When the news industry began 200 years ago, it grounded the world in fact. Now faith, localism and entertainment rule
Journalism has joined the list of endangered professions: teaching it appears to be more lucrative than doing it. A great deal of brilliant and high-quality journalism is still being pursued around the world every day, but the news industry is steadily shrinking. Why is that?
Let’s make a distinction here between journalism and news. News is only one of the many kinds of journalistic output. News as a standardised, non-fiction literary form was invented more than 200 years ago in response to very specific social and cultural conditions, and was ignited by a new technology called the telegraph. The invention of the electric telegraph in the 1830s allowed the fast and international transmission of bursts of information in short, staccato messages, which were, ironically, not unlike tweets.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2NjCHzo
