Founded in 2006, PBS MediaShift has been a must-read for anyone toiling in the media trenches. I had a chance to catch up with its founder/executive editor Mark Glaser during his visit this week to New York City where he presided over the second annual Collab/Space New York workshop sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and hosted by the Ford Foundation.
Wearing his signature Dick Tracy-style hat, the long-time industry chronicler talked about MediaShift’s recent split from PBS, the state of journalism and the new economics of the media industry, including Michael Wolff’s recent assertion in USA Today lamenting digitally native media and the youthful, underpaid workers who produce it. Questions included:
- Are these the best of times or the worst of times for journalists?
- Can media consumers tell the difference between quality journalism and biased, mistake-prone reporting? Who can one trust?
- Is sponsored content/native advertising the holy grail that will sustain news organizations?
- Is The New York Times’s news hole inherently biased?
- Do Buzzfeed and Vox Media represent the future of news?
Here’s a 12-minute clip of my talk with Mark (whose voice, unfortunately, gave out at the end). I was hoping to ask him about Facebook and Twitter’s growing roles in the news ecosystem.