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The Review - FEATURE - by RICHARD OSLEY
Published: 8 November 2007

Can journalism survive the internet?

HAS the internet sounded the death knell for good journalism? Does the future belong to bedroom bloggers who can reach more people with a lazy web hit than a well-researched investigation in newspaper print?
That was the question addressed by David Leigh, of the Guardian, at the inaugural Anthony Sampson lecture at City University on Thursday night.
Leigh, who won last month’s Paul Foot Award for Investigative Journalism for his expose of bribery in the arms trade, fears that a new generation of bloggers, Facebookers and “hyper-active news bunnies” are taking control.
“My fear is that today everybody is rather too obsessed with new platforms,” he said. “But not enough people are talking about values. I do wish we could spend less time fretting about platforms and more about the loss of honesty in our trade. The future of journalism will be a future with less money around. That won’t be good. Too much competition leads to a race to the bottom. And you can’t afford to report if you can’t afford to eat.”
Leigh has seen enough as investigations editor at the Guardian to know that the “craft of the reporter” is at risk. He said enough to make some of the journalism students in the audience uneasy and wonder whether they should have taken web design or internet studies or an MA in how to surf the information super-highway, instead.
Leigh added: “There is yet to be a proper accounting for the disgraceful loss of journalistic integrity on both sides of the Atlantic that cheer-led us into the Iraq war on a false prospectus. There’ll probably be a lot more news bunnies in the future,
high-speed, short-legged creatures of the internet age. But not proper reporters.
“You can get junk food on every high street – and you can get junk journalism nowadays in every outlet there is. But just as there is now a movement for slow cooking, I should also like to see more of a demand for slow journalism.
“Slow journalism would show greater respect for the craft of the reporter – a patient assembler of facts. A skilled tradesman who is independent and professionally reputable and who can get paid the rate for the job. A disentangler of lies and weasel words.”

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