How journalism is dying and why it might be your fault

Money can’t buy you happiness, but as a journalist it certainly buys you job security.

Recently, Fairfax Media announced it would cut $30 million from its editorial budget, and has promised to let go of a quarter of its newsroom at both the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age.

This follows the $15 million cuts last year where 120 Fairfax staff lost their jobs.

As the news spread, I watched the reception of the general public, my newsfeed filling with angry emojis and friends sharing articles to their Facebook timeline, completely outraged at the prospect of firing more Fairfax journalists.

This reaction is great, it shows that people care about journalism and value journalists as an integral part of healthy, functioning democracy.

But here’s the catch: almost all of the friends who shared these posts do not pay for their journalism, getting most of their news from social media.

And to those people: your opinion is about as redundant as the poor journalists who are about to lose their jobs.

Journalism is suffering because people refuse to pay for it. You cannot demand a service and simultaneously refuse to pay for it.

“But the quality of journalism has gone down! I don’t want to pay for poor quality journalism!” I hear you cry.

Well my friends, neither do I. But it’s cyclical. You refuse to pay, the quality deteriorates and as a result, fewer and fewer people subscribe.

I’ll admit in my pre-Netflix days I may or may not have streamed a movie or two online, but I am since reformed! The sheer time and money and manpower it takes to create a movie, TV show, play, or novel is an indication that we should be forking out to enjoy this luxury.

That rule should extend to journalism. In the same way an artist, producer or author deserves compensation for their work, so to do journalists.

Without journalists some of the greatest atrocities would never have been uncovered; from the Don Dale Detention Centre, to The Panama Papers and the 2013 reporting of the NSA surveillance.

We need journalists, and by that I mean we need to pay for our journalism. When something is perceived as ‘free’ it is deeply undervalued.

Do us all a favour, and support our journalists, financially. Your clicktivism is not enough.