With the ever-prominent rise of the internet, and social media being used in journalism, there has long been talk of newspapers ceasing to exist.
The global financial recession hit the media industry hard, in the United Kingdom and the United States if not worldwide, with newspapers merging, cutting staff or even migrating completely online.
So is the rise of social media really a threat to the printed news that has prevailed for so long? How is this affecting the way journalists work and how is news changing?
Weekend Review spoke to three prominent journalists — whose experience in the business of news spans a total of more than 80 years — at the second Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, which closed recently in Dubai.
In terms of social media being used in journalism, micro-blogging site Twitter, for example, has now been referred to as a "news-feed".
Numerous news tips from the UAE have been gleaned from Twitter, including more recently the tragic aircraft crash in Sharjah and the collapse of a wall in Al Mezhar that killed three workers.
For Kate Adie, veteran BBC journalist, sources of news such as Twitter, are not a new form of media, but simply a different way of receiving citizen journalism.
"It's nothing new — there's no such thing as newly invented citizen journalism, it's utter rubbish from people who've never understood how journalism has always operated," Adie said in an exclusive interview. "You are a journalist, you take your sources from anywhere, but you go and check them out. That has always happened: people have always had strange letters and weird phone calls … that has always been the case," she said.
The problem with sources of news from citizen journalists online, Adie continued, is that "it may be that people are now putting on air or on paper things that they have no idea where they came from. That is a form of journalism that is unverified". There have been a number of instances of malicious misuse, she added. "Verifying has always been … part of journalism."
For Tim Butcher, ex-journalist for British broadsheet The Daily Telegraph and author of Blood River, receiving news tip-offs in this manner is "double-edged".
" ... it's so powerful, you can reach people instantly," he said. "The power, it's amazing. The correctly-placed Twitter can reach people … in terms of power it's a very exciting time."
The negative thing about this, he continued, is that "there's so much of it around. Who does the editing, who does the choosing, who does the selecting?" he queried.
Butcher cited the example of protests in Iran (reporting from inside the country is scarce). "It was people with mobile phones, Twitter feeds and Facebook messaging … that's how we know what went on."
However, he asked: "Does that mean we actually know what went on?"
For Butcher it is a resounding no, as the filter of individual people with mobile phones isn't necessarily a good filter.
With so much material, there is no one filtering the Twitter feed or Facebook or MSN, "so you've got no control or understanding of it", he said. "If you've got no understanding of it, it's not journalism, it's just a stream of events."
Tomorrow's chip paper
The way the public receives and digests news has changed to a great extent over the past 20 years. Twenty-four-hour news channels may show the same "breaking news" story for 12 hours, while repeating the same news all day and online news providers hand out news day by day free for anyone wishing to click and read. So what worth has the rise of online given or taken away from print journalism?
For Butcher, newspapers have formulated an "insane, suicidal, throat-cutting business plan" in providing free online content 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"They [newspapers] have all suicidally embarked upon a plan of giving away their content online 24/7. So there's no incentive … there's less incentive to buy the newspaper," he said, citing the fact that The New York Times had to mortgage the building it has been housed in for decades, and that some UK papers are "close to financial bankruptcy".
This has had a knock-on effect on journalists for these newspapers, who he believes aren't as good any more because they're producing the same content as everyone else.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch made waves in the press last year upon his announcement that he would start charging for online content by mid-2010. For Butcher, this means that "he [Murdoch] is going to lose 99 per cent of the people who click on his websites and I'm worried that the 1 per cent won't come close to covering the costs."
For John Simpson, World Affairs Editor, BBC, the financing of newspapers is also a major issue, although during his address at the literature festival, he said: "There has never been a better time in Britain for newspaper journalism but I don't know how it's going to be funded. Papers are in the process of cutting off and killing off their organisations that are funded by paying 50p [for the newspaper] at the newsagents and nobody knows what's going to come," he told a captive audience.
In defence of the newspaper and through research into his latest book Unreliable Sources, Simpson said: "There are as many newspapers now [as] in 1950 and they're far better than in 1950."
