Despite all the dire news about the state of the newspaper industry, we are actually in the middle of a Golden Age for news consumers who can surf the net, use search engines, access the best stories from around the world, and be able to comment, interact and form communities. Journalism plays an indispensable role in our democracy, but it's important to remember that the future of journalism is not dependent on the future of newspapers.
The great upheaval the news industry is going through is the result of a perfect storm of transformative technology, the advent of sites such as Craigslist, dramatic changes in consumer habits, and the dire impact the economic crisis has had on advertising. And there is no question that, as the industry moves forward and we figure out the new rules of the road, there needs to be a great deal of experimentation with new revenue models. "We are now in the midst of an epochal debate over the value of content," said the News Corporation chairman, Rupert Murdoch, last week, "and it is clear to many newspapers that the current model is malfunctioning."
But what won't work – what can't work – is to pretend that the last 15 years never happened, that we are still operating in the old content economy as opposed to what journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has called the new linked economy, and that the survival of the industry will be found by "protecting" content behind walled gardens. We've seen that movie – and consumers gave it lousy reviews.
No, the future is to be found elsewhere. It is a linked economy. It is search engines. It is online advertising. It is citizen journalism and foundation-supported investigative funds. That's where the future is. And if you can't find your way to that, thenyou can't find your way.
When I hear the heads of media companies talking about "restricting" content, I can't help feeling the way I did in 2001, when I was a co-founder of the Detroit Project, and watched as the heads of the auto industry decided that instead of embracing the future they would rather spend considerable energy and money lobbying the government for tax loopholes for gas-guzzling SUVs and fighting back fuel-efficiency standards. We saw how well that turned out.
I firmly believe in a hybrid future where old media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity and immediacy) and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy and high-impact investigative journalism). This hybrid future will include non-profit/for-profit hybrids, like the Investigative Fund the Huffington Post has launched. Backed by non-profit foundations, the fund provides staff reporters and freelance journalists who have lost their jobs with the opportunity to pursue important stories.
Don't forget: our media culture failed to serve the public interest by missing (with a few honourable exceptions) the two biggest stories of our time: the run-up to the Iraq war and the financial meltdown. We've had far too many autopsies and not enough biopsies. And online news is well suited to obsessively follow a story until it breaks through the static. We need to also remind ourselves that the mission of journalism has always been truth-seeking not, as it has often become, striking some fictitious balance between two sides.
We stand on the threshold of a very challenging but very exciting future. I am convinced journalism's best days lie ahead – so long as we embrace innovation and don't try to pretend that we can somehow hop into a journalistic Way Back Machine and return to a past that no longer exists and can't be resurrected.
The above is an edited version of her testimony to the US Senate Commerce Communications subcommittee last week
