Traditional journalism will 'blow away on the winds of the internet'

Philip Trippenbach:

Make no mistake: traditional, platform-based journalism is being crushed, and its dust will blow away on the winds of the internet. I know this is a melodramatic way to put it, but it’s an important point to make. Newspaper, television and radio journalists now are all in the position of itinerant bards at the advent of the printing press.
The good news is that there’s never been a better time to be a journalist. The bards have disappeared, but we still sing, and we still spread news. Just so, the digital sphere is growing fast as the blast front of an explosion.

It’s hard to find much to disagree with in this post, even if the links with PR have inflamed some commenters. But its a crucial point: the demand for the narrative communication skills all forms of journalism have prized are in more demand than ever, just not so much in traditional journalism businesses.

In my-post RBI career, I’ve had a decent amount of work from non-journalism businesses, but only a very little from the traditional publishers. The world is changing, and the sagging business models of traditional publishers mean that many of them don’t see how valuable the skills they have in-house actually are…