PRINTEpic prediction
Journalism vs. technology
February 28, 2008 | 3:43 p.m. CST
The year is 2014. News organizations are a thing of the past. Anyone on the street could be considered a journalist, and believe it or not, Googlezon is a real word.
If you’ve seen Epic 2014, a Flash movie released online in 2004, these words probably sound familiar. The movie is a fictional account beginning with the invention of the Internet in 1989 projecting to the year 2014 when the distribution of news is completely changed and the role of journalists is lost. These are just a few of the predictions that Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson made when creating Epic 2014, which they dreamed up based on their own conversations about the troubled future of news organizations that face an increasing demand for online news.
Among the movie’s predictions are the fusion of online giants such as Google with Amazon and Microsoft with Friendster. These cyberspace powerhouses create new ways of reading the news, in which the user has much more control over the content he or she consumes. The final product is EPIC — the Evolving Personalized Information Construct — which not only caters to the interests of individual users but also allows them to take on the role of a reporter and place information on the system for all to see. The information is then individually packaged and specifically tailored to the user’s interests. The catch? The entire process is done without lifting a single journalistically trained finger. Instead, it is all done by a computer program.
Jeanne Meyer, managing editor for multimedia at the Kansas City Star says that Epic 2014 makes both encouraging and alarming predictions.
“Some prospects are a real concern,” she says. These concerns range from computers mixing facts from multiple stories to cater to personal preferences to the grim prospect that ethically and professionally gathered news might not have a financial foundation.
The threat of online dominance is nothing new in the minds of journalists, especially as more and more newspapers are taking their news online in the interests of their readers. According to the Pew Research Center, only one in 50 people got their news online a decade ago. Today, one in three regularly get news online.
The Kansas City Star reaches about 1 million people a week through both online and print, though they have seen tremendous growth online in the past year. “There has been an increased number of (online) visitors — about 40 percent — which is amazing growth in one year’s time,” Meyer says.
The movie predicts an eventual backlash against the exodus to online when The New York Times goes offline in response to the unethical practices used by EPIC. Embracing past traditions, the newspaper returns to print only, guaranteeing readers that the news they read in black and white is the work of trusted journalists, not a computer.
“A worry for all of news is larger than a worry for print,” says Tom Warhover, executive editor of innovation at the Columbia Missourian. “It’s that advertising is no longer dependent on news. The symbiotic relationship is disappearing. That’s what you should worry about.”
The reality of Epic 2014 is that some of its predictions have already come true. There is a constant movement of everything in daily life to the Web. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace continue to attract a wide range of users, particularly younger generations. But perhaps the most striking similarity of all came when Google bought YouTube in 2006.
Meyer, like most members of news organizations, acknowledges that there is a change in the method of news delivery. “Technology makes it easier to have news on demand,” she says. “The method of getting information will change, but it’s hard to predict how. The users will lead that.”
Meyer remains optimistic about the future of news organizations. Even amid the obvious trend to be all-online all the time, her allegiance lies with the traditional press.
“I trust that even with endless information available, people are going to look for information that they trust,” she says. “If today’s news organizations can meet those needs and evolve to meet those needs on whatever platform users want, they’ll find a future.”
— Lesley grissum
