Political Economy of Journalism Essay

The political economy of journalism is ground on Marxs critique of capitalism. With this in mind assess the following professionals and amateurs stick come forth form powerful partnerships to create important journalism (Jones & Salter 2002 29)The term political economy originally denoted the study of the conditions under which economic merchandise was coordinate in the capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy studies the way of life of production specifically of capital, and how that manifests as economic activity (Marx, 1867). Its simple, political economy derives numerous of its analytical insights from the Marxist analysis of capitalism as a model of production, defined in the first instance by the relationship amid the forces of production, or the technologies and techniques done which material and symbolic goods and services are produced, and the favorable relations of production, or the relations amongst social agents (such as owners, editors and journalists in this case) through which the production of such goods and services are organised, and the associated modes of distribution of the economic product. This coupling of the forces and social relations of production provides the base from which another(prenominal) social transitiones, and the overall social structure of a historically specific mode of production, are organised.In the political economy of journalism, capitalism is identified as a mode of production characterised by unprecedented dynamism, continuously revolutionizing its productive processes with refreshing technologies and mod forms of organising the labour process (Mosco 1995 43). Karl Marx described in Capital this relationship between the economic base and the social structure in these footing In the social production of their life men, enter into definite relations that are ingrained and independent of their will, relations of production that will correspond to a definite stage of development of their mater ial productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure, the real basis on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the widely distributed process of social, political and intellectual life (Marx 1867).In his three volume consummation The Information historic period parsimoniousness, Society and Culture, the sociologist Manuel Castells has proposed that since the 1980s a neweconomy has emerged that is global, networked and informational. While this new techno-economic framework remains capitalist in form, it is based upon what Castells describes as an informational rather than an industrial mode of development, which he defines in these terms In the industrial mode of development, the main source of productivity lies in the introductions of new energy sources, and in the ability to decentralize the use of ener gy through the production and circulation processes. In the new, informational mode of development, the source of productivity lies in the technology of knowledge generation, information processing, and symbol communication What is specific to the informational mode of development is the motion of knowledge upon knowledge itself as the main source of productivity. I call this mode of development informational, constituted by the emergence of a new technological paradigm based on information technology (Castells 1996 17).Castells has proposed that the rise of a network society has its origins in some central elements derivatives of the new regime of accumulation, or the nexus between production and consumption, identified by Castells as the information technology paradigm, which is based upon the mass diffusion of information and communication technologies. The new economy is networked and it is based upon information networks such as the earnings, as well as the networked enterp rise becoming the dominant form of economic organisation, at whose emotional state is no longer the capitalist firm, but global markets and business projects based upon short-term strategic alliances and partnerships. For Castells, the networked enterprise is a logical corollary of electronic business, as it is based around the Internet-based, interactive, networked connection between producers, consumers, and service providers (Castells 2001 75).It has never been so easy to create information, and at the same time it has never been so difficult to ease up a living off its practice the market is bigger than ever, but the income is the lowest in hi tosh, in relative terms. This trend is clearly visible in the USA, so m any times forerunner about what is going to happen with the rest of the western countries. The scene is quite disturbing, at least in the USA, where study newspapers strike seen how their diffusion has fallen from 62 million copies to 49 million since the Internet became mainstream with an easy access for most of the citizens of that country 15 years ago. near a hundred newspapers were forced to stopprinting in paper format. During the same period, the number of readers of digital journalism has increased from nought to 75 million. The shine in advertisements, which represents the main income in paper journalism, has reduced the profit drastically, which subsequently has brought massive lay-offs as read in some of the mastheads of the main European newspapers (1).El Pais, reference Spanish newspaper, fired to a greater extent than 30 per cent of its staff after announcing a dismissal program. The company notified 129 of its workers that they were fired via e-mail the past tenth of November, while many of them were at their positions. The reason of the redundancy was the mismanagement of Juan Luis Cebrin, CEO of El Pas, according to Maruja Torres, journalist of that newspaper, in a lecture at University of Barcelona Cebrin lost 5 billion eur o gambling in casino capitalism, buying radios in Miami and Latin-American TVs that were absolutely worthless. He wanted to be a financial shark in Wall Street, but he actually was a little sardine who made everything wrong. He wasted the profits of our work in the adventure of the best newspaper of the Spanish democracy (2).In the last years and due to the systemic crisis experienced by this sector, the main newspapers have faced many problems and several of them have been forced to move totally their paper editions to only On-line editions, like Pblico, another Spanish newspaper, that stop printing its paper edition a little longer than eight months ago, because of the decrease in its sales. (3) Newspapers financially survive in two ways, one is the income generated from advertisings and the other is from subscriptions. Advertising is at the centre of the postulate, because, among other things, is the main source of funding and therefore for the survival of traditionalistic news papers. As noted in The Economist in its special report called Bulletins from the future (4), the bulk of the revenue enhancements had descended while at the same time the income of On-line media grew enormously. It is not only that the model of business has changed but overly the model of consumption has changed.The Internet has brought an unprecedented revolution in the way we create, handle and spread information. It has demolished the old methods and has opened unlimited possibilities for the elaboration of a top-quality product with information. Brian Winston (1986, 1998), argues that, in contrast to claims that we are currently