domenica 18 Febbraio 2024
Il settimanale New Yorker ha aggiunto un ottimo articolo di riassunto alla ricca bibliografia di queste settimane dedicata all’accelerazione della crisi dei giornali americani. È apocalittico e speranzoso al tempo stesso.
“Journalism requires a peculiar mix of skepticism and earnestness; as journalists, after all, we consider ourselves integral to the functioning of civic society, even if much of society doesn’t particularly like us. This breeds a funny mix of pugilism and sanctimony that can be, frankly, a little unlikable. Speaking recently on the “Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!)” podcast, Tina Brown, a former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, compared members of the U.K. press with their American counterparts. “They see it as a job,” she said, of her fellow-Brits. “They don’t see it as a sacred calling, and I think there’s something to be said for that.”
The business models that will sustain journalism in the future won’t be perfect. They’ll leave people out who need good-quality news the most. They will probably cater to older, wealthier men who (for now) make up the demographic most likely to pay for news. There will be idiocy and the enablement of rich idiots. But there will also be new generations of journalists willing to leap into an unsteady industry because they think explaining the world around them is worthwhile, if not particularly remunerative. The sanctimony that Brown sniffs at certainly exists, but a little bit of the holy spirit is probably necessary to report on contemporary America. Even if past experience has taught journalists that change is often a destructive force, the crisis is here, and it needs solutions if we’re going to keep recommending, in good conscience, that promising young talent join the media’s ranks”.
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