listen to the market

the solution to information overload is...jounalism

by michael oreskes

When thinking about new answers to old questions about journalism and its future in our rapidly changing media world, I am reminded of something said more than 100 years ago by an American writer and philosopher named Elbert Hubbard.

In his day, Hubbard was the most sought-after lecturer in America. He also was a correspondent for the Hearst chain of newspapers. From that experience, Hubbard formed his definition of an editor. An editor, Hubbard said, is “a person employed by a newspaper whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff … and to see that the chaff is printed.” He clearly had an astute understanding of the journalistic process!

Elbert Hubbard died long before the birth of the Internet, or even of television or radio. But to labor his agricultural analogy, living in the digital age is like standing at the bottom of a grain elevator as they pour in the wheat. Our audiences are literally drowning in information — unrefined wheat and chaff and all the muck raked up with the harvest.

information overload

This information overload, at first glance, seems like a problem to us, but I suggest it is, in fact, our opportunity. Indeed, information overload is the opportunity that we as journalists cannot afford to miss, for our own sakes and for the sake of the society that needs what we journalists do. It is the opportunity to reshape what we do so it survives well into the future.

There is a great sense of panic in our business these days over a perceived circulation crisis. It is widely believed that newspaper circulation is declining. That belief, however, is only partly true. The circulation of paid-for newspapers in Europe and North America is declining, but the total circulation of paid-for newspapers all over the world is continuing to climb. In Europe, the distribution of newspapers given out for free is soaring. There are still millions of people all over the world who want the news in the old-fashioned form of a newspaper.

appetite for knowledge

There also is considerable evidence that the appetite for knowledge and understanding of an increasingly tangled and complex world is as great, or maybe even greater, than it has ever been. Gallup poll survey data shows that interest in newspapers and magazines actually goes up among Internet users when they are seeking analysis and context.

The solution to information overload, at least in part, is journalism. The Internet offers us this alluring idea that all information is available to everyone all the time. But no one has time to absorb all that information, to make sense of it, to separate the wheat from the chaff. That is what journalism is for, as Elbert Hubbard told us long ago.

need for orientation

Mathias Dopfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, has said that what audiences want more than ever now is orientation — direction through the overload of information that is daily life. That is what journalists know how to do. The more society is inundated with information, the more we need the service of journalism.

Journalists have a very specific challenge here. It is to remember who we are and what we actually know how to do. Change is essential. We are learning how to distribute our work in new ways, and to create new forms of journalism that fit the new forms of distribution. We need to adapt to the new attitudes of our audiences, too.

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