The only constant in journalism today is change

By: Marjorie Miller*

“Disruption” is a word often heard these days at venerable journalism institutions such as the 170-year-old Associated Press news agency and El Universal newspaper, which celebrates its 100th birthday today. The media is in a state of disruption.

For the longest time, traditional media had a lock on the news with expensive printing presses, television towers, and an army of professional journalists who gathered information and put it out to local audiences that received the news from a relatively small number of periodicals and broadcasts.

It was mostly a one-way communication. The media distributed the news.

But the internet, social media and smart phones have changed that. The costs of entering the news business have plummeted, spawning a new generation of “digital native” media. Average citizens have access to literally a world of media options anywhere, any time of day or night. With just a mobile telephone and a Twitter account, they also can contribute to journalism, and comment on the news.

As a result, communication between the media and the public has become a two-way conversation that has given rise to a new language of journalism: shares, likes and engagement.

The competition for audience is fierce, and that’s unsettling for media that depend on advertising and subscriptions for revenue. It costs money to cover a coup attempt in Turkey or a war against Islamic State, not to mention a two-year presidential campaign in the United States. The Associated Press is a not-for-profit news cooperative, but most media have owners and stockholders who want profits. And regardless of the business model, most media that do not receive government subsidies have had to make cuts in news budgets to balance the books, and are innovating to do more with less.

While challenging, this new environment also offers tremendous opportunities for journalists who see the media as a pillar of democracy that informs the citizenry and holds the powerful accountable. They want to expose crime and shine a light in the dark recesses of the world, and with the internet, they have a vastly greater audience.

More people see the journalism produced by El Universal today than when it was distributed only on paper. The AP, which originally catered to newspapers, also produces audio, video and interactive journalism for the digital age that consumers can share and discuss--or, as we say, engage with. There is more opportunity for impact.

Not only that. No matter how many AP journalists we send around the world, we cannot be everywhere. But a citizen journalist might be. AP journalists still writes stories and shoot photographs and video. But we also use social media to track down sources and track down ever greater quantities of user-generated content--photos and video taken by citizens who happen to bear witness to a Bastille Day attack in France, or police killings in the United States.

So, with an abundance of citizen journalists and new media, you ask, what is the role now for news agencies such as the AP?

In a noisy world of information overload, our job still is to sort through facts and data so that we may provide accurate, independent news coverage to other media that rely on us. It is to explain the news as clearly and fairly as possible. And, it is to provide distinctive story-telling for mobile and digital platforms, where so much of the global audience gets its news.

That’s the role today, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. For the only thing certain about the future of journalism is that it will continue to change at a break-neck pace.

*Article written by Marjorie Miller, Associated Press, Vice President, Global News and Enterprise