Why is it that for the vast majority of people in this society the word “success” is inextricably linked with the word “wealth”? Why is it that any modern definition of success is based on personal earnings and value of possessions?

For most recent college graduates, of which I am one, the pressure to go out into the world and become a “success” is overbearing.

Grinning portraits beam from alumni walls – the implication being if you are not here in five or ten years time, you haven’t made it.

But what does this abstract concept actually equate to in real terms?

Well to this society success is the car you drive. Success is the area you live in. Success is your professional title.

Success, we are led to believe, is a monetary concept.

And this perverse mindset is perpetuated by the young, desperate not to fail, desperate to become “a success” whatever the definition.

Success is not based on the quality or honesty of your work, but rather the return you get for it. Former AIB chairman Eugene Sheehy earned (including bonuses and pension contributions) €892,000 in 2009 – the same year the bank made a loss of €2.65 billion.

Goldman Sachs made billions selling extremely risky products to customers, which the company then bet on to fall in value. When interviewed by the US congress, CEO Lloyd Blankfein said that in his opinion Goldman Sachs had no obligation to inform customers that the company was benefitting from products they were selling failing. Despite the destruction and devastation this policy would cause, in 2007 Mr. Blankfein went home with $100 million.

Success is not about the contribution you make to the welfare of your society, it is about the amount you personally amass. Just look at the example given by those in power -  social welfare rates are cut, social programmes are axed for those most in need, while the “wealth creators” are bailed out to the tune of billions.

We live in a society where “successful” politicians are more concerned with perpetuating lies to protect their own reputation than doing what is right. Because politicians know that in our society it is more in beneficial to appear honest rather than to be honest. The illusion of respectability is more important than the practical application of ethics.

As soon as we leave school and college we are conditioned to see each other as economic competitors in a cut-throat labour market. There is no room for friendship or decency when it comes to securing a job. Earning vast amounts of money in an office is the most important thing in the world, we are told.

And this perverse culture leaves us all perpetually anxious. We are scared we won’t be able to afford that six bedroom house for our family of four. Scared we won’t be able to drive that flashy Range Rover on smooth paved roads. Afraid we won’t be able to send our children to the most prestigious private school, with the best facilities. Because the other option is to be termed a “failure”.

“Failure” too is a word that has come to be viewed in purely economic terms. Failure is having an education and not earning more than your parents. Failure is not earning more than the graduate next to you. Failure is being seen by your friends and families as a lesser economic being.

When one categorises the world between success and failure in monetary terms, the poor aren’t to be helped – they are to be mocked. They are to be scorned. They are to have their entitlements cut, their amenities dismantled, their homes repossessed and they are to be told “Why don’t you try harder? Why don’t you make something of yourself?”

When this is our definition of success, is it any wonder we are in the economic turmoil we are in? When success and greed are interchangeable? The bankers, the property developers, the speculators – they operated perniciously with the blessings of a free market society. They were patted on the back (literally in some cases by former financial regulator Patrick Neary) by a society that told them to strive for profit at all costs.

If we are to ensure that the current crisis we find ourselves in does not repeat itself we need more than increased regulation, more than a contingency plan, more than international economic agreements. We need to change our very definition of success.

Keira also writes that some students are positive about the line of work they have chosen, while others are negative, one student saying “I think journalists are completely undervalued and work very hard for very little pay”. Keira seems to believe that journalism will always exist despite the problems it is currently facing, the form will simply change.

I would agree and would, unfortunately, say that the market will probably self regulate – meaning a lot of journalists will find that they aren’t able to make a living in such a crowded market place and will leave to do something else to pay the bills. As a journalism student it’s not a nice prospect, but then that’s life. I guess capitalism doesn’t value the role of the journalist as highly as I do.

Niamh Mongey’s blog highlights an alarming trend by news media – the practice of gathering information on individuals from social networking sites. Niamh gives the example of the Irish Times gathering information on Michael Dwyer, the Irishman murdered in Bolivia, from his facebook account. Niamh sees this as a complete loss of privacy in the internet age and laments the fact that anyone can log on, find out information about a person’s life and then print it in national (and now with online journalism international) media.

A problem I have with this journalistic fact-finding technique is that most people do not tell the truth on their facebook, bebo and myspace accounts. “Professional legend” is not really an occupation, people who are “122” years old generally don’t use the internet and it is probably illegal for people under the age of 16 to be married – yet all of these things are written by people about themselves. Hopefully journalists will return to a more organic form of finding out the facts, one with less chance of being entirely wrong.

It seems that old age hacks bemoan the very existence of journalism courses, citing the “they didn’t need that in my day” argument as they look at the new breed of third-level educated journos. They say the journalism courses are pointless and futile and laud the classical method of apprenticeship. Others, as Sinead O’Brien writes, say that technological advances will leave the academics stumped – the media industry is moving too fast for a degree course to keep up with. Why it is inconceivable to those critics of journalism degrees that if the industry changes quickly the courses will just change quickly too is beyond me. Also, certain aspects of journalism remain constant despite technology.

I would chalk a lot of this ill will towards journalism courses up to nothing more than a mixture of condescension and perhaps even fear by those in power.

The country has also set up a blacklist of domestic journalists who break government reporting rules.

According to CBS News:

Researchers at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society said Tuesday that other sites blocked included those on health, education, news, entertainment, religion and pornography… The top 10 Google results using the key words “Tibet,” “Taiwan China” and “equality” were all blocked, as were eight of the top 10 results using “democracy China” and “dissident China.”

