A New Newsroom
By John Lim
It was simple when I first started out in magazines. Work the room, one step at a time, moving from editorial assistant to writer to deputy editor to editor. And while I consider myself lucky to have achieved that in five short years, last year I felt the urge to move out of print getting stronger, a feeling that led me here, to The Edge's online department.
The reason why journalists become journalists is partially narcissistic; within all writers and journalists lies the desire to influence society, to inform the public, to sway people's opinion through their byline. Five years ago, print was still king in providing that communication platform. Now, however, the situation has clearly changed.
The role that digital media played during the last general elections woke many Malaysian journalists with this message: if you want to be influential, to get your point across and to build a rapport with your readers-all goals that every writer aspires to achieve-the web was the way to go.
Yet the move to integrate digital media with print has not happened en masse: while local newspapers and magazines are moving onto the web, there remains a lack of consolidation between a the print product and the web. The logistics are a mess, burdened by print room legacies that have proved successful for centuries, but are failing in the Internet age, which emphasises on speed, rich media, and connectivity. And not all writers have adapted the same enthusiasm to embrace the web. There are a couple of reasons for this.
It's the information that matters
A few months ago, I interviewed a prospective young writer on joining a magazine I helmed, and I remember a telling quote that kept ringing in my head: "I don't blog," he said. "I want to concentrate on being a magazine journalist, it's what I love." As noble as his passion for print was, it's a misplaced passion that I hope is the exception to the rule for most young journalists.
His mistake, and the mistake of many news organisations around the world in the recent past, was placing his loyalty to a medium. Michael Rosenblum, a CBS News producer turned video journalist, couldn't have put it better when he said: "Newspapers are in the journalism and information business, they're not in the paper business." That statement is obvious to many, but it's a lesson that some are only starting to learn.
For while there are inherent advantages and disadvantages for each medium, the main goal of a media company is to deliver information. And for a journalist to restrict oneself to a medium is goes against to what they are employed to do, which is to produce and disseminate information as effectively as possible, regardless of the medium.
The Conundrum of Cost
Now, more than ever, the hunger for information has never panged so much; the Y- or Net Generation, those born between 1978 and 2000, is the most knowledgeable generation in human history. Every morning, every night, they actively search and contribute information by the terabytes, browsing through Wikipedia, blogs and news sites. It is now, in this age when the information available is seemingly never enough to satisfy the hunger for it, that being a journalist matters.
Here in lies the enigma of journalism in the digital age. For even as the demand and consumption of information rises to unprecedented levels, the cost of information has never been cheaper. It's a paradox that still confounds many, even the sharpest minds of Google and News Corp.: "Don't exchange print dollars for Internet pennies" is the elephant in the room that no one has figured a way to usher out yet.
To put the situation in a local context, the Malaysian advertising expenditure for New Media last year stood at "almost 1%" of the Adex of about RM6 billion, according to Nielsen Media. That's one-tenth of what the global average is (in the UK, Internet ad spend can reach as high as 19%). From those figures, you can understand why many news organisations so used to print ad revenue aren't compelled to go all gung-ho onto the web.
Michael Hirschon, writing for The Atlantic gives a clearer picture of the state of newspaper economics: "The conundrum, of course, is that those 1 million print readers, who pay actual cash money for the privilege of consuming the paper, and who are worth about five figures a page to advertisers, are far more profitable than the 20 million unique Web users, who don't and aren't. Common estimates suggest that a Web-driven product could support only 20 percent of the current staff; such a drop in personnel would (in the short run) devastate The Times' news-gathering capacity."
This is part of the reason the newspaper industry is crashing across the US and the UK-situations which well could be our own in five to ten years' time, if broadband penetration becomes ubiquitous. But for all the turmoil surrounding the newspaper industry in the US, the Malaysian print industry remains healthy for now.
That, however, doesn't mean journalists should wait and watch while the wave crashes on them, for in 10 years' time, the idea of a print-only journalist won't exist. For those existing at these crossroads, now is the time to put on blinders, knuckle down, and prepare for the future that's soon-to-arrive.
The Future Journalist
This conundrum in which news organisations reside is a challenge that journalists have to rise up to. For while the economics of newspapers stutter, the flow of information and news must continue in abundance, in the gigabyte-loads of text, audio, and video.
It's a challenge that even I greet with a sense of trepidation. In restructuring the newsroom for The Edge to integrate the Web into the daily print workflow, old practices need to be reviewed, paradigms shifted, and more skills to be learned. It's not an easy task.
So here's a picture of the new journalist in the next five years: They will be the most hardworking, skilled, and knowledgeable journalists in the history of news organisations. They'll think fast, report fast, and know rich-media editing skills. They'll also be the most networked journalists, implicitly knowing how media works. For this generation of journalists, "New Media" is just media, because it's all they've ever known, consumed and contributed to.
Looking at Malaysian teenagers, university and college students, all those future journalists, I'm confident that despite the turmoil surrounding the industry, the future of news is in great hands. From the get-go, they're taking the initiative to set up their own blogs, forming opinions, sharing and sourcing information, and some even have a business model before they're out of their 20s. When this media generation enters the profession, they'll have years of experience even before they step into the newsroom.
It's a future newsroom that I can't wait for to arrive.
John Lim is the Assistant Editor for New Media at The Edge Communications. He has been around the publishing block with magazines such as KLue, FHM Malaysia, and NewMan Malaysia. For more rants and raves surrounding media you can check his blog at johndotorgslashblog.wordpress.com, follow twitter.com/johnlim, or see his lighter view of the Web at popmedia.tumblr.com.