While the journalism industry may not be the industry audiences once knew, the future is about reshaping and finding out how to reach an audience, said Brian Stelter, senior media correspondent for CNN Worldwide and the host of “Reliable Sources.”
Stelter addressed a room of journalism students and faculty on Monday night at the Walter Cronkite School’s recent Must See Monday event, and he said nothing makes him more excited for the future of journalism than speaking with students.
“I don’t think there has ever been a better time to be journalist, especially a young journalist starting out,” Stelter said. “The flip side of that, there has never been a more unpredictable time.”
There is a radical transformation today, especially when it comes to mobile phones because that is the direction the future of news is going, Stelter said.
Jesse Hines, a senior journalism student, said she agreed with Stelter’s view on the changing news industry.
“I think it’s a generational gap; I never watch television so I never watch local cable news,” Hines said. “National and International news affects me more because it is constantly given to me through updates on my phone. Also local Arizona news doesn’t have as big of an impact on me as the current global issues do.”
Stelter, who previously wrote for the New York Times before moving to CNN, said audiences have voracious appetites and so much content to choose that it is the job as journalists to evolve, figure out the new rules and look toward the future of journalism.
“Three out of four people will say they don’t trust the media,” Stelter said, “But every day we can gain trust or lose it more.”
Stelter described journalists as the watchdogs. They are no longer the middlemen, and they are being bypassed by the companies, celebrities and politicians who are creating content and directly pushing it to their audiences without going through media, Stelter said.
“We know the potential of our outlets, our platform and of our voices,” Stelter said. “We know the reach, the power we can have.”
Stelter even applauded Buzzfeed and Snapchat for curating news, although not like traditional news sources, for a specific niche market that wouldn’t typically watch or read news.
Liz Nichols, a junior economics and journalism student, said she liked that Stelter discussed the impact of social media and agreed that the reshaping of the industry is extremely important for young journalist to understand.
“People have demand for fast free news, like Twitter, but then it becomes a problem because they aren’t getting revenue like platforms with subscriptions,” Nichols said. “I think news organizations are going to have to find a way to work with advertisers or create a subscription method to stay financially relevant in the future.”
The current issues for mobile device applications are there are no easy subscription methods, and advertisement revenue cannot solely sustain a company, Stelter said.
There is a revolution in the industry unfolding, as Stelter described. News is not dying, it is moving from live to on-demand, and from scarce to abundance.
“There will always be bad news about the media,” Stelter said. “But we are the little green shoots that come out of the soil after a forest fire. I think we are the new young growth that comes out afterwards, and that’s the good news.”
Contact the reporter at aklopez2@asu.edu.
