Roland Hedley Lives!
CNN announced it will soon deploy digital journalists to 10 cities in the United States. A digital journalist is the a 1-man band who can report for all platforms using the latest digital technologies. Such reporters, apparently, have no need for expensive office space with even more expensive support staff.
The article points out that this move — and similar ones by other networks — will soon re-define the concept of a news bureau. 
Let me also suggest moves such as this could re-define what it means to be a news organization. This idea doesn’t have to be confined to staffing “bureaus” in other cities. How might a newspaper in a small city deploy digital journalists in the state and local community? Could it be that the brick-and-mortar part of the news organization can begin to shrink? How much money could be saved and then plowed back into what really counts? The journalism.
Tags: journalism, rhetoric, politics
“Could it be that the brick-and-mortar part of the news organization can begin to shrink? How much money could be saved and then plowed back into what really counts? The journalism.”
If the newspapers weren’t publicly traded one might believe this was about plowing more money into journalism. Under the circumstances it is far more likely this is intended to keep plowing money into the pockets of the owners and stockholders.
Evans… Certainly. My question should be read far more as a desire than a description of what might actually occur.
Capitalism didn’t ruin journalism, journalists did. For decades journalists complained about their costumers (people are idiots who don’t want to read, people are partisans who don’t want to hear inconvenient truths, shooting-the-messenger, etc.) as their costumers complained about poor quality (inaccuracy, misleading stories based on poor understanding, etc.).
During the last decade, journalists mocked the Internet as a platform for journalism, and their customer base shrank further.
Tim… I don’t mean to suggest simplistic reasons. Those you cite play a huge roll, too. But it is true that it is difficult to practice good journalism with few resources no matter how we got to this point.