"The internet might end up returning journalism to a faster, more technologically sophisticated version of what it was before the advent of the commercial newspaper business."

"Does journalism have a future?

NICHOLAS LEMANN

George Brock
OUT OF PRINT
Newspapers, journalism and the business of news in the digital age
242pp. Kogan Page. Paperback, £19.99 (US $24.95).
978 0 7494 6651 0

Brock doesn’t try to solve this problem, but he does take on the project of defining the social value of journalism more precisely than merely asserting, implausibly, that everything journalists do is essential: “I would define journalism as the systemic, independent attempt to establish the truth of events and issues that matter to society in a timely way”, and he offers a menu of four sub-categories – verification, sense-making, witness and investigation. It still leaves the question how this mission will be supported, if not by readers and advertisers. The news you read today that meets Brock’s definition is often supported by government (as in the case of the BBC or Al-Jazeera) or by a rich patron who finds the role of press lord attractive and has other means of making money. These are not entirely satisfying solutions to the problem of how to support the socially useful aspects of journalism: state support is out of sync with the current resources and inclinations of the developed world, and support by patrons is a happenstance, not a guarantee.

There are alternatives, and, towards the end of Out of Print, Brock notes some American examples of relatively new, online-only news sites that seem to be self-sufficient. One senses that Brock is trying to be optimistic about these, but he is intellectually honest enough to mention that all of them are still small and struggling. It is difficult to say with a straight face, and George Brock does not, that the fabled “new business model” for news – that members of Team Mainstream Media often see just around the corner – has arrived, or will arrive any time soon. The internet might end up returning journalism to a faster, more technologically sophisticated version of what it was before the advent of the commercial newspaper business."