The Pixelization of Journalism

[Commentary] The journalism industry is in turmoil. The digital revolution has hit content providers of all kinds, changing their business models and in some cases altering the nature of the underlying content itself. Music has seen this most starkly. But print content, most particularly newspapers, have also faced significant disruption.

Digitization and the communications revolution have placed in the consumer/user the tools to access the content they want, when they want it, at little or no cost. But there needs to be something to access: content needs to be created and paid for at some level. The good news is that there are many revenue streams for news and information visible today. Journalists serve as watchdogs to the effective operation of government, and provide much of the information a citizen needs to exercise his or her functions of citizenship. They also supply much of the day-to-day information necessary for an individual to get along in civil society. As the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy so aptly describe, these functions are all essential to a thriving democracy. So too is the quest for finding sustainable models for the functions of journalism, however they are realized.