Opinion | To survive, journalism must become indispensable

One of the most important and misunderstood reasons for the crisis in journalism has little to do with revenue or technology. The problem is the journalism itself.

Much of what made newspapers, radio newscasts and TV news programs indispensable to people in the 20th century was not the journalism but what surrounded it. You couldn’t know what movie to see or TV show to watch without the listings. You couldn’t sell a bike or buy a house or rent an apartment without the classifieds. People got the last word on tomorrow’s weather from late local news.

Today, people find nearly all of that elsewhere.

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Tom Rosenstiel is the Eleanor Merrill Visiting Professor on the future of Journalism at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism.