Revolutionary highway

There’s no turning back for the news media. Margaret Simons discusses the threats and opportunities with Peter Clarke

24 March 2009



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Above: The front page of the final edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (16 March 2009), which will now be published exclusively online.
AP Photo/ Seattle Post Intelligencer

HUMANS HAVE ALWAYS craved and shared news. News journalism started to emerge after the Gutenberg Revolution in the fifteenth century eventually blossoming as a profession with the Industrial Revolution and the invention of a clutch of mass media technologies that characterised the twentieth century. Then, on the eve of the twenty-first century, another revolution, as profound as the Gutenberg, started a new wave of even more complex and layered transformations. We are in the “one-reeler” stage of that revolution right now, intertwined with a global financial crisis. News and the professionals who fashion its forms and dissemination are caught up in a whirlpool of often mystifying changes. Well-known media blogger and journalist, Margaret Simons, herself wrestling with the challenges of adapting to novel demands and opportunities, tells Peter Clarke there is no turning back now to the old one-to-many model of news journalism.

Stream or download the audio here (18 mins 24 sec)

Websites mentioned in this podcast
The Content Makers
Jay Rosen’s PressThink
Jeff Jarvis’s buzzmachine
Spot.Us
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Peter Clarke is a Melbourne based broadcaster, writer and educator. He pioneered national talkback on Australian radio as the inaugural presenter of Offspring (now Life Matters) on ABC Radio National. Podcast theme created by Ivan Clarke, Pang Productions.

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