Is Journalism Turning Protestant?

Alexander Howard thinks the media is "going through its own Reformation"

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"Is Catholicism to the old media ... as Protestantism is to new media?" That's the question Alexander Howard asks in The Huffington Post, following up on a spat between media leaders Arianna Huffington and Rupert Murdoch over future of journalism. The problem of online content has fueled intense debate in recent weeks.

So is journalism "going through its own Reformation?" Howard admits he's "on dangerous ground" with this "tricky metaphor," but points out that readers' new, "more direct relationships with the sources," cutting out the "'high priests of journalism'--newspaper and magazine editors" in some ways mirrors the Protestants' bypassing of medieval clergy; during the Reformation, Lutherans and Calvinists established a new, more direct and personal connection with God.


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