Not quite the end of journalism

REPORTING EXISTS WITHIN THE RIVER OF TIME What matters is that the deadline not only concentrates effort, it provides both discipline and precise accountability.

The newsroom setting at The Citizen is far removed from the feng shui, aesthetically pleasing, queer eye decor trends of Google’s head office, or that of a Cape Town-based show-off that starts with Nas and ends with pers.

In a way, the intimate seating arrangement – a fancy way of saying cramped – means we know and hear everyone’s business. So when a colleague (his name rhymes with pearl) announced yesterday that “anyone can be a journalist these days”, it did not go down well. But he may have actually hit the nail on the head.

Over the past 10 years and with the ever expanding digital media landscape, everyone has indeed become a journalist. Even “seasoned” journos now hardly leave their desks to get their boots muddied in the field and rely heavily on aggregating or producing digital content.

But what does this shift in content production mean for the future of the traditional newsroom? For answers to this question and more, one need only pick up a copy of Harvey Tyson’s latest book End of the Deadline – Behind the News 2.

In terms of how the daily deadline of the printed press contributed to maintain news standards over the last century Tyson, 90, a journalist and author with some 70 years’ media experience, says “… what matters is that the deadline not only concentrates effort, it provides both discipline and precise accountability.”

This, he adds, is because all news reporting exists within the river of time. “Floating on the current and merely changing published facts intermittently, as news broadcast stations and blogs are inclined to do, avoids a great deal of accountability. Newspapers, on the other hand, have had to stand by their printed news and their public apologies for all of time.” While End of the Deadline – Behind the News 2 follows on from Tyson’s autobiography, The Other Side – Behind the News 1, it deals more with the rise and fall of the printed press, fascinating exposes of its heroes and villains, and the future of news reporting.

It also outlines the author’s concerns that the accepted standards of a credible printed press, such as editorial independence, plus adequate checks and balances aimed at ensuring veracity of the facts, be transferred from the old medium to purveyors of news in the current online conveyor belt era.

Tyson’s standing in local and international journalism circles make this offering a must-read for all journalists and students of the craft.