The most pertinent session for me was aptly titled "How the Changing Nature of Information Affects Information Providers." It was proposed by a local magazine writer who recently lost a column to content produced via "the wires."
Simply put, the Reporter Diaspora has been exacerbated by three main trends:
- The growing supply of citizen journalism and user-generated content is effectively replacing traditional journalistic content.
- Newpaper business models based on print advertising slowly lose relevancy as fewer people read print.
- Newspapers must cost cut and writers are fired.
More recent evidence of the Diaspora:
SFChronicle lets Real Estate Columnist go
Adding up the Newspaper Cutbacks
LA Times drops Print Real Estate Section