News media is on its way to a looser environment as upstarts such as BuzzFeed and Vice become mainstream, the former president of CBS News told an audience at the Walter Cronkite School’s Must See Mondays event.
The event, “Journalism in the Age of Personal Media,” focused on the future of journalism. Mark Lodato, assistant dean of the Cronkite School, interviewed former CBS president Andrew Heyward on his experiences and predictions for the business.
“We are going to move into a world not where news people become comedians, but I think it’s going to be a little looser and real,” Heyward said.
The new era of news is largely focused on the once-risky upstarts now known as BuzzFeed, Mashable and Vice. Heyward, who created and developed the show “48 Hours,” said consumers are gravitating toward these outlets for real news coverage such as politics, rather than watching television. Because of this, the age of personal and personalized media is upon us.
Heyward said most mainstream media outlets are all reporting mostly the same news, but upstarts are reporting on different, less-covered news.
“The sort of survival of the samest, rather than survival of the fittest — that’s not good for America,” Heyward explained. “Again, I think that is going to change with upstarts coming in.”
Heyward explained to the audience how journalism is changing and why that’s happening. He touched on subjects including the role of the anchor and local television news. He explained the origin of the upstart Vice and how it went from a small magazine out of Montreal to a leading news alternative. And he emphasized that upstarts could become the news media of the future.
“It was really interesting to hear about how the industry of journalism was changing overall,” said Carly Henry, a freshman journalism student. “Just in the way it is broadening.”
Heyward predicted that in the next five years, viewers will be getting their news from a wide array of sources and that news overall will be less bland and include more variety.
“I would like to see some of these, if not all of these, upstarts succeed,” Heyward said.
Heyward also discussed new uses of social media and technology, which he called the “social scanner.” Like a police scanner, journalists and reporters would use the “social scanner” to tap into issues in the community through social media. The “social scanner” would not only veer reporters away from frequently reported crime stories but would also help build relationships with the viewers and give them the personalized news they wanted, Heyward said.
Bryce Newberry, a freshman journalism student, said it was fascinating to hear someone who worked at a traditional media outlet speak about the future of journalism.
“It’s very interesting to hear it from his perspective since he worked in the industry in the past,” Newberry said.
Reflecting on this age of media, Heyward jokingly blamed the students in the audience as the reason why television is becoming a thing of the past.
“Young people care a lot about news but they don’t take on the media habits of their parents,” Heyward said.
Contact the reporter at sloane.mcgowan@asu.edu
