The Future of Journalism at the Hands of Convergence and Consolidation

Upon hearing the word "journalism," connotations of Channel 2 anchor Chris Facchini, or the Bangor daily newspaper may pop in to a the mind of typical Maine citizen here in the Greater Bangor Area. These familiar and comforting local news sources, however, will soon be lost not only in Maine, but throughout the country due to convergence and consolidation in journalism.

Convergence is the new buzz word in journalism, referring to the luxury that devices such as Blackberries, iphones, and laptop computers provide. Every day such devices are used as travel agencies, phone books, radios, mp3 players, maps, cameras, movie theaters, TVs, and most importantly, news sources. It would be a great mistake to interpret this as just another source of media to compete with TV, radio, and news papers; the digitization of media is indeed competing, but also replacing these more primitive sources of media (Global Information, Inc.).

While convergence diminishes the significance of non-digital media sources, consolidation causes the disappearance of local as well as bold and aggressive news. Consolidation is a technique used by large corporations to make a larger profit by buying out smaller companies. With respect to journalism, consolidation leads to a small number of business owners controlling the content presented by a large variety of media outlets. When large corporations control the information distributed, many problems arise.

One disadvantage of consolidation is the lack of aggressive journalism. Because large corporations own so many outlets, profit, rather that societal importance, becomes the main goal. In order to gain profit, the owners of these corporations select writers that comply to their personal beliefs and values to write about mainstream topics that are easily embraced by large portions of the public. Because the audience target is so large, anything bold, or dynamic is not included in reports, and the journalism becomes moderate. In addition, the large audience causes local news to become obsolete. News worthy issues in one particular community does not appeal to people throughout the country, and would not, therefore, produce a profit for the corporation.

If consolidation and convergence continues down its path in journalism, we can kiss our newspapers and local news stations goodbye. These familiar sources of news are being bought up by larger corporations, and outcompeted by digital devices. In addition, the independent and aggressive style a dwindling few long for will soon disappear. With the combination of convergence and consolidation, news will be drastically different than it has been for generations. This is the future of journalism, but the true question is does this change need to be addressed, or is it simply the continuing evolution of information and communication?