10 best points in Tim McGuire’s ‘This I believe’ essay
Arizona State University journalism professor and former Minneapolis Star Tribune editor Tim McGuire recently wrote an essay titled “This I believe about journalism, newspapers and the future of media” for ASU colleague Len Downie. “We have been discussing a book and I wanted to organize my thoughts,” he writes. “I share it, not because I think it is an earthshaking pronouncement, but rather because it might allow other folks to engage in the same exercise.”
Here are some of the best points from the 62-year-old journalist’s piece:
– We all waste our time when we look for culprits in the demise of mainstream media.
– Mainstream media need new blood from other more entrepreneurial fields as well as a massive infusion of youth.
– Government funding is a very bad idea. We have to be capable of more creativity than that.
– Most media organizations still too often act as if they are in control.
– Traditional newspapers are profoundly troubled, but not necessarily doomed.
– Those who view an unorganized world full of citizen journalists as idyllic are smoking something.
– Those who believe the loss of corporate media will be a good thing are terrifically naïve. Right now news media ownership alternatives are not all that pretty.
– Social media and the power of citizen conversation is not fleeting and we need to respect and appreciate that our society has been deeply changed by that power.
– The goal of finding new revenues should not be to return to the Golden Days of 30+ percent profits.
– The future of the news is good because the tools of our age give us more opportunity than destruction.
* This I believe about journalism, newspapers and the future of media (McGuire on Media)
