Why journalists deserve low pay | csmonitor.com
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Richard Picard might be chanting, “The journalist is dead; Long live the journalist.”
Picard defines a journalist as a person with “the capabilities to access sources, to search through information and determine its significance, and to convey it effectively.” Until shockingly recently, you needed the support of an institution to enjoy such powers. Now you can do this at home, so the “value added” has to be added differently.
His suggestions for daily newspapers are sound, I think. “[E]mphasize uniqueness. The Boston Globe, for example, could become the national leader in education and health reporting because of the multitude of higher education and medical institutions in its coverage area. Not only would it make the paper more valuable to readers, but it could sell that coverage to other publications. Similarly, The Dallas Morning News could provide specialized coverage of oil and energy, The Des Moines Register could become the leader in agricultural news; and the Chicago Tribune in airline and aircraft coverage. Every paper will have to be the undisputed leader in terms of their quality and quantity of local news.”
Of course, it’s hard even to get the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post to divvy culture, business and politics rationally among themselves. It’s not easy to convince the beat reporter that “Journalists are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such as professors or electricians,” although they likely would agree after the third beer.
I also offer this criticism of Picard, who is “a professor of media economics at Sweden’s Jonkoping University, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, and the author and editor of 23 books, including “The Economics and Financing of Media Companies”.” The “unique base of knowledge” of an electrician, brain surgeon or jet pilot is more valuable than that of most professors.
Paul Statt Communications 