High quality journalism disappearing?

Every day there is a new blog, a new opinion and a new set of rules for journalism, but are we losing the quality with demand for quantity?

Let's take the minimal word count for an article, a typical 175 words is your average nowadays, but some agencies and blogs are sticking to 125 words or less. Surely Google should be placing more emphasis on word counts now that the market has been flooded with people just looking to turn a dime on advertising.

There is money to be made with ads but there is also quality to be lost, and non-engagement. As readers will find out over the next few years, more and more blogs will scramble for higher readership over quality.

The faster stories are turned out, the quicker they can get indexed, but at a cost to your audience and the information they seek. You may have the right keywords in your article, but if it's just to sell out and get the people searching for those terms, its a lose-lose situation.

Sites like the BBC or CNN have professional journalists with years of experience in their fields. They spend their time, writing lengthy essays, analysis and perspectives on key areas of news.

For us in the entertainment industry, there tends to be less focus on in-depth coverage, but more on celebrity gossip, getting those short, quick bulletins out there with the latest trend, but without value.

What do you think? Is the quality of what you read online falling, or do you have a good choice of outlets that give you what you want?

What about the ipad and its equivalent devices which now put the news in your hands digitally? Will you want to read less because there is more choice?

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