psuper

As I attended the CU World Affairs Conference earlier this month, there was a theme that emerged from a number of panels I attended, around how we obtain and digest news, historically, now, and in the all to near future.  One thing all panelists agreed upon…things have changed and will continue to change more rapidly than we would prefer.  In other words, we are almost incapable of ever catching up with the onslaught of “news” being pushed our way, whether through traditional outlets such as radio and TV, newspapers, etc., or now through websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter.  Yes, Twitter!  As one panelists asked the audience to raise their hands for where the audience primarily obtains their news on a daily basis, more than a third of the room responded with Facebook or Twitter…..now, yes, the audience was populated with students, but as a news source, I am concerned about this.

What began to worry me after hearing about the changes we have already experienced (pay or not to pay websites, newspapers closing at an alarming rate, journalists not being able to make a living with such fierce competition from part-time bloggers) to what is on the horizon (affirmation journalism where one can easily search, gather, and read only that information which confirms their narrow but possibly wacky view of the world) is the dearth of editors in the news gathering and dissemination process now and only exacerbated in the future.  I never thought much about editors as I read my daily paper, Newsweek each week, or watched the evening news (I was a Peter Jennings guy).  But editors were there, an integral part of the process before I read or heard anything.  Now, even reputable news gathering organizations will be able to afford editors, or many of them.  They are in competition with websites and blogs that don’t have either an editor or have any compunction that one might be needed.  This may be the wave of the future and may be an acceptable view of it……only if we take on the responsibility to edit the news and sources of the news we read or hear for ourselves.  And I can be OK with that……but what really concerns me is how are we going to teach our children to edit the news…to be concerned about the source, to not fall into the trap of affirmation journalism.  Is that a parental function like teaching our children how to count so they won’t be given wrong change at the store?  Will we expect our schools to teach this skill?  What of those parents that don’t have the shill themselves?  And of the most concern to me, what of those parents that knowingly either don’t teach their children these ever more important skills, or point them in the direction of those news sources that only validate their narrow view of the world.  Can a democracy last long in a world such as that?  Are we there already?

A note for my well written friends…..as you can see from the above, i could use a good editor.