The Internet is destroying journalism, according to Internet journalist Joshua Micah Marshall, the award-winning founder of TalkingPointsMemo (TPM). In a Friday speech at a Harvard conference on the future of the web, Marshall said traditional reporters are "terrorized" by economic and competitive challenges, living with a mix of "denial and fatalism" about the future of their craft -- and their livelihoods. When openings for entry-level jobs are posted at Marshall's site, for example, he said applications come in from senior investigate journalists struggling to find a job. The industry changes are bad for journalists, Marshall argued, but good for journalism.

As traditional journalism breaks apart, a new form of open, interactive, networked and, most importantly, iterative reporting is thriving online. TPM is powered by an energetic band of readers and activists who participate in gathering news. Marshall calls it "intimacy" -- a collaboration between writers and readers -- and it clearly drives research, traffic and stickiness. In complex, long-term stories like the U.S. attorney scandal and the fight over privatizing social security, TPM tapped readers to gather information, interview congressional staff and upload evolving political intelligence. While readers may be motivated by policy or political goals, their work product can still be objective information. For social security, Marshall said readers built a better virtual list of politicians' stances than anything tabulated by the traditional media or the White House.

Open reporting can also diversify and democratize the sources that reporters use. Journalists come to rely on "professional sources," Marshall explained, both for expertise (they know something) and convenience (they know how to deal with the press and speak in quotes). Interactive media websites can draw on more sources with more niche expertise, even if they don't speak in quotes. So why should non-media people care?

I think this is good for public discourse because it can (slowly) shift authority from a small clique of connected experts to a larger universe of niche experts and informed participants. The modern spin industry embeds itself in all kinds of media via these "professional sources," along with think tanks, shadow groups and online astroturf. Open reporting can organically route around that spin. (Or at least make it more transparent and expensive, if people try to game comment sections.)

Finally, when asked by a conference attendee to define the new role he built, Marshall stressed that he is still a traditional "journalist." He just operates in a different landscape.

Comments (9)

1. its like a giant salon. the internet forces newshungry folk to think critically (whether they succeed or not...).

   furhtermore the sketchiness of the msm has forced newshungry folks to resort to the internet for their news.

   and the internet must be kept open...

   as long as it is and as long as it competes with traditional media outlets the msm is forced into at least some honesty and journalistic professionalism in order to compete.

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 05/16/2008 @ 3:34pm

2. "The industry changes are bad for journalists, Marshall argued, but good for journalism."

   destroying journalism to save it?

   Posted by JonPincus at 05/16/2008 @ 5:18pm

3. Journalists write & post. We comment. What's so complex about that? In the hot seat? Yes. However, I don't have a job to protect. Or lose when I blunder.

   Posted by Sorelish at 05/16/2008 @ 5:44pm

4. It has a positive effect in that it brings stories to light that the MSM wouldn't touch. Like the story about "military analysts" lying on the MSM. No one will touch that but the story stays alive because of the web.

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 05/16/2008 @ 6:15pm

5. Posted by Mask at 05/16/2008

   Awesome quote. I think I will go home and watch one of those movies tonight.

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 05/16/2008 @ 8:29pm

6. Guess there's no internet in West Virginia.

   Posted by winyahn at 05/17/2008 @ 12:35am

7. The internal journalism is shoddy at best. It is more like an undisciplined graffiti ...reflecting the bias of the bloggers rather than a piece of investigative reporting. To suggest that it represents collaboration between readers and the bloggers is to distort reality. What does it exactly mean? The bloggers have a definite bias in what they chose to put on their website...these sites typically censor readers comments. The readers who wish to criticize blogger's point of views are quickly denied privileges. While I am highly critical of corporate media, journalistic standards used by the bloggers next to nothing.

   Posted by kevin99999 at 05/18/2008 @ 11:27pm

8. Anyone who can make 20 cents from Google adsense becomes an expert on the future of journalism.

   TPM "gathers" news from primary sources, the I-was-there journalist, and then sprinkle on it.

   iterative isn't a new word. It's getting boring, actually.

   Would love to write more but I need to get my "denial and fatalism" party invites out.

   Posted by dcblogs at 05/19/2008 @ 10:48am

9. Most of the best work of journalism still cannot be done from a chair in front of a computer screen. You still have to talk to real people who occupy themselves with natural resources, machine capital, and human services. Above all, those of us who care about economic justice need to remind ourselves that most of the poor DO NOT OWN COMPUTERS. Therefore, direct, interpersonal communication with ordinary people who live beyond the edges of the silicon network is valuable, indeed indispensable work, and it is right that we should pay journalists to do it.

   If web bloggers (and commentators like us) can actually help rather than harm journalists, and do it for free, then I'm sure that's nice sometimes. But I'm also sure that bloggers generally don't do the hard part - otherwise they wouldn't do it for free.

   We can't all be creating high-quality journalism in our spare time, for no pay, without leaving the comfort of our own homes.

   I can agree with Joshua Micah Marshall's optimistic view only insofar as it is POSSIBLE that technological change will eventually help professional journalists, once a LOT of new problems get solved. For example:

   How shall we pay people to do the hard part of journalism? How can hard information compete with the popular infotainment that comes with predigested corporate bias, made to order for consumers who know nothing else? How can the truth win out when people believe that whatever sells, or whatever gets viewed most often on the Internet, must be true? How can fact-finding research be given the fighting chance that it deserves - when it has to compete with the advanced science of political propaganda? How can today's struggling journalists compete with the legions of well-paid PR flacks, ad men, and political spin doctors who are better positioned than any blogger to take the place of journalists as the sources of most of the "information" that we receive when we turn on our computers?

   Posted by JakobFabian at 05/20/2008 @ 08:43am