American newspaper organisations have sustained infrastructural changes in a media world that is evolving past old forms of journalism. The death of daily newspapers, and the decline into administration of newspapers such as Rocky Mountain News, Philadelphia News, and The New York times have drawn attention to these changes.
The Storyville documentary, New York Times – Deadline, uncovers these changes, and discusses the impacts and influences that have participated in diminishing commonplace newspapers.
2008 signalled troubling times for the New York Times. The influence of new media prompted the creation of a ‘new’ New York Times. In the time of this change, there was a 30 per cent drop in advertising, a collapse that no one anticipated.
The documentary highlights the immense impact that the decline in advertising revenue has on newspaper organisations. Jeff Jarvis commented in the documentary, “the old newspaper format is dying.”
The dominance of one newspaper can be compressed and damaged due to advertising collapses. Storyville discusses if this level of advertising would ever be recovered in modern new media formats.
Brian Stelter, a new media journalist, is referred to as “the kid who went from blogging to the New York Times.” He comments on the influence of Twitter, and says “people in the newsroom are talking at lunchtime about a story that I knew about at midnight. Twitter gives people a sense of today’s news and how people are reacting to it. Twitter is the wider collective voice.”
The wider collective voice was echoed in the documentary through the exploration of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. In 2010, Wikileaks released secret documents, and the documentary explored what affects this would have on journalists. Assange denied that his whistleblowing website would have an affect on the war, and commented “journalism is just a tool to get to the goal.”
The documentary explores the overhauls, changes and the dramatic impact that instantaneous and new forms of information being released has on journalists’ roles. The interviewing techniques and constant referral to problems that have been overcome, and how the NYT keeps moving forward, gives a deep insight into the world of reporting for the NYT, and the evolving changes that the newspaper has gone through.
New York Times – Deadline was screened on BBC2 in February 2012.
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