It's a great time to be a journalist, says editor

It is a “golden age” for serious newspapers, said John Witherow (photo), and it is wrong to argue that such technology giants as Google and Facebook have “sucked the lifeblood” out of high-quality journalism.

“Today we are told it’s the tech giants who are killing us. Readers want everything for free, we must do click-bait, it’s a race to the bottom. Except that’s not true,” he said. “Good journalism does not need saving. It’s thriving. This is a golden age for serious journalism. It’s expanding into audio and visual and reaching new audiences.”

Witherow was speaking at Web Summit, Europe’s largest technology conference, in Lisbon on Tuesday. He added: “When young people ask me if they should go into journalism nowadays, I say, by all means, now is a great time.”

Witherow joined Reuters as a graduate trainee journalist in 1977 and worked in Madrid and London before joining The Times in 1980 as a reporter. ■