by Sophie Roelle In a break from our usual practice of focusing on books, we asked the journalism analyst and veteran blogger to recommend five articles illustrating the upheavals of the news business
I know that as journalists we have to adapt rapidly to new ways of doing things, but you've really thrown me in at the deep end – you’ve chosen five online articles instead of five books, and we’re doing the interview on Google chat rather than by telephone.
I like to do things differently. For example, using PressThink for longform blogging – which wasn't the normal thing at the time, in 2003.
Will you give me an overall sense of what you are saying about changes in journalism with the articles you've chosen?
Well, first there's been a shift in power. The users have more than they did because they can publish and connect to one another, not just to the media. Second, the people formerly known as the audience are configured differently. They are connected horizontally as well as vertically, which is why today we speak of social media. This is what I sometimes call “audience atomisation overcome”. Third, the media still have power and journalism still matters. In some ways the essence of it has not changed. But a lot of what journalists did became bound up with particular forms of production and distribution. Since the web has radically altered those forms, it has radically changed journalistic work, even though the value of good journalism remains the same – timely, accurate, useful information that tells us what's happening in our world over the horizon of our personal experience.
