associations.

8) What is a 'social good'? In what way is journalism a 'social good'?

A social good is a good or service that advantages the biggest number of individuals in the biggest likely way that it can. Journalism can be viewed as a social good through the publication of stories, for example, the catholic church outrage since they would somehow or another have been concealed totally or made not to look as terrible as they were.

9) 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?  

Shirky stated "We need a class of institutions or models, whether they’re endowments or crowdsourced or what have you — we need a model that produces five percent of accountability journalism. And we need to get that right 17 times in a row. That’s the issue before us. There will not be anything that replaces newspapers, because if you could write the list of stuff you needed and organizational characteristics and it looked like newspapers, newspapers would be able to fill that role, right?”