WHAT’S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Please play along with me and BusinessWeek.

A few weeks ago, Bruce Nussbaum gave a provocative speech (Are Designers The Enemy Of Design?) at Parson’s about the backlash against design.

Read it and swap design and designers for journalism and journalists and the message is the same.

Let me just play the game with some paragraphs and you can do the rest.

Are Journalists The Enemy of Journalism?

In the name of provocation, let me start by saying that Journalists SUCK.

I’m sorry.

It’s true.

Journalists SUCK.

There’s a big backlash against Journalism going on today and it’s because Journalists suck.

So let me tell you why.

Journalists suck because they are arrogant…

Journalists are saying that Journalism is everywhere, done by everyone.

So Journalism is debased, eroded, insulted.

The subtext, of course, is that Real journalism can only be done by great star journalists.

This is simply not true.

Journalism Democracy is the wave of the future.

Exceptional Journalism may only be done by great star Journalists.

But the Journalism of our music experiences, the Journalism of our MySpace pages, the Journalism of our blogs…the Journalism of our online community chats, the Journalism of our Class of ’95 brochures, the Journalism of our screens…

This is a huge challenge.

Let’s talk about the arrogance of architects.

When I began covering architecture a decade ago for Business Week, we launched an annual contest with Architectural Record.

When we were about to publish pictures of the first winners, I looked at all the fancy architecture magazines.

None had any pictures of people inside buildings.

The buildings were all devoid of people.

And most still are.

We put people inside the spaces they inhabit.

We inserted people into the conversation of their lives…

Think iPod and iTunes.

Think TiVo.

Starbucks.

Fortunately, Journalism has tremendous tools.

In fact, Journalism has evolved from a simple practice to a powerful methodology of Journalism Thinking that, I believe, can transform society.

By that I mean Journalism, with a capital J…

Journalism can become powerful enough to be an approach to life, a philosophy of life.

But it can do so only when Journalism by Ego ends and Journalism by Conversation begins.

More on that later.

Back to the backlash against Journalism.

Journalists suck because they are also IGNORANT, especially about sustainability.

The rap against Journalists is that they Journalism CRAP that hurts the planet…

So… you can replace the rest.

The speech has been so controversial that 50 members of the Global Design Community responded to Nussbaum and, again, you can replace the same words and you will see that their responses fit very well with our Journalism and Journalists.

I am sure that people like Jeff Jarvis can do this very well.

About the Daniel Merle picture: A person who was posing as a press photographer pulls out a gun and runs away from angry journalists after they discovered he was not a colleague, outside the base where rebel soldiers were holed up April 12, 1988. The person was later beaten up by the crowd and then arrested by the police.

UPDATE: See this PRINT magazine essay that could be subjected to the same game.

Virginia Postrel ends saying:

“Little of today’s DIY design is a substitute for the real challenges of professional practice.

It’s either routine or purely personal—the equivalent of home-style cooking, not a four-star restaurant meal.

We wouldn’t eat better, or appreciate fine cuisine more, if only certified chefs could buy fresh ingredients or use pots and pans.

Access to typefaces doesn’t define good graphic design any more than access to a word processor and a dictionary guarantees good writing.

The more amateurs do things themselves, the more they develop a refined taste for good professional work—whether in the kitchen or at the design station.”

Virginia Postrel is the author of The Substance of Style and The Future and Its Enemies. She is a contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly, where she writes about culture and commerce. She is online at dynamist.com.