Why Journalism is Like Manufacturing

"The Internet was a pretty standard resource for research and knowledge by the time we were in high school." Writes Brian. "God only knows how people "did" secondary education--let alone journalism--20 years ago."

I'm pretty sure the answer is "slower." When I moved to DC, I was often astonished by how little output was expected from journalists. Three or four features a year was a decent clip -- worthy of a salary. That seemed absurd. But back in the day, you couldn't just Nexis your way through everything written on the subject. Research required days in the microfiche stacks. Every time you got a new lead, you had to go back to the microfiche stacks. Writing serious articles took a really long time.

This is, in part, why you're seeing cutbacks in many newsrooms. I'm not supposed to say this, but journalism has gotten easier, and fewer individuals can do more of it. Now, you can certainly go way too far in that direction, and there are certain areas -- like foreign bureaus, where the reporting time is the same now as then -- where you don't want to lose staff. But as productivity rapidly increases, either the market has to expand or staffs will be cut. And to make matters worse, much like in manufacturing, the rise of blogs and online magazines has created intense, low-cost competition that simply didn't exist before. The problem, much like in manufacturing, is that we're killing off the positions that we still need and that Nexis hasn't made easier. The bloviators -- like myself -- reproduce, while the resource-intensive reporters, see their resources cut. Which is why we need more projects like this one, or possibly some public subsidies.