Is news media facing a problem that they created?

Firstly let me say news, real news, the kind that is thorough and legitimate is valuable and should be paid for to be consumed. That said, I don’t think jumping on Facebook as the villain for the failure of professional news outlets is right.

For the last 20 years we have seen the decline of traditional media as a respected opinion of truth. We have seen the decline of old advertising and monetisation models that were used to fund good journalism. But like many other industries, the people that could do something about it spent more time trying to shore up old and outdated revenue streams. We still don’t have a large, successful model that represents a fair value exchange in the daily life of most Australians. Even as newsrooms are gutted and a lot of journalists are forced into a race to the bottom in producing extremist, popularist crap, we are yet to see the industry stand up and provide alternatives.