The iGeneration And The Downfall of Murdoch

6:00 Nov 21st, 2009 | Notes

I was dumfounded when I heard Rupert Murdoch’s interview on Sky News a few weeks ago. There I saw the founder of the modern journalism industry proclaiming that he is going to undo a decades worth of progress into the online market by reverting back to the tired, old methods of the past. What really struck me was this: Murdoch doesn’t know who he’s up against.

The iGeneration, my generation. The generation born from the early 1990s up until now. The generation who has been the first to grow up from childhood with the computer. We’re the first generation to have known instant communication, the MP3 player, digital entertainment, cable television and the cell phone since birth. And yes, we’re the first generation to grow up with the internet. Growing up in such a world, connected like never before, earned us the nickname “Digital Natives”.

Growing up in the internet age also taught us a frightening lesson: media is free. We explore our world and find two realities in front of us. We find the first reality, in which people go into physical stores to purchase movies, music, news and games. In this reality, physical versions of these items are received in exchange for currency. We see that the older generations like this reality and remain content to exist solely within it. The iGeneration are confused by this. For as we turn our heads we see another reality, an invisible one. In this second reality, those same items exist, but we can’t see them. We delight to discover that all of the items are much cheaper than they are in the first reality. Sometimes, if we’re sneaky, we can get them for free! But for everything that means breaking the law to do so. Everything but news.

You see, here is where Murdoch’s plan to raise the dollar sign in front of peoples’ faces hits a snag. It hits a snag with my generation, the iGeneration. As I’ve explained, we’ve grown up watching free news on the TV, listening to free news on the radio and reading free news on the internet. The only time where we’ve encountered payed news is when we wanted to get berated by loud, intolerant people, or when as young children we looked at our parents, wondering why they would bother struggling to unfold a giant piece of paper with tiny writing on it when there were easier alternatives. I’ve personally bought a newspaper only once in my life and regretted it very soon after as I realized I had to carry it around with me, and even more so when I realized I could get the same news for free on my iPhone. In fact, the only person I’ve know to carry around a newspaper is one who drinks way too much coffee for a 17 year old and who so obviously belongs with the university crowd that it could be said he is already subconsciously practicing his future habits.

Murdoch is forgetting that despite my generation being the wealthiest in history, we are also the most stingy when it comes to news. We have cell phones to buy, skinny jeans to try on. There are social expectations to conform to, politicians to swear at without discerning our own political views. We don’t have the time or money to spend on some of the smut you describe as “Quality Journalism”. We’re the status update generation, garnering all our news and information from one line of text. We’re the 8 second news grab generation, the targeted advertising generation, the news on tiny screens generation, not the news on paper generation. We’re the generation with the world in our pockets, the history of anyone and everything at our fingertips. All the while, it is free. Information flows into our elastic minds more freely than water into our mouths.

Rupert Murdoch faces the most commercially hardened generation in history as his upcoming audience, and he expects them to pay. Rupert Murdoch wants the iGeneration to pay for online news. Good luck.

The Tough Decision

11:26 Aug 10th, 2009 | Notes

The economic crisis has had a huge impact on traditional journalism in Australia and across the world. Professional journalists from high end publications are being cut back in favor of gossipy, tabloid drivel machines. It’s a major sign that the economic problems we face are far reaching and that not even journalism, one of the key elements of a healthy democracy, is safe.

But you know that the world’s is in an even worse state when the editor in chief of your school paper is telling you to dumb down your content, that what you’re writing is too high brow and that you should shorten your articles because editing them gets to a stage where if anymore was cut out they would stop making sense. That’s right, the school newspaper is telling me to drop my standards.

It’s obvious to me why I’m being told this. None of my articles are anywhere near as popular as the “Caption Contest!” or the “Jokes of the Week!”. Yet my articles bring something resembling real journalism to our school publication, and that’s something I’m proud of. In the eyes of students it seams that articles on the future of technology in education, upcoming important changes to our electoral system, the place of privacy in schools and the importance of backing up school work pale in significance to the importance of what funny caption a picture of a guy falling off a bike should have.

It’s not like I’m being paid for these articles or receiving recognition for my work. I’m simply doing it because I think journalism is a vital aspect necessary to maintain a healthy community, and because I think every school should strive to engage, inform and entertain students in a way that makes them think about the world they live in instead of feeding them the lowest of the low. There is a place for “Caption Contests” and “Jokes of the Week” in our school paper, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of news and opinion that should matter to students. We shouldn’t be lowering ourselves to the lowest common denominator, we should be trying to bring the bottom up.

So now I’m faced with a decision: soldier on through this problem, lowing my tone and trying to continue as normal, or quit the publication as it’s top contributer. It’s a tough decision to make, but if my editors aren’t looking for what I have to offer, I might as well not bother.