Week 2: differentiated contents on niche market

Patterson and Picard both showed the miserable status quo of Journalism, but they reasoned causes of such crisis of Journalism differently. Patterson argued that filtering raw information by journalists did not work well, in terms of fabricating fake information. Those lead to the corruption of information, threatening the credibility of Journalism in a long run. Patterson argued that such information corruption mostly originated from journalists. 

However, Picard implicitly advocated journalists, and emphasized that the demise of traditional Journalism is unavoidable due to the development of communication technology. Communication technology is taking over the role of journalists, by lowering the entrance barrier of creating information. On rapid changing communication technology, various peoples who have different preferences are existing. No need to say, service providers should consider the individual preferences together, not producing unified products at all. Picard gave some examples of providing unique news contents. Providing a differentiated service is almost mandatory for all service providers. 

As Patterson suggested, knowledge-based Journalism, the new form of a differentiated service in Journalism, can be an alternative to overcome the crisis of Journalism. This reminded me to introduce 'Texas Tribune' Data Journalism (http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/), which contains various sources to let readers know the exact information about Education and Congress systems. Texas Tribune Data is a knowledge-based, differentiated news service, compared to other news providers, focusing on niche audiences. 

Considering traditional demand and supply curves, the supply of news outlets is clearly being increased, while demands by consumers became diversified. Also, even the supply (quantity) has been increased, the quality of such increased news contents might not be guaranteed, as Patterson mentioned (the corruption of information). Mere simplified form of supply and demand curve could not explain the status quo. Unique platforms and services by news providers towards consumers will draw clearer blueprint of future Journalism.