Debbie Friez of BurrellesLuce wrote an interesting post about a pending change at the Washington Times. And, we found the questions Debbie raises at the end of her piece to be worthy of a great deal of discussion as it relates to the future of journalism. Debbie's piece follows:
As I casually watched the 11 p.m. news Monday night, I perked-up when I heard a story on NBC 4 Washington discussing the Washington Times' plans to use content from unpaid citizen non-journalists in the paper six days a week. I made an immediate mental note, to look into it. One advantage to working at BurrellesLuce is that I could easily search the Monday and Tuesday print editions of the Washington Times. However, I could not find the story. It seems the Washington Times released the story to other media outlets and on their website, but not in the print edition of the paper.
For their part, the Washington Times is planning to provide the contributors with rules and ethics guidelines. The non-journalists will need to follow the same criteria as other journalists at the paper. As a reader, this is comforting - assuming the editors are really fact checking the stories.
For public relations professionals, this is a great opportunity to get stories published, and not have to worry about grabbing the attention of the busy paid journalist. With newsrooms stretched thin, I hope this will mean more community information and stories.
I wonder if other newspapers will take on this approach to get free content. Will this be a way to help papers become profitable? If so, what does it mean for the future of journalism as a profession? What does it mean for media relations?