"The media pie is being cut up into tinier pieces with each one trying to be more profitable," McNabb said. McNabb said the revenue problem has been building for decades due to advances in technology. "We are in the middle and there is no way to know where this will go," McNabb said.
Bridges said that while the Statesman is going through many of the problems most newspapers are facing, they have managed to remain profitable. "We haven't downsized but there have been buyouts," Bridges said. "Our newsroom has gone from 195 people to 152 people."
Bridges said he really felt the hurt when classified sites like Craigslist became popular. "The classified ads are the equivalent of printing money," Bridges said. "The irony is the Internet is all about information and we are information professionals, and we are the ones in trouble."
Beat reporting has gone by the wayside, often being one of the first positions cut along with copy editors, said McNabb and Bridges. Bridges said that beat reporting is vital to journalism. McNabb said he does not believe the future of journalism rests on bloggers. "I don't believe citizen journalists are the answer," McNabb said. "They are good for tips and quotes but they are not trained professionals."
To survive in the competitive field of journalism you have to be a one man band McNabb said. You need to be able to shoot your own video, take your own pictures, edit them, write the story and air it, if on TV. Reporters today can't rely on just being good writers McNabb said.
Bridges and McNabb gave their advice to future reporters. Bridges believes that writing is something you just have to do. "It is more like a trade," Bridges said. "A plumber can't fix a pipe from reading a book, he has to do it."
McNabb disagreed, he said he believed journalism is a profession not a trade. "It must be practiced like law or medicine," McNabb said. "You have to want it, you have to really, really want it."
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