Virtual Worlds Forum
Posted on October 25, 2007
Filed Under What's New |
Virtual Worlds Forum is one good conference. After talking to a couple of the people who were there I am convinced that non-local journalists have about five years left before their profession implodes.
That means journalism will be ultra low-paid (most local journalists earn around minimum wage) and the newspapers and magazines that get their survival plans right will do so by having no permanent staff journalists.
They will become a group of editors whose job is to seek out content from the web and contacts at the lowest possible cost. They will prosper economically through more of those special report inserts, advertising features and other tricks of the trade that dress up PR as journalism. One Irish paper already asks companies do they want an article in their business section, for a fee, which is superficially appalling but not vastly different from the “special report” section.
What’s going to replace newspapers as we know them - I know it is a commonplace now to believe the press has weathered the storm but I think we’ve only witnessed a sneak preview of what will happen.
I think we are in for a long battle over who has a legitimate right to create and purvey factual content, a battle that will have a strong moral element as we the public are persuaded that the truth is out there in a variety of competing models.
The best bet is some kind of cross reality product that fundamentally improves our ability to tell true stories in engaging ways. I’m happy to say also it’s a project I’ve finally got a chance to work on. More later.
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