Taking a broader look at how news is being digested in society, Adie said it was not just a case of the rise of the internet and the death of print media, but a much more complex social issue.
Whereas a few generations ago, across the world, people would sit down for half an hour and watch the news, or take the time to read a newspaper, now those who have been brought up in a comfortable consumer society are less likely to do so.
Lifestyle takes its toll
"People have very full lives now, they feel very pressured to find time for things. And one of the things people often don't find time for is sitting down and reading a newspaper. They watch a few headlines, they come in, plonk on the 24-hour news and think ‘Ah nothing new'," she said. "What is happening also is a change in lifestyle and priorities for a huge number of people, especially in the West," she said.
With technology developing at an ever-rapid pace and the rise in popularity of instant communication, breaking news could be said to be losing its "breaking" effect.
Some 24-hour news channels display "breaking news" for 12 hours or more, by which time, it could be said, it's no longer ‘breaking' but just the same news as 12 hours earlier.
Adie touched on this in her address at the Literature Festival, observing that the demand for instant news has changed the way people digest news (as previously mentioned).
Breakfast news programmes, for example, have changed the way reporters do their job and reporters have to be deployed differently.
"It's no good them [journalists] bringing back a concise two-minute report, a distillation of the most significant events of the day — that used to be the main course on the belly of the news."
Now, she continued, as reporters have to fill up the time that the news programme is broadcasting for, "they have to graze across these things, stand and speculate a bit. It's another form of news — breakfast television is full of desperate, cold people, standing in a lonely manner at places that hours later will be full of people," she said to an amused audience.
According to Butcher, the demand for instant communication, and news in turn, has had a detrimental affect on the quality of news.
"There's value to be added in contextualising something. It's not just ‘the bomb went off' it's ‘the bomb went off and we suspect it's for this reason, and this is what happened, and these people suffered, and in fact these people might be connected to the people who did the bombing, they suffered' and how ironic that it," he said of the need to report breaking news.
No value addition
As an ex-journalist for The Daily Telegraph, Butcher said, he used to work to one print deadline and the article would appear in the next day's newspaper. However, with the need to feed a website, you have to send the story immediately, with no time to add context to the news.
"For me that waters down the product because it means everyone is producing the same thing, everyone is producing instantaneously. They're not adding individual value, they're not adding unique value, they're not doing something which is separate. And it means that your USP [unique selling point] as a journalist goes," he said.
Adie also commented in this respect on "live" news. In technical and practical terms, it is not always possible to broadcast live from the heart of where the news is taking place.
This is because of the costly nature of satellite broadcast equipment and the time of day that the "live" broadcast is taking place. "You're going ‘live' quite a distance from the action and that's changed the job of reporting. Your news is being filled up … it's being done in front of a satellite dish ‘live'," she said.
So with increasing pressure to deliver instant news, verify news sources and still get the story right, what motivates and makes a good journalist?
For Simpson, it is not a noble but a highly competitive profession. "It's kind of a bloodsport really," he said in response to a question at the Literature Festival. "It's often a competitive desire to see one's name in print or a liking to get one's face all over the screen."
This sense of competition, wanting to be there, is "perhaps rather childish in many ways", he continued.
"At the same time this is what motivates news. It's called news, it isn't called ‘olds', so it's about the newest things that have happened somewhere or other. And you want to be the one that gets it," he said steadfastly.
Adie and Butcher concur on a number of points that make a good journalist. Mainly, Adies said, it is about being nosy. "Somebody who wants to find things out. It could be interesting things, exciting things, fun, significant and at times, you can go burrowing after what other people don't want you to find out. That's what it's about, being curious."
"I'm nosy," Butcher said, "it's my nature. I'm destined to be a journalist because I'm nosy — who said that? How does that work? Where did it come from? Who lives under here? Pick up this rock [for example]".
However, the job is also about modesty and luck. One thing a journalist should remember is not to be "bigger than the story", Butcher said, not to think "I'm a big TV star, look at me", continuing that luck also plays a big part, as "journalism is the most luck-dependent industry in the world".
He concluded: "Never get complacent, be modest, be curious and be lucky."