The movement from traditional media to online, digital content is a good thing, for both ethical, journalistic, and even economic reasons. The best policy approach, then, is to naturally let this transition take place, with little to no interference from the government or any other external sources.
A cautionary tale involving a failed government attempt to regulate the journalism industry comes from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Journalism was undergoing a different transition during this period—newspapers were losing audiences to a new form of journalistic media, namely television broadcasts. During the late 1960s, many smaller newspapers began to lose revenue and go out of business, especially papers that only delivered during the evening and those that reached only small, local readerships. Worried that many of these smaller newspapers would fail, Congress passed the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, which allowed different newspaper companies to form joint operating agreements, exempting them from some antitrust laws prohibiting profit sharing. Although the law was intended to keep smaller newspaper companies afloat, it backfired and actually sped up the rate at which newspaper companies consolidated or closed down altogether.
There are two important lessons from the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970. The first is that government regulation of a widespread, volatile, and highly competitive industry like journalism should be avoided. Even the most well intentioned piece of legislation can easily have the exact opposite effect from what it intended. This is in part because the evolution of journalistic media is hard to control. Even a more effective bailout of failing newspaper companies would have only slowed the transition to the then new, alluring possibilities of television broadcasts and a twenty-four hour news cycle.
The second lesson is that a transition to a different form of media does not mean the death of journalistic integrity or quality, and it does not entirely obliterate the older form of media. Print journalism still survived alongside television, albeit with lower readerships and only larger newsrooms making it through the transition. But also, television journalism flourished and gave rise to powerful forms of reporting and storytelling. The 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s saw the rise of legendary news anchors like Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw. Television journalism had a crucial part in influencing public opinion about the Vietnam War. And investigative journalism also found a place on TV—the most famous example being Mike Wallace and the rest of 60 Minutes.
Of course, a laissez-faire approach must be ready to accept some kind of "creative destruction." Smaller newspapers or news agencies that do not successfully make the transition to digital distribution may lose a large portion of their audiences and may be forced to shut down. This, however, is a common side effect of innovation. Many journalists will still be able to find work and be paid in the digital sphere, and the innovation that the Internet offers will contribute to richer, more powerful forms of journalism.
Internet journalism is still in an extremely nascent stage and thus offers a wide range of possibilities for new forms of reporting and investigation. This is perhaps the most compelling argument for a natural, laissez-faire transition to online and digital journalism. The new media presents exciting communicative challenges for journalists, and offers consumers more powerful ways of receiving and even interacting with the news.
A cautionary tale involving a failed government attempt to regulate the journalism industry comes from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Journalism was undergoing a different transition during this period—newspapers were losing audiences to a new form of journalistic media, namely television broadcasts. During the late 1960s, many smaller newspapers began to lose revenue and go out of business, especially papers that only delivered during the evening and those that reached only small, local readerships. Worried that many of these smaller newspapers would fail, Congress passed the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, which allowed different newspaper companies to form joint operating agreements, exempting them from some antitrust laws prohibiting profit sharing. Although the law was intended to keep smaller newspaper companies afloat, it backfired and actually sped up the rate at which newspaper companies consolidated or closed down altogether.
There are two important lessons from the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970. The first is that government regulation of a widespread, volatile, and highly competitive industry like journalism should be avoided. Even the most well intentioned piece of legislation can easily have the exact opposite effect from what it intended. This is in part because the evolution of journalistic media is hard to control. Even a more effective bailout of failing newspaper companies would have only slowed the transition to the then new, alluring possibilities of television broadcasts and a twenty-four hour news cycle.
The second lesson is that a transition to a different form of media does not mean the death of journalistic integrity or quality, and it does not entirely obliterate the older form of media. Print journalism still survived alongside television, albeit with lower readerships and only larger newsrooms making it through the transition. But also, television journalism flourished and gave rise to powerful forms of reporting and storytelling. The 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s saw the rise of legendary news anchors like Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw. Television journalism had a crucial part in influencing public opinion about the Vietnam War. And investigative journalism also found a place on TV—the most famous example being Mike Wallace and the rest of 60 Minutes.
Of course, a laissez-faire approach must be ready to accept some kind of "creative destruction." Smaller newspapers or news agencies that do not successfully make the transition to digital distribution may lose a large portion of their audiences and may be forced to shut down. This, however, is a common side effect of innovation. Many journalists will still be able to find work and be paid in the digital sphere, and the innovation that the Internet offers will contribute to richer, more powerful forms of journalism.
Internet journalism is still in an extremely nascent stage and thus offers a wide range of possibilities for new forms of reporting and investigation. This is perhaps the most compelling argument for a natural, laissez-faire transition to online and digital journalism. The new media presents exciting communicative challenges for journalists, and offers consumers more powerful ways of receiving and even interacting with the news.