Fourth estate won't bow to digital age - Business - Business - smh.com.au

Fourth estate won't bow to digital age - Business - Business - smh.com.au

So are newspapers dying or not? Are they a little bit sick, or is it terminal?

According to News Limited CEO John Hartigan, newspapers need to aggressively market themselves as interpreters of the news, not just providers. In a speech this week to the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association (PANPA), Hartigan also called for more "crusading and campaigning journalism".

This is actually a scary thought - most of News Limited's papers, which dominate the Australian market, are conservative and more prone to spreading moral panic than crusading analytical journalism.

Look out for more tabloid-style crusades from the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and the Australian. No paedophile, drug-addicted single mum or drunken Aborigine will be safe from the News Limited rain of terror.

Is there really though a new virtual public sphere -- a 'fourth estate' of the internet? I'm not yet convinced as I told my students the other day. The interent is rapidly being suborned by the very same large old-media companies who currently dominate the print and broadcast media. In this climate there's no greater freedom available to journalists of either the professional, or the 'citizen' type.

The End of Journalism?

Journalism & Media Discussion Forum: The End of Journalism?
Adrian Monck is the head of journalism at City University London, the link here is to his recent post on "the end of journalism" blogsite.
Is there a link between journalism and democracy? In theory "yes", but it needs to be much more carefully unpacked and analysed.
Most of the world has some resemblance to "democracy", but usually of a limited, restricted parliamentary sort. In some parts of the world the values of democracy are already under threat.
The fourth estate model of journalism is discredited and news workers are generally seen as lacking in ethics and credibility.
The key paradox for me is in the duality of the news commodity. Journalism is, as Monck says, both an information source and a watchdog. But this is fatally flawed by the commercial imperative of the market system. The ethical imperative of journalism - to support democracy - is undermined by the cash imperative of capitalism.