"WHY JOURNALISTS DESERVE LOW PAY" – THAT’S THE
only slightly provocative title of an article by Robert G. Picard, a professor of media economics at Sweden’s Jonkoping University, that appeared in the May 19 edition of The Christian Science Monitor. “Wages are compensation for value creation,” Picard writes. “And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days.”

Technological change has radically widened the range of sources of news and information available to the public, notes Picard, and has thus lowered the economic value of content, which in the past was raised by the difficulty and cost of operation, publication and distribution.

I’m with Picard this far; like the recording industry, the news industry is doomed if it clings to a business model based upon a mode of distribution of its product that has been rendered obsolete by the digital revolution.

He says that technology “is providing individuals – without the support of a journalistic enterprise – the capabilities to access sources, to search through information and determine its significance, and to convey it effectively.”

This may sound self-serving and perhaps elitist, but I am not as sanguine as Picard about the average Web surfer’s ability, let alone desire, to “search through information and determine its significance.” It is this exponential proliferation of information that makes the journalist’s role more important than ever; this is how we can add real value.

Where I really part company with Picard is when he says “journalists do not want to be in the … highly competitive information market. Most believe that what they do is so intrinsically good and that they should be compensated to do it even if it doesn’t produce revenue.” Ouch.

I don’t know who Picard’s been hanging out with, but most of the journos I know are well aware they’re in the information biz, and realize just what an enormous challenge – and opportunity – the Internet presents.

He’s right on the mark, however, when he says “Journalists will also need to acquire entrepreneurial and innovation skills that makes it possible for them to lead change rather than merely respond to it.”

That’s what I’m trying to do (please excuse the self-promotion) with my recently launched online newsletter and Web site covering the Japanese and Asian music industries. Breaking-news items are available free of charge, but I charge money for market-sector reports and research services.

I recommend Picard’s article (www.csmonitor.com/2009/0519/p09s02-coop.htm) to anyone interested in the future of journalism. But he fails to mention one crucial point: how much the Monitor paid him for his article. I trust it was not so large as to invalidate his thesis.