A bright future, baby

"Even at the best sites, the notion of a new form of journalism that takes advantage of the vast technology is not really accurate."

This is only one of the findings from this year's State of the News Media content analysis of online journalism. The analysis is conducted annually by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

When I came upon the results of the study, I was hardly surprised. They fit in smoothly with the findings the project made on cable television, newspapers and radio. In other words, none of our beloved mass media was breaking new ground. Instead, they tend to rely on each other as much as they do on unadventurous reporting and the ever-so-effective tactic of firing staff and making room for more ads. The result-€”lightened content and jeopardized credibility.

But while the big news Web sites seemed immersed in the mud of mass news, the Web had something all the other media struggle for: innovative potential. A bright future, baby. Now the Web only has to take advantage of all its opportunities.

Although online news often only rehashes stories covered in other mass media, the stories are better-sourced than any other medium except newspapers.Chart courtesy of The State of the News Media 2005.

Want an example? Look at Ohmynews from South Korea. Ohmynews is journalism at its best, a dazzling prospect of what can be accomplished in online journalism. And you know what? Those reporters are -€”Dare I dare say it? -€”citizen journalists in the best sense of the word.

They are men and women on the street, who research or write about people, events and places important to them. They are driven by passion, a motive that seems to have vanished from some of America's journalistic strongholds. (Yes, I am bitter about Bob Woodward's fall from grace, especially after reading this article setting straight what investigative reporting really means.)

Ohmynews boosts journalistic competition by ranking the stories according to their relevance for readers. The audience decides what it wants to read because it has value for them.

This is the kind of competition journalism needs so the Web can live up to its almost unlimited potential as a news medium. And I cautiously predict that this won't kill the old news media, but motivate them to face the journalist changes necessary for the future.