USC’s Online Journalism Review has an interview with NY Times technology reporter John Markoff, written by Adam Clayton Powell. Markoff has been covering technology since the year after two guys named Steve came up with a computer named Apple, and he gives an interesting but somewhat bleak picture of the future:
I certainly can see that scenario, where all these new technologies may only be good enough to destroy all the old standards but not create something better to replace them with. I think that’s certainly one scenario. The other possibility right now — it sometimes seems we have a world full of bloggers and that blogging is the future of journalism, or at least that’s what the bloggers argue, and to my mind, it’s not clear yet whether blogging is anything more than CB radio.
And, you know, give it five or 10 years and see if any institutions emerge out of it. It’s possible that in the end there may be some small subset of people who find a livelihood out of it and that the rest of the people will find that, you know, keeping their diaries online is not the most useful thing to with their time.
When I tell that to people … they get very angry with me. … I also like to tell them, when they (ask) when I’m going to start a blog, and then, ‘Oh, I already have a blog, it’s www.nytimes.com, don’t you read it?’
Not sure what he means, not the most useful thing to do with my time … [sniff]. Markoff may be a bit pessimistic, but his vision of the possibilities is intriguing and certainly sounds believable. (via Romanesko)