To pay, or not to pay. That is today’s question!
The Digital Era is in full swing and it's crashing into the livelihoods of people everywhere, including journalists. As ‘the man’ said: “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
Paying for podcast subscriptions?
A friend commented on paying for podcasters of the Internet saying:
I follow former CBC journalist Trish Wood both on podcast and on Substack. She introduced me to 2 other ex-CBC journos who have left the mainstream due to the corruption that erupted into full view in 2020 (all 3 were involved in the recent NCI/National Citizens Inquiry).
It looks like Substack is the place to look for authentic journalists these days, but the going rate for paid subscriptions can add up fast if one chooses to support these writers monetarily.
I have also been a paid subscriber to Trish Wood Is Critical for two years. Worth every penny, especially her pandemic coverage.
There are many good podcasters these days. Some are professional journalists who expect to be paid for their work. A few like Trish produce shows that justify paying the prescription fee; most are not, in my opinion. Some generate revenues by advertising products and service providers that the host selects according to their perceived value. I like this because I am never subjected to cola cola or tampon ads on those shows.
I am the only writer for MY LIFE LENS on Substack.
I describe myself as a “citizen journalist” because I report on many economic and political topics and offer my perspectives on them. I have posted over 260 times on Substack since January 2022 when I was kicked of Facebook.
I require no paid subscriptions because, as a citizen journalist, I neither possess the career experience of lifelong investigative journalists like Trish Wood, nor do I have the ability to attract impressive guests as she has done weekly for the last three years.
I gladly pay the Trish Wood Is Critical subscription fee because I value her experience, skills and ability to access the right people to inform me with expert views and information on topics which have been propagandized by the political elites like Justin Trudeau and his “captured” media mouthpieces at the CBC, Toronto Star, and other legacy institutions.
My Confession
I silently celebrate the slow and painful death of legacy media organizations and the people employed withing them (Very insensitive of me, I know!). Technology has finally caught up with their industry and quaked its foundations with “creative destruction” like it has for many others (remember the horse-drawn buggy?)
The technology platforms upon which the legacy media’s business models and career tracts depended are becoming obsolete. Like rats on the Titanic, many investors, customers, suppliers and employees understandably “abandon ship”.
It’s hard to have sympathy for people who had their “day in the sun” but must now recreate themselves professionally in order to adapt to the Digital Era. This transformation affects everyone. As AI platforms continue to become more sophisticated, more capable and “go mainstream”, savvy investigative journalists of the future will possess AI “digital assistants” to leverage their productivity beyond anything ever imagined at the CBC and its brethren during the heyday of radio and television.
My expert message to legacy journalists.
Adapt to AI or find your name and reputation in the trash keep of history.
Only the best will survive in an ocean of content provided by competent citizen journalists who won’t be charging for our content.
I have an eye for tech-enabled career transformations.
Most of my readers know that I worked in the “Computer Industry” from 1977 to 2018. For 36 years, I was Professional IT RECRUITER after four years will IBM Canada as a Systems Engineering Representative and Marketing Representative in the “mainframe and minicomputer era”. I interviewed over 10,000 “IT professionals” for thousands of different “Job Orders” requested by big and small companies in nearly every economic sector.
To be good at my job, I had to keep well-informed on industry trends and their impacts on organizations, workplace productivity and the emergence of new skillset demands arising in the “job market”. My nick name was “coach” because I had a reputation for helping candidates make good career choices to capitalize of market trends.
While I have been retired for five years, my interest in technology trends, and their career impacts, remains. For example, I have been aware of the productivity potential of the various forms of AI technology for decades (ever since serving my first Job Order request for an “Expert System Specialist” about 1990, and other requests for LISP and Prolog Application Developers about the same time).
Recently, I saw a company advertising in INDEED to hire a Prompt Engineer (https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3592150179), a new breed of AI Expert. At that moment, the penny dropped, and as I investigated further over the next week, the future became clear.
With any explosion of LLM (large language models) application vendors coming to market to exploit the powers of AI platforms, the demand for talent to feed this market will grow exponentially.
The demand for an entirely new breed “AI expert” is emerging that will spread to every business sector. These professionals will possess advanced and reliable problem-solving or opportunity-exploiting knowledge-acquisition capabilities empowered by superior skills in using AI-powered productivity tools such as GPT-4 and it's future releases.
Needless to say, every knowledge worker everywhere will eventually be expected to possess competency in AI prompting to augment their personal productivity and these skills we be as fundamental to genral skillset requirement on a professional’s resume and Word, Excel and Powerpoint have been the the past. That said, however, Prompt Engineers will be more than merely competent and will be paid very well to tackle an organization’s leaders’ most thorny challenges. The title of “Prompt Engineer” is likely only the earliest name applied to advanced practitioners of AI prompting. Many comparable job titles are coming if history is any indication.
Only the best Journists will be paid.
Along with the ability to prompt AI platforms for information, Demographics and Economics will profoundly shape the future of journalism as the Digital Economy continues to sweep over all of us.
The cost of living continually rises (largely driven my government policies and tax/regulatory interventions in all aspects of life). The aging of large segments of Canada’s populace our into retirement, often on fixed incomes, is a very significant trend. Employment is becoming increasingly “precarious” for “working age” citizens as they face the transformation forces of the Digital Age.
With these forces at play, paying a subscription fee for online content will become a luxury that few will be able to afford.
Consider the past.
A “print” newspaper publisher, like the Toronto Star, had room in their business model for many staff writers to report “the news, weather and sports”, plus a range of opinion pieces such as “letters to the editor”, “Dear Abby” for the wounded lonesome, and thoughtful, informed essays on the Opinion page. This format was all available in a single issue for the low cost of a newspaper subscription and was considered essential reading for anyone who wish to be seen reputation ally as an “informed citizen”. It was inexpensive, of course, because the consumer price per issue was subsidied by pages of revenue-generating advertisements of all sorts. It is worth noting that the content of every issue was carefully curated by editors to attract and sustain the largest readership possible. Editors were hired for their experience and judgement concerning what content will “sell” to the masses.
The Internet has atomized the legacy media’s former mass market dominance. The leaders and journalists of those legacy media corporation considered themselves to be too important and too big to fail, but fail they have largely by their own hand. They failed to act fact enough to see the Digital Age coming and adapt accordingly. Politics delayed the inevitable when they accepted subsidies for Justin Trudeau with his 2018 “media bailout” announcement to help allegedly them transition.
Their business model was destined to fail and to disrupt media careers. The careers of millions of “knowledge workers” in many economic sectors have suffered the same fate with the same impersonal effectiveness.
My advice legacy journalists.
Join the club. Your job is not the first to be a casualty of the Digital Age, and it won’t be the last.
Sink or swim. The Tide of Change is rising and you can land on the beach or be swept out into the vast Digital Sea. It’s your choice and effort to make!
PS.
[I might have added: “Suck it up, buttercup, and stop pouting.”, but that it too insensitive for even an old-time technology trends observer like me. ]
