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Nieman Reports Winter 2007 Issue Is Local News the Answer? Journalists Navigate New Waters ‘When high-tech’s central institutions blew up, people asked many of the same questions I hear asked by journalists today.’ By Lisa Williams Massive layoffs with no end in sight. Wave after wave of acquisitions and mergers fueled by the excesses of artificially cheap capital. Widespread fear that an entire industry will stall or simply cease production. These phrases describe the news industry today, but they also echo what was heard about the high-tech industry during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) laid off people by the tens of thousands; Wang Computers, Data General, and Apollo Computer sank beneath the waves. Prime Computer fought off a hostile takeover attempt by corporate raiders only to die of its wounds. IBM and Hewlett-Packard survived, but never regained their roles as central innovators in their industry. My life has been spent in high-tech, not journalism. My parents met over a mini-computer; my marriage comes with free lifetime technical support; our kids will know their Emacs from their Vi. Now I run two hyperlocal Web sites—h2otown.info,
I’ve been communicating and connecting via computer since I was a kid. Over time, I haven’t strayed far from what I’ve always done, but in many ways journalism has been drifting steadily in my direction. What’s going on now with journalists—as layoffs hit and thinking about the future turns to teaching or wondering if your kids will follow in your footsteps—happened to me and mine during high-tech’s tailspin, and it made for a few miserable Thanksgiving dinners paid for with unemployment checks and spent with laid-off aunts, uncles and cousins. When high-tech’s central institutions blew up, people asked many of the same questions I hear asked by journalists today. Without these institutions, who will fund the mission? How will we attract the talent we need to make the transition? Just as journalism without newspapers seems inconceivable, it seemed to many of us back then that innovation could not continue without the force, resources and sheer heft of the companies that formed the core of the high-tech industry. Who would write the next operating system? Who would create the next generation of microprocessors? Today, journalists ask how democracy will fare in our country without the robust free press they’ve been a part of. Back then, technology folks were asking how the United States could retain its leadership position without big, powerful computing companies. There can be no underestimating the pain of the tech implosion: People who got laid off expected to be out of work for a year or more; people lost their houses, got divorced, or left the industry entirely. The lucky ones took early retirement packages. To make matters worse, many people had deep loyalties to the companies they worked for and spoke with pride of the “HP way” or the “IBM way.” This breakdown wasn’t sudden: From beginning to end the dismantling took nearly a decade. We decamped from the Titanic and dispersed in every direction in a fleet of kayaks: small, self-propelled, and iceberg-proof. We learned through all of this to be loyal to our friends and to the ideas and ideals for which we had genuine passion. It was our friends who were going to pull us out of the cold water. And it was our ideas that would relaunch us after this setback. What we discovered, of course, was that innovation survived the death of its institutions. Only 10 years after DEC founder and CEO Ken Olsen stepped down amid the massive layoffs, Google was launched. And if you are reading these words on the Nieman Web site, both of us are beneficiaries of LAMP, the “web stack” that serves the vast majority of sites and browsers across the world. The acronym LAMP stands for its components—Linux, Apache (a Web server), MySQL (database), and PHP (scripting language)—each of which began as the contribution of an individual and is maintained by a distributed cast of thousands. The central innovations of the Web today don’t emerge from the labs of giants but from the dorm rooms of kids. And on them is constructed a big and varied industry with, yes, actual paychecks. Do not mistake this message as a prediction that the news industry’s misery is mere stage setting for a glorious resurgence. It isn’t. As the Web, emerging software, and news coverage merge gradually—but certainly—into a single industry, the stability and security of those times when our foundational institutions were big and strong are gone and will never return. Gone with them are bloated bureaucracies and that feeling of giving up trying to change anything because it’s impossible to figure out how many people to ask for permission. All of these and more are as dead as IBM’s dress code of blue blazer, red tie, white shirt. Good Riddance! On the decks of a career Titanic, passengers sat back and let others ensure their safety and set their course. Traveling now by kayak, setting your direction, and learning to keep yourself safe have become essential skills. From a fellow kayaker, let me pass along this navigational advice as you enter the high-tech waters:
Lisa Williams is the founder of Placeblogger, the largest live site of local Weblogs, and of h2otown. In May she received a Knight News Challenge grant to support her work on these Web sites. Next section: Words & Reflections Table of contents Printer-friendly format |
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