Three major questions came up for which we were not able to find easy answers. Indeed, they are some of the most difficult questions about this transition.

1. WHERE WILL THE NEWSGATHERERS COME FROM? News rooms are empty in print and broadcast media across the globe. In the new information model, who will do the beat and investigative reporting?

2. ACCESS: The current digital media leaves people behind, especially the elderly and people with limited incomes. How will they be informed and involved if all information is disseminated and all involvement requested through electronic means?

3. POLARIZATION: The print media allows people to select the information they want that meets their pre-selected interests and biases, which can increase polarization in the country.

Prediction: there will be no significant newspapers printed on newsprint in the US by 2012. So, you’ve got two and a half years before the newspaper industry is going to be doing something else with the news and the ads, or not be there at all. Does that change what you do today if you work in this business?

Insight! The newspaper industry is in trouble, but news is not going to go away, just the paper part. Those who are working hard to preserve the paper part are asking the wrong questions and are doomed to fail.

It doesn’t answer our questions, but it starts us realizing how big of a course correction we may be facing.

—–
I attended the recent AnnArbor.com meeting. In short, while the relationship between journalism and democracy is important, it may be a red herring in this case. They seem acutely aware of this relationship and all its nuances—most if not all questions were focused on this, and answered satisfactorily.

Of course, time will tell.

I am (and one should be) most concerned about the discrepancy between how print layouts guide passive focus to content (readers are unaware that they’re being guided to content), where online news sites have been less successful in guiding users to desired (and unknown-desired content). Online news layout is thus a crucial consideration regarding the democracy issue, and it is a more substantive grounds for activism.

The technical functionality of the site—that it be accessible and usable to the widest range of users, including users using dialups but also users with limited visual and motor capabilities and users of a variety of language proficiencies—is paramount. I raised these issues at the meeting and was impressed by the speakers’ range of knowledge on these issues. How they’ll actually deal with them is an unknown, as it is for them: they’re still trying to figure it all out.

On the down side, I’m not sure what they mean when they say (as they did) they’re using standards-compliant coding methods. Michigan Peaceworks, ICPJ, Zings and countless other websites think they’re using these, but none of them are. Web standard-compliance (rarely practiced by self-taught web developers) is the key to making online content the most accessible and usable to the widest demographic of users.

So, a focus for ICPJ users should be on this rather technological issue. A lot of time will be wasted if discussions are of the democracy vis-à-vis journalism issue; better time will be spent on how to best optimize content for a range of users. ICPJ would be doing a service to its members by educating them about web standards and their relationship to the (red-herring) journalism-democracy issue. The latter is very important, but it has to do with news organizations and journalists, not with how the news is represented online.

As for the number of people who don’t have internet access, it does seem this should be accommodated by providing these people with free bus rides to their local libraries. Not sure what to recommend regarding more rural people for whom there are no bus rides available except that they lobby their municipalities (and beyond this) for a transportation library network.