Saturday 24 July 2010

Andrew Marr hopes for 'a better kind of journalism'


Andrew Marr on the BBC News website has blogged again about the future of the media and held out hope for "a better kind of journalism".
Marr says of the future for journalism: "Two things struck me. The first is that I've started to spend quite a lot on buying online reading material, from books and magazines to news material; and that the quality's pin-sharp, easy on the eye and addictive....People pay for magazines, television channels, DVDs and endless apps. The notion that they shouldn't ever pay for news is actually quite bizarre and a historic anomaly."
Marr adds: "The second thought is that journalism may be on the edge of a great new age. How good have we been, honestly, at telling the truth to the powerful? When a crisis blows up, or a problem of deep complexity has to be confronted, few reporters have the specialist knowledge or time to really confront government, or a company."
He suggests: "The next media age may be differently configured. We may have a group of very large "aggregators" bringing busy people the most important new news of the day, rather as now, but there will be fewer of them.
"But underneath that, we will have large numbers of specialist news sites - for specific companies or sectors, for different environmental issues, for overseas crises - which bring together journalists, academics, specialists, campaigners, professionals, lobbyists and so on.
"These will be where the expertise and longer-term attention span will be found. They will pile the pressure onto the powerful, and keep asking the questions. And from time to time their work will break upwards, to the aggregators (we need a better word) and the global headlines.Or so I hope.
"There's the real chance of a better kind of journalism in all this."

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