This is the reason I went to the Guardian. If you are interested in what is going on in journalism, read it. It is Alan Rusbridger’s recent lecture “Does journalism exist?” (accompanied by a video podcast). In it, the editor of the Guardian covers new forms like linked reporting and layer reporting, paywalls, business models, and sketches where we could go from here.
As we all know there is a lot of change going on. In the lecture, Alan takes all this into account uncovering that there are new chances, too. This isn’t the downturn of journalism. The industry of journalism is changing, however journalism won’t just survive. There are new fields waiting to be discovered out there. To put it with the German journalist Egon Erwin Kisch, we need a new “poetry of curiosity” in journalism. And on the way, we are going to take this along…
“… journalistic virtues – courage, campaigning, toughness, compassion, humour, irreverence; a serious engagement with serious things; a sense of fairness; an eye for injustice; a passion for explaining; knowing how to achieve impact; a connection with readers.”
Yes, there is an industrialisation of information. Yes, more and more algorithms are delivering results that calculate the future. What might look convenient at first sight, can become a huge problem – think of being profiled for health care insurance. The experts, the search engine optimisers, were the first to understand what is going on, but we all should be much more alert. It is about time to start the debate in a broader sense, like the publisher of the FAZ, Frank Schirrmacher is doing here, teaming up with the German Chaos Computer Club who is pleading for a digital passport that informs you about your digital profile.
What Apple can do for journalism
If publishers take their chance with Apple, iTunes can offer 100 million accounts with credit card information. Yes, you read it correctly: 100 million