in the midst of an information revolution, the historical development of technologies such as telephone, radio, TV,satellites, computers and Internet are marked far more by continuities rather than epochal transformations. Winston also argues that, insofar as technologies may still contain potential to repugn the dominant pattern of social relations. That its what we are seeing in the actual performing of relationship between citizens and journalism, where citizens are acting as journalists modify content that is published on traditional media.This form of citizen journalism includes things like publication of photographs or video taken by amateurs who happened to be at the even up place at the right time, such as the London bombings in July 2005 or London Riots in 2011. It could also include comment and opinion by a blogger that later appears on a mainstream media news site. Most of the time these people are not paid for their contribution. Citizen Journalism in this context is most always contextualized, edited and proofread by professional journalists (Quin & Lamble 2008). The website OhmyNews is one of the pioneers of citizen journalism, having more than 50.000 citizen reporters as of March 2007. Jean Min of OhmyNews International said every story went through an extensive screening and copyediting process before it was published. Although sometimes good quality blog content appears in mainstream media.The key word is quality. UK journalist Jemima snog concedes that the cream of bloggers will be experts in their field. Blogs are often an extension of peoples job or their passions (5). It is logical that traditional media should seek out their skills, but traditional gatekeepers have important skills that should not be underestimated. Min of OhmyNews concurs We believe bloggers can work better with professional assistance from trained journalists. On the other hand, we also believe professional journalists can expand their view and scope greatly with fresh input from citizen reporters. News media as a whole can offer more diverse and rich content to readers by tapping into the wealth of Netizens collective wisdom (Quin & Lamble 2008). However, citizen journalism assume the role of journalists and that necessitates a debate about who is a journalist. Citizen Journalism sites succeed because they ar e easy and cheap to set up. Salaries are often not an issue because people volunteer their time.This means these bloggers or citizen reporters dont want to be journalists, they just want to be heard and respected. (Min 2007) The first form of citizen journalism is likely to continue because traditional medianeed quality content, and in many cases they are not paying for it. The second form requires energy and passion to sustain itself, and a form of revenue or business model. Arash Amel, a senior analyst for the media analysis company Screen Digest, said The business model for user-generated sites has been build it and sell it and let somebody else worry about the business model. News Corp admitted early in 2007 that its Fox movie studio and television content would be more important than home made clips for capturing online video advertising. Screen Digest expects this market to expand for billions before 2012 (Edgecliffe-Johnson and van Duyn 2007).Bowman and Willis see collaborati on as the campaign force behind the explosion of citizen media as passionate and motivated people produce new forms of media. The democratization of media has levelled the competitive landscape and forced dramatic changes in the news business (Bowman and Willis 2005 7). They reject the notion that citizen journalism means the ends of the new media companies or journalism. However, in the last few years, the journalism has been through a circumstances of troubles because of Internet, but also thanks to the Network and how was changed the pattern of consume information, a lot of possibilities has been disclosed. One of them is crowdsourcing. Jeff Howe (2006) was the first person who has coined its definition, he describes crowdsourcing as a process that distribute problem-solving and production model.In the classic use of the term, problems are broadcast to an unknow group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Usersalso known as the crowdsubmit solutions. Solutions a re then owned by the entity that broadcast the problem in the first placethe crowdsourcer. The contributor of the solution is, in some cases, compensated either monetarily, with prizes, or with recognition. In other cases, the only rewards may be kudos or intellectual satisfaction. Crowdsourcing may produce solutions from amateurs or volunteers working in their spare time, or from experts or small businesses which were unknown to the initiating organization (Howe 2006).Concluding remarks the global production of information and mass media is not make over the grounds of objectivity and the quality of a truthful information, as they would make us believe. Journalism in this case is not any diverse from any other capitalist industry. The production of information follows the laws of political economy, that is to say, the maximization of profits and thanks tothat fact the media owners trade freely with information like any other commodity on the market that is at the service of the c apitalist system.BIBLIOGRAPHYAXFORD, HUGGINS 2001, New Media and Politics, Sage Publications, London. BENDER, DAVENPORT, DRAGER, FREDLER 2009, Reporting for the Media, Oxford University Press, Oxford. CASTELLS, Manuel 1996a, The Rise of the Network Society, vol. 1 of The Information Age Economy, Society and Culture, Blackwell, Malden, Mass. 2001. The Internet Galaxy Reflections on Economy, Society and Culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford. COTTLE Simon 2003. News, Public Relations and Power, Sage Publications, London. FLEW, Terry 2002, New Media an introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford. JONES, SALTER 2012, Digital Journalism, Sage Publications, London. MARX, Karl 1867, Capital, Verlag von Otto Meissner, Hamburg. MOSCO, Vincent 1995, The Political Economy of Communication, Sage, Calif. QUINN, Stephen LAMBLE, Stephen 2008, Online Newsgathering Research and Reporting for Journalism, Focal Press, Elsevier, Burllington. SALWEN, GARRISON, DRISCOLL 2005, Online News and the Pub lic, Lawrence WINSTON, Brian 1986, Misunderstanding Media, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, London. BOWMAN, WILLIS 2005, The Future is Here, But Do News Media Companies See It?, Nieman Reports. Available from http//www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/100558/The-Future-Is-Here-But-Do-News-Media-Companies-See-It.aspx cited 2012 EDGECLIFFE, JOHNSON & VAN DUYN 2007, Murdoch is sight of Dow Jones. 21 June 2007. Available from http//www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cde8a968-2016-11dc-9eb1 000b5df10621.htmlaxzz2CPrMqwcR cited 2012 HOWE, Jeff 2006, The Rise of Crowdsourcing , Wired Magazine. Available from http//www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html MIN, Jean 2007. Interview. 29 May 2007. Available from http//laazotea.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/entrevista-jean-k-mings-ohmynews.html cited 2012 CARLING, John. El momento crucial. El Pas. 10 May 2009. Available from http//elpais.com/diario/2009/05/10/domingo/1241927553_850215.html cited 2012 TORRES, Maruja. Preguntes que els periodistes ens haurem de fer cada