Can Facebook save journalism and bring it into the digital age?
Facebook is trying to teach journalists how to thrive in the digital age while also tackling the scourge of fake news. The key lies in helping users tell the difference between truth and lie.
As self-proclaimed authorities on everything specialised, generalists – or (ahem) journalists – don’t like being told how to suck eggs.
But at the same time, those in the media who owe their longevity to being adaptable and rolling with the changes actually relish every opportunity to learn new things. And that’s a metaphor for any profession or trade to thrive in the 21st century.
Can Technology Save Journalism?
Ten years ago, in a moment of characteristic prescience, the Economist asked, “Who Killed Newspapers?” The year was 2006, and already, the Internet posed an existential challenge to an industry that only several decades earlier seemed unassailable. While the question was then, and remains, relevant to the broader world of journalism, the Economist observed that “of all the ‘old’ media, newspapers have the most to lose from the internet.”
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AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
Publishers and journalists must work together to save journalism
Hardly a day passes without an announcement by one newspaper publisher or another that jobs must go, titles must be merged and offices must be closed.
Cutbacks have been the reality of the news trade in Britain for the best part of 20 years at national, regional and local level. And the same story has been unfolding in the USA, Canada, Australia and most European countries.
The cause, as we all know, is the onward march of the digital revolution. We who praise its advance cannot also help but lament its disruption.