Len Downie Jr.: Online news has been 'a wild ride of discovery'
At the opening of the Online News Association conference, Washington Post Editor Len Downie Jr. said, "The last 10 years have been wild ride of discovery."
He said there were lots of things that mainstream media organizations feared about the web, and not only have they not turned out to be true, but in most cases, those same concerns have turned into positive things.
While there was fear that news companies would lose their audiences, "Our overall audience for our journalism is huge compared to what it was," he said.
There once was fear that reporting for these multple platforms would be a distraction for our core newspaper business, with reporters going on radio and writing for the web, he said.
"It's improved our journalism a lot, more than we could imagine."
It means they're starting their day earlier and people are thinking all day long what is going to go on the web, on radio and the newspaper - creating better journalism.
"And now we have an unlimited news hole."
He said we worried the 24-hour news cycle would lead to more errors. But in fact the opposite is true. We work to the same standards and there's more scrutiny than before with the web - you can't publish anything now inaccurate without people catching you.
And, he said, technologies like blogs put our reporters in better touch with their readers.
"Everybody in our newroom wants to be a blogger," he said.
Downie threw out some challenges to think about.
" I still have some fears and concerns and worries for the future," he said, though.
- Attention spans are shorter on the web, so what does that mean for contemplative consumption of journalism?
- Will handheld devices further shorten attention spans?
- Ad revenue is growing, but will it make up for the loses of the print newspaper and be able to pay for the same level of journalism?
- Will edited and verifiable content continue to lbe as important with so much content now available?
- How can we learn from blogging and other forms to improve traditional media like newspapers and can we use that to bring in new readers and stem the circulation declines?
- Will branded content still have value?
Oct 06, 2006 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(1)
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1 comments about 'Len Downie Jr.: Online news has been 'a wild ride of discovery''Apparently not a wild ride of copyediting acumen, though.
Posted by Chuckles at October 6, 2006 1:12 PM
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