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New 'info ecosystem' a denuded place

By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-19 07:22

For months, there has been nothing but bad news about the troubled print media in the United States. Still, I was shocked to hear that The Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped printing on Tuesday and now exists only online.

For one thing, my boss worked at The Post-Intelligencer for three months about 20 years ago. Now and then, he still shares stories of his days in the news room, where he honed his skills not only as a reporter and editor, but also as a newspaper manager.

In the early 1990s, two journalists from The Post-Intelligencer spent about a year working as copy editors at China Daily. Their hard work and professionalism helped to improve the articles we wrote and the pages we put out.

Although we print journalists lament the demise of The Post-Intelligencer, the Web and its readers seem oblivious. At least, the story is not listed among the top 10 "most emailed", or "most viewed", or "most recommended" on Yahoo, nor is it among the "most popular" news stories on Google.

It is sadder still that I have to judge the popularity of a news story by the yardstick of the Web. I do notice that The New York Times carried the Post-Intelligencer story on page 18.

Like so many papers, The Post-Intelligencer had financial woes. Readership was down; more and more people now get their news from the Internet. Advertising - particularly classified, automobile, and real estate advertising - has also migrated to the Web. But there is more to the story. There is what Arthur Sulzberger Jr, chairman of the New York Times Company, called "the new information ecosystem", in a recent speech at Stony Brook University.

The Web plays a huge role in this new ecosystem. To survive, we reporters try to make use of every available medium. We compete to get breaking news online first. We take pictures and record audio and video reports to be published online before we ever sit down to write for newspapers.

Many of us are especially keen to produce news flashes for the Web, in the hope that commercial Internet portals will spread our news and our names across the world.

I find this a little disconcerting. More often than not, these news flashes consist of a sensational headline, followed by three paragraphs containing very little detail or background.

Sometimes, it is hard to judge whether these reports are even true. Recently, for example, a local news agency carried a Chinese language report saying that 3,000 journalists arrived in Austria to report on the trial of Josef Fritzl, who is charged with raping and imprisoning family members.

Is it true? I doubt it. After doing a little research, I discovered that this news appeared only in a blog; none of the major news agencies or newspapers picked it up.

Worse still, as we pursue more flashes, we rely more on telephones and second-hand reports. We have become lazy, forgetting to do our leg work, to go and double-check what is going on at the scene, and to dig deeper into why the events happen and how people are affected.

I often feel let down when I see the same stories and pictures on the Web, over TV, and in newspapers. Obviously, electronic media provide an important service, but as a journalist, I know there is more to the story.

Editors and publishers are forever trying to discern what the public wants. Again, there is more to the story. Judged by the number of hits on a Beijing-based newspaper website, the most popular story last week was a lingerie contest. Was that the most important news story?

Of course, we must learn what our readers want and try to give it to them. However, I think we also must cultivate our readers by setting our own agenda and maintaining our own standards. If we don't maintain our journalistic principles, we will only let down our readers and dig our own graves.

E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn