From post-industrial to post-journalism

Does journalism need a change of tactics or a new model entirely, and is it meeting the needs of a changing society?
Reporters with microphones
As a profession under pressure, journalism needs to adapt to a more diverse and stratified society. Photograph: Robert Daly/Getty Images/OJO Images

To say that journalism is in trouble is a massive understatement: decreased revenues, layoffs, newspaper closures, all show a field perilously close to the end. So the release of the Tow Center's report on Post-Industrial Journalism (pdf) was very opportune. Accepting the end of the news industry as such, the report presents an extensive and thorough analysis of the state of (primarily American) journalism offering valuable recommendations for adapting journalism to the present. It examines journalists and their practices, organisations and institutions, as well as the wider ecosystem within which news is produced and circulates. The future this report carves for journalism is an exciting mixture of innovative practices and journalistic values, including accountability. Journalists are no longer only reporters, but data miners, media artists, writers, analysts, witnesses and so on. Importantly, the report documents a shift in power from news institutions and organisations towards individual journalists – indeed, Andrew Sullivan's move from The Daily Beast to his own subscription-based website is seen as an example of post-industrial journalism at work.

And yet, after excitement settled down, I couldn't help feeling somewhat dissatisfied: the report delivers tactics, but not an overall strategy for journalism, its vision is interesting, but lacking in ambition. Will the acquisition of new skill sets and a turn towards more flexibility save journalism? Well, the answer would be yes, if these were the causes of journalism's problems.

But it may be that journalism is in deep trouble not because its business model was undermined or because journalists can't read Excel spreadsheets, but quite simply because it no longer serves the needs of a changing society.

What is the purpose of journalism? According to the report, as always, journalists are there to uncover and publicise information, but they need to do this in novel and more collaborative ways, while also being more open and accountable. Indeed, this is the very role of journalism as an institution of modernity. Throughout the report, and despite the authors' insistence that things can neither remain as they are nor can they return to an imaginary golden age of journalism, it is assumed that the normative role of journalism can remain more or less the same.

However, the massive systemic changes, not only in journalism, but more widely in society, cannot sustain a model of journalism that remains wedded to old and currently largely irrelevant norms conceived for a kind of society that no longer exists. At the same time, rethinking the norms of journalism is not a futile exercise in normative theory. It has important implications for practices as well. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, journalism, as much as any other social field, is a field of struggle between different players, who compete for dominance and control of the field's economic, symbolic and social capitals. Journalists, news institutions, and newcomers, such as the new infomediaries, are pragmatically oriented towards self-preservation and dominance within the field.

But their dominance and indeed survival will depend on the extent to which they succeed in imposing their own norms and criteria of excellence. Journalistic norms therefore emerge both as an ideal and as a regulatory mechanism within the field. They are used to justify dominance and exclude others – to determine what qualifies as journalism and what doesn't. From this point of view, successful journalistic practices are those that adhere more closely to norms established by the dominant players. If we leave these norms out of the discussion, we are effectively conceding the game to the players that are, or are likely to become, dominant within the field, ie those already in possession of considerable amounts of capital (economic, cultural, social, technological, symbolic). So to speak of a pluralisation of the field while undoubtedly positive, masks the growing cleavages between the various players.

More broadly, the problem is that journalism requires a more radical strategy and not only survival tactics. We are too far removed from the kind of mass society that required journalism to mediate between politicians, experts and the public. We – all stakeholders, that is, in the end, everybody – need to radicalise journalistic norms and functions, and move towards imagining not only post-industrial, but post-journalism. This would refer to the kind of journalism that applies itself to the kind of society we live in, a globalised network society, in which information is both its lifeline and its means of control, in which the constant communication instead of leading to more informed decisions ends up in meaningless circulation in an environment described as communicative capitalism. What does this society need? More information or more digested information? More layers of mediation through visuals and infographics? More personalisation and affective news? Or something else? And if so, what? Determining this will at once redefine and reorder the field, leading to a reshuffling of the various positions and establishing the value and relative worth of various practices, data journalism, news aggregation, citizen witnessing, opinion blogs, affective news and so on.

The success of Tow Center's report lies in initiating a wider dialogue on journalistic practices that goes beyond finding a new business model. But this, on its own, is not enough. Ultimately, journalism can only survive if it remains socially relevant, and for this, it needs to reflect on its own normative role in a society that is becoming not only more diverse, but also more stratified, more unequal and more tense.

Eugenia Siapera is a lecturer in new media and journalism at the Dublin City and Aristotle universities. Her recent work includes the Handbook of Global Online Journalism and you can follow her on Twitter @eugeniasiapera.
