Is Columbia having an existential crisis, or is it just changing?

Columbia School of Journalism is experiencing an identity crisis, spurred by an internal feud between “new media” people and “old media” people, according to a blog entry from New York Magazine.  As they often do, the comments to this article both clarify and snarkify the situation.  A more nuanced view that I get, though is that Columbia is experiencing the same uncertainty that the entire industry is, and at least from my experience, the so-called “dinosaurs” on the faculty have been trying to learn new technology along with the rest of us. However, these folks are first and foremost at the school to teach us writing and reporting, and if anything, I personally think the attention has shifted away from how to do this really well in favor of perceived market demands for young people who will work on the websites of well-known publications like the Atlantic or the New York Times.

The debate that surrounds the future of the news industry is characterized by the sort of anxiety that leads people to make sweeping assertions about pretty complex problems.  Some of those assertions are just lazy, like the comment that the New York Times is a “sluggish piece of machinery,” which, given that the Times has one of the most visually appealing, depth-driven multimedia sites, can be written off.

What I am interested in though is why people, in trying to understand the industry, feel the need to position the “dinosaurs” against the “innovators” and side with the latter. I can only think that it is an effort to cast about for  a  Great White Hope format of journalism that will save us from the demands of the old one–exhaustive reporting, fact checking, knowing a beat, editing–because the 24-hour news cycle does not jibe with the imperative to provide well-reported and written articles.

Thinking that if only the dinosaurs “got it,” that new media (which is so many different things) is the future, and not only that, but figuring out how to make money off of it and do good reporting is a childish hope.  It is wrapped up in the wish that someone else will solve a problem that we all have to deal with.  Journalists and media owners figure this stuff out, not some invisible arbiter of the journalist success universe.  Our problem is we don’t think people will pay for what we do, and in some ways that is true, in part because organizations, desperate for content, put out a glut of writing that they cannot ask people to pay for, because there is a glut everywhere else.  Then, young people eagerly do the free or cheap stuff for the experience and resume points.  Even worse, websites make less money than print, and they involve more time.  It is certainly not an easy situation, and it is not served by easy, blame the old people-style assertions.