"So rather than trying to cut off Google or make it pay, news organisations
should devise more ways to get more Google links. Indeed, I say that if the news
agencies wanted to serve the cause of journalism, they should help Google link
not to their own articles, which are often just rehashes of the commodity news
everyone already has, but to the original reporting they draw upon. Google and
the wire services should be supporting journalism at its source and encouraging
more of it. And news organisations should be trying to create more valuable and
unique reporting to stand out and be seen in this web of content. My standing
advice to journalists on the internet is, do what you do best and link to the
rest. That is how people will discover you: through your value, not because you
are a destination. My teen son told a newspaper executive recently that he never
goes to sites directly to read them - not major news brands, not blogs (not even
his father's). He gets to the news he reads - and he reads a lot of it - through
the links of peers who aggregate headlines in services such as Digg.com. Quality
will out."
This means that it is that much harder for journalists to make a name for themselves. There are two groups that are going to remain in journalism when the blogs, the internet and Google get done with their assault on the traditional career strong holds. On the low end is going to be news that local reporters are in a position that they can attain, and no one else. If you are covering the local courts, or the local city hall, traditional beats, nothing can replace the reporter on the ground, meeting and talking with the sources. At the other end of the scale will be the best writers in the industry that can put out copy about the big stories that are effecting the nation. These reporters might source their information from other reporters, blogs, news wires and a host of other sources. The writers who do not cover beats on a daily basis, and the writers who have been putting out less than stellar copy are going to find it hard to keep their jobs. As more of the news moves to the internet, and news sites find it easier and cheaper to link their readers to great stories from other sites as opposed to hiring their own writers to produce copy about the same stories. This process means less jobs for journalists, and a strong competition for the ones that are left, beat assignments may be the most coveted assignment on newspapers of the future.
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