Quality v quantity

With the impending Fairfax cuts in Australia comes more opinion pieces about the future of journalism. This one from Jack Waterford in The Canberra Times is one of the better ones I have read.

I like what he writes right at the end:
"The real test of it all is not with newspaper bottom lines. It is with circulation and readership, bearing in mind that the core readership is of baby boomer age or of the generation above it. By no means does it follow that younger journalists will have lower standards. Or that the simultaneous renewed focus on ''new media'' means that proprietors have given newspapers away. But if 50-year-olds are not comfortable with being informed, or hectored, by 25-year-olds, it is likely the demise of the newspaper will be quicker."

The real threat to newspapers comes from quality not quantity
BY JACK WATERFORD
30/08/2008 10:14:00 AM

The big challenge for any professional journalist, particularly in a city such as Canberra, is that a good proportion of readers probably more than 30 per cent here know more about your subject than you do.

They know the subject because it is their job to know it. That job, perhaps in the public service, or business, or academia, gives them access to a lot of other information, including most of our sources of raw information. If the subject is within their field of interest, they may well have already skimmed the latest information upon it even before they pick up this newspaper, or another one. MORE