In Saudi Arabia bloggers have been targeted for criticising the government. In early 2008 Fouad al-Farhan was arrested by the Saudi Interior Minister following an investigation into his blog, one of the most read in the country. Mr. al-Fahran is quoted in the New York Times as saying:

“The issue that caused all of this is because I wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia, and they think I’m running an online campaign promoting their issue”

However it is not only the east that engages in censorship. The Australian government passed proposals in 2008 to broadly censor the internet, preventing access to what they have described as “pornography and inappropriate material”.

This law may prevent certain bloggers and journalists writing anything that the government deems “inappropriate”.

As Duncan reily of Tech Crunch writes:

Worst still, bloggers or those (such as forum owners) who allow users to comment or post could find themselves blocked under this proposal should someone say or post the wrong thing. If there is one certainty in any country that implements broadscale censorship, once they start blocking content it doesn’t stop…

The internet may be said to still be in its infancy – it seems likely that in the future those in power will increasingly try to censor the medium. The ramifications of this will be felt most strongly by journalists and bloggers, two groups who the onus is on to fight back against censorship and bring the truth to the public despite all else.

This demand for a constant stream of diverse media has resulted in journalists having to become adept with different forms of technology, a requirement which some would argue has had a direct impact on the quality and depth of their reporting. Others say the increase in technology has allowed for a greater level of explanation of events.

Even newspaper websites go far far beyond print now, offering a huge array of mediums, blurring the line between television, print and radio. For examples of new multimedia technology being used in clever and innovative ways to relay the news check out the Guardian’s interactive graphic and time line of the last moments of Ian Tomlinson, the New York Times’ video on  Afghanistan and the Wall Street Journal’s interactive map of Spain.

While some see this as a way to provoke healthy debate on important issues, as well as a means to gauge public reaction, others see this as free speech run amok. One needs no degree of knowledge on a topic to post a comment and many websites are unregulated, meaning bad language and adult themes are rife. People are free to post libelous defamation without a shred of evidence, and facts can be recast by the user in a biased light.

Still, if an article provokes outrage and disgust in you it’s nice to be able to scroll down and see that a whole host of other people feel the same, and perhaps even learn why some people don’t.

However there are serious drawbacks to this form of unaccredited journalism. There is no one to ensure that citizen journalist stories are veracious, no one to check facts. Citizen journalists can slander and demean without consequence. On a more basic level, without training citizen journalism may be technically poorer and fact finding techniques may be sub par.

It is fair to say that the popularity of blogging and citizen journalism may very well change journalism as we know it.

In my opinion however there will always be a need for journalistic institutions that the people can rely on to get factually correct news. Media outlets with the resources to gather this news are a necessity. In this regard citizen journalism and major media outlets should not be in competition, but rather can live in harmony.

For an insight into citizen journalism, see the video below:

One of the main reasons for the fall in profit is the shift in advertising from print to online. As Boston Globe journalist Kevin Cullen said in an interview on RTE Radio:

The reality is the business model is broken. The business model was based largely on advertising, that advertising has shifted to the web. People that used to pay newspapers huge sums of money to advertise are now putting a lot of that advertising on the internet for free. The reality is that was the money that funded journalism. The… contradiction in all of this is that the Boston Globe has never had more readers. We still sell about 3 hundred and 20,000 or 30,00 papers a day in hard copy, but there’s something like 700,000 unique visitors to our website… the problem is we make no money from that.

(Listen to the entire interview with Kevin Cullen here: Problems confronting US newspaper business)

Many in the American print industry believe that this is a sign that no newspaper is safe from the financial difficulties posed by the fall in advertising revenue.

At home however the future looks somewhat brighter for the three major broadsheet newspapers (the Irish Independent, the Irish Times, the Irish Examiner). Although these papers do face difficulties, it is not yet up to the level of that of their US counterparts. DCU media professor Colum Kenny believes that this is due to the Irish public choosing print over online news:

One of the reasons it’s somewhat different [in Ireland] is, perhaps, in the United States people are more ready to rely on the internet as a source of information. I’m not sure we’ve quite reached that stage where there’s the same level of reliance and so we haven’t yet seen the decline in newspaper readership they have…

He goes on to say that by putting all content onto the internet for free Irish newspapers have however “shot themselves in the foot”.

Whether this is an injury that Irish newspapers can recover from, or whether it will prove to be fatal, remains to be seen.

(Listen to the interview with Colum Kenny here: Colum Kenny on Irish newspapers)

But now it seems, online advertising revenues are starting to fall. Statistics suggest that this is only the start and in 2010 and beyond things will dry up even more.

According to the Business Insider:

For a year, we’ve listened to analysts passionately explain how online ad spending will power through any broader economic and advertising weakness. Eyeballs are moving online, this story went (goes), ad dollars will follow. Online advertising is accountable. Online advertising is the future. Blah, blah, blah.

It’s time we woke up and faced reality. Online display-ad spending will fall in 2009, probably sharply. It will probably fall again in 2010. Hundreds of startups counting on advertising as a business model will be flattened.

The New York Times has already reported a 3.5% loss in online advertising revenue and is generally seen as being indicative of the industry.

It may seem that websites are saturated with clickable advertisements, but in actual fact the number of advertisements per average website now shows signs of decline. As the Washington Post states, one of the problems may be that “The more ads that get thrown at us, the more we learn to ignore them.” – a sentiment that may cause advertisers to lose faith in the power of the internet to push products.

As Yahoo and other internet based companies start to announce layoffs, one wonders how long it will be until the news media is forced to do the same. Journalists specialising in online reporting may soon feel the effects of this virtual advertising fallout.