Vanishing Professions and the Risk of Becoming Obsolete
Albert BarraAugust 13, 2018 · 4 min read
Yesterday I was having lunch with some friends; nothing had been planned, it was simply lunchtime and we decided to eat out together. In fact, having lunch is something people tend to do almost every day, isn’t it?
One of them has decided to study Journalism, as he is passionate about the world of communications, and at one point in the conversation he asked for my opinion on that decision. Not as an expert, because I am not one, but as a friend I told him something that surprised him. I simply told him that journalism is a profession on the path to extinction, like lathe operators, town criers, blacksmiths, chimney sweeps, lithographers and coopers—at least as we know it today.
It is not my intention to provoke controversy with journalists, far from it, as I have the utmost respect for them. Nevertheless, it is true that news media, which are the ones that employ journalists, as we know them today, must reinvent themselves in order to survive. Many journalists are aware of this.
News media obviously provide information, and their business models are based on the sale of information (online or in print), as well as advertising.
The new generations—the digital natives—are not receptive to advertising; rather, they reject it, because they prefer to form their own opinions through their own circles about the products they want or wish to consume. By nature, they do not believe what manufacturers say, because they know that manufacturers simply want to sell the product, sometimes without telling the whole truth about it—or, at the very least, if they do, they know it is done with a vested interest.
On the other hand, for them, information has become something that belongs to them by right, a right for which the coming generations—those born after 1980, who are just around the corner—are not willing to pay. In fact, they know that, through the fully connected world in which they live, among networks of friends, collaborators and more, information flows freely and without charge.
I am not making an argument for the Internet or citizen journalism; I am simply reflecting what I believe to be a social reality that affects not only journalism and the media, but also marketing and the way we convey our messages with the intention of capturing the attention of those who will very soon be our customers, if they are not already.
In reality, the social web is a commercial brand. I will never tire of repeating this, something for which many are fighting (are we fighting?) to appropriate the term for commercial purposes. Some even shave years off their age to call themselves Digital Natives. It is not a trend or a new way of doing things; it is a reality, a lifestyle that we cannot ignore and that we must, at the very least, keep in mind. Just because we may be unfamiliar with it does not mean society is too.
People my friend’s age, or my children’s, will be tomorrow’s leaders—people who will stay connected through networks, indeed they already are—for whom advertising will not exist because they will have no eyes for it; people who have another concept of the word friendship and will interact with people thousands of kilometres away without ever meeting them in person; people who prefer to write rather than speak, or send a photograph rather than write.
It is worth considering this, and thinking that what we are doing today will most likely be of absolutely no use to us tomorrow. What is more, it is probably no longer as effective today as it was yesterday.
From here, let each person draw their own conclusions, perhaps by looking at their children. Let us hope hoteliers do not end up joining the ranks of town criers, blacksmiths, chimney sweeps, lithographers and coopers because of a lack of customers demanding their services.This article ends here. The archive does not.
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