Is the profession of journalism on the verge of extinction?

This is not a so straight forward question as it might seem to be. Present media consumption trend depicts that newspaper consumption is on a decline. Does this necessarily mean that journalism is on the verge of extinction?

Some future-technology pundits have predicted that with the advent of Web 2.0 and Blogs, (bloggers blogging about almost anything), journalism could phase out. However commentator Donnacha Delong does not hold so much of an obscure view about the presumable threat to the professions of journalism. He claims that the professional media does provide users with something ‘truly authoritative’.

Coming back to the question that newspapers consumption is on the decline and whether it has a correlation with news consumption at all; it is first vital to distinguish between traditional and new forms of media.

Traditional forms of media have long been the preserve of newspaper. Lately, online newspapers have been overshadowing print newspaper. This explains for the decline in print newspaper consumption; but in no way implies that people have stopped reading news all together.

Television has also played a major role in eclipsing print newspaper as a media. Digitization has permitted broadcasters to squeeze several channels in fewer bandwidths, thus making it possible for broadcasters to profitably run 24-hour news channels, for example BBC 24, Sky News and CNN. More to this, television and online newspapers, constantly keep consumers informed with news update- something that print newspaper cannot afford. This is likely to be one of the major reasons that people are consuming less print newspaper. Whether the extinction of traditional newspaper is a good thing or not is debatable, however, one thing that is definitely good is that e-newspaper is much greener than print newspaper.

With the extinction of newspaper, is the profession of journalism becoming extinct too? The answer is definitely no. First of all, newspaper is very unlikely to die out completely. A reduced number of journalists would still work for them. Moreover, Television news channels and e-newspapers would still need journalist to bring news.

Barry Diller, in this interview below claims that the key thing for the survival of print newspapers is that they should adapt to changes.



From a personal perspective, in order to make a profitable turnover, print newspaper organisations would have to reinvent and diversify rather that delivering only one form of service.