I am the end of journalism. The very end, my friend.

I read the Washington Post every day. But I never read the front section, the news section. Because all my news comes from news aggregators, blogs, social networking sites, etc. (I read the Washington Post for sports, arts, entertainment, etc. But that’s only because I’m from a newspaper generation.) Obviously, I could know everything I want to know without ever reading a newspaper or watching TV news.

There’s something else I can get without ever touching a newspaper, something more important than information alone — and it’s what really portends the end of journalism as we know it. I can get proximity of information source. I can get credibility where I assign credibility. I can get trust. In other words, I can choose to assign accuracy and credibility to, and invest trust in, blogs, Facebook feeds, Twitter updates, etc.

In a recent post in his influential blog, Micro Persuasion, Steve Rubel, writes, “Trust is by far a more important metric, one that clearly rules when it comes to influence.”

It’s trust and accuracy that has always been the currency of traditional media. It’s trust and accuracy upon which journalism professors hang their hopes for their profession. Problem is, to steal from Forrest Gump: accuracy is what accuracy does. Next Blogenberg I’ll explain what I mean, and why, within 15 years, at most, citizen journalism will be the market for this currency.

*Borrowed, with a bit of Blogenberging, from The Doors depressing song, The End.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 7:14 am and is filed under Communications, Media Criticism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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