Dusk or Dawn

Last night, I attended the East Bay Press Club's awards dinner, and the tenor of the evening was what had I expected it to be. More of a wake than a celebration. Several of the award winners had been recently laid-off or taken buyouts. Many of the conversations revolved around the grim future of journalism.

It'd been about five years since I last attended the dinner, and the turnout this time was noticeably smaller. There were many more categories, such as for best online news site, graphics and multimedia presentations, which meant pretty much everyone there won something. That also provides me with a nice segue to the title of this blog entry.

While the signs all around us tell us this is the end of an era, the hope I heard from several journalists last night was that it might also be the start of something. What that might be, of course, no one has any idea. Whether that new something would provide a decent living for journalists or support in-depth reporting and writing, also no clue. No one was even sure if there'd be a next something beyond what exists today. And what exists now means a lot more unemployed journalists.

But there was still hope. One former colleague was diving into multi-media and excited to break out of the newspaper mold. There's also this great article in San Francisco magazine this month about the green shoots sprouting around the region. Hyper-local journalism. Nonprofit outfits.

Then again, I've also heard several reporters talking about getting out of the biz for good, which would be totally understandable. It's hard to come up with a 5-year plan much less a 6-month plan these days.

So are we looking at a dusk or a dawn? No answers last night, only questions and lots of beer. But hope hasn't died yet.