英语Newsroom of the Future.pdfVIP

Newsroom of the Future A Report The Spokesman-Review December 2006 Carla T. Savalli INTRODUCTION Spokesman-Review Publisher William Stacey Cowles stood before a group of business professionals in September 2006 and declared, “We ain’t dead yet.” With Mark Twain’s famous quote – “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated” – projected on the Power Point screen behind him, Cowles told the Dean’s Business Forum at Gonzaga University that newspapers will exist for years to come, but their shape and form may change. “Things are changing, and changing dramatically,” he said. “But fundamentally, the newspaper is full of bright, very engaged, very committed people who’ll find a way to keep newspapers alive, if not on paper and ink, then at least on pixels with screens.” His predictions are among dozens included in this report, which is the result of a three- month examination into the present and future of American newspaper journalism. A lot of journalists are in the business of prognosticating these days, which may be the surest sign yet that the industry has finally acknowledged the inevitable: newspapers will need to reinvent themselves, not only to survive, but to remain relevant. But if the ‘what’ of the problem is understood, the ‘how’ of getting there is not. There are as many prescriptions for what ails this industry as there are daily newspapers. Some might argue that the fact we are all talking about the future means it’s already too late. The nature of the newspaper industry has been to talk endlessly about challenges and prototype projects for months before actually doing something. We tend to be technology adopters, not innovators. During the three months of this project, hundreds of new Web sites, citizen blogs, virtual worlds, videos, niche publications and technical gizmos and gadgets have come into the marketplace, further diffusing a