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Smartphones have transformed journalism, panelists say

The auditorium was packed with more people than there were seats at an alumni-faculty forum about journalism in the digital age today. The forum’s moderator was Pam Belluck ’85, a health and science writer for The New York Times. The panelists included Paul Haaga ’70, the acting President & CEO of NPR, Marc Fisher ’80, a senior editor at The Washington Post, Jennie Thompson ’90, supervising producer of NBC News, Jane Greenway Carr ’00, ACLS Public Fellow and contributing editor at New America; Koda Mike Wang ’10, Chief Operating Officer of The Huffington Post. “Obviously the digital age has completely transformed what we do as journalists,” Belluck said in her introduction of the panel and panelists. New technology has changed the way journalists gather information and present information, how newspapers structure their business models and the way media outlets interact with readers, viewers and listeners, Belluck said. Belluck noted that, over the course of her career, she has gone from using pay phones to transmit information to receiving text messages from her editors. Panelists began discussing and questioning the future of the journalism industry in the digital age. “In this world where you can get more information than ever before in a targeted fashion, will there be a way for news organizations to sustain themselves without having a billionaire sugar daddy?” Fisher asked. “I’m coming into an industry in which digital is the norm, where smartphones are the norm,” Wang said, who spoke about the rapid and dramatic changes that occur in the digital age, specifically in the shift to mobile devices. In less than four years, he explained, the Huffington Post’s readership has shifted from a small segment being mobile, to a large contingency of its readership being mobile. “It’s affecting us internally in every single way we do our business,” Wang said. “Every facet of every single decision we have is affected by mobile.” Carr spoke from a more academic perspective, that of a trained literary historian. She, too, noted that she has experienced journalism in a purely digital age. “One of the things that I think about, perhaps in part because I run one, is the role of digital literary magazines in this age,” Carr said. Storytelling has a profound role to play in the digital age. Culture and free expression are still demanded and needed in the modern age, according to Carr. Carr said that if people want to find out where journalism is going, they should look to literary intellectuals’ opinions. Digital journalism, she said, is a social justice issue as well. If a given locality has few resources, it may struggle with structural information inequality, Carr said. “As we think about business models, we need to look at how to diversify and innovate the non-profit model,” Carr said. The forum was then opened to questions from the audience. Audience members asked about how long the panelists think print forms of news will exist. Haaga answered that the prices of print news are being raised, in order to milk loyal print subscribers as long as possible. Fisher noted that, while the rate of decline of subscribers has leveled out, the rate of collapse among print advertisers is starting to pick up steam. Ad rates online are about a tenth those in print. Much of high-quality reporting is still being done by traditional, print journalism organizations. The audience then asked about video’s role in the new media age. “Video is huge,” Wang said. Fifty-five percent of all video in the U.S. is being watched on mobile phones. Video quality and watching rate is continuously improving. People are spending more and more time on online video watching than on traditional TV, explained Wang. A new generation has never paid for a cable subscription, but pays for online video sources like Netflix. Video allows for “editors on the street” and addresses the inequality of information needs on the ground, explained Carr. In response to a question about how to more effectively curate news posted on the web on diverse platforms, Fisher pointed to editorial standards, to old and new brands establishing themselves by cultivating a loyal audience that knows their content is reliable.

Scale and quality, Wang said, are not mutually exclusive, offering a different viewpoint than Fisher.

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Carr added that consumers tend to look at a platform before they look at a piece, and that content is curated by editorial standards and editors and writers being willing to work on content from many points of view and for consumers to respond to that. Old school editorial standards in concert with new media tools are the most effective means of curating information, contended Carr. The forum was titled, "Journalism in the Age of Smart Phones.” It was sponsored by the Alumni Association of Princeton University and took place at 10:30 a.m. in McCormick Hall 101.

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