Yesterday, Linda Greenhouse and Arianna Huffington appeared together at a master’s tea, hosted by Jonathan Edwards College here at Yale. JE’s master, Penelope Laurens, drew a contrast between the two, labeling them as representatives of old and new media. Greenhouse is a Pulitzer prize winning Supreme Court reporter who wrote for the New York Times until recently joining the staff at Yale Law School, and Huffington founded the news website the Huffington Post. The two women had much in common in terms of their assessment of the current situation and future hopes for the news industry. Huffington and Greenhouse suggest that all news outlets will have to develop and change over the next few years.

Here’s a brief breakdown of the contrast between old and new media. In the old media model, each outlet attempts to be independent; an old media outlet employs a cadre of staff reporters, who write stories which are published in print and online. The new media model is in its essence interdependent and interactive; Huffington Post, and similar news sites, employ a lean staff, which does some reporting, but is dependent on the aggregation of other sources in order to be a comprehensive source of news. The centrality of aggregation for news sites like Huffington Post brings up copyright issues. How far can fair use of other news entities’ reporting go?

When the floor was opened for questions, I asked about copyright concerns that may arise from the aggregation method used by the Huffington Post. Huffington suggests that “fair use is not enough” to fully account for this phenomenon. “In a way we are still working out the rules of the road,” she said. About 30% of the Huffington Post’s content is original. The rest is gathered from other sources, many of them old media. In a recent interview with Huffington, Time suggests that the Huffington Post’s rising popularity in comparison with the news sites it sources may lead to some legal battles in the future. “Someone is going to sue the Huffington Post,” says Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. “It’s not just about the volume of the content that it appropriates, it’s about the value.” Old media sources are facing deep financial problems, and some may take legal action to stop losing readership for stories they report. It is unclear what the obligations of an aggregator are to the sources it aggregates.

To decrease the Huffington Post’s dependence on aggregation, the website plans to establish a fund for freelance journalists. Freelance journalists would pitch the Huffington Post stories. Having selected a freelance writer to do a story, the Huffington Post would pay for costs related to covering the story and pay the writer for the article. Huffington sees this new reporting model as a response to the rise of citizen journalism in the digital age.

Citizen journalism is considered by some observers as the beginning of the democratization of journalism. In the past, ordinary people were relegated to being mere consumers of products, including the news. Now anyone can contribute to news and reporting and actually shape their societal context. The Huffington Post’s proposed fund would take advantage of this phenomenon. Huffington brought up the case of Mayhill Fowler, a middle-aged amateur reporter who broke the story on Barack Obama’s “bitter” and “clinging to guns” statements during the Democratic primary.

Greenhouse was sympathetic to the principles behind citizen journalism, but placed several pragmatic facts on the table for consideration. Huffington mentioned that Huffington Post reporters have a decent amount of freedom to cover what interests them most, their “passions.” However, Greenhouse pointed out that, for example, in the Metro Section of the New York Times, assigning articles guarantees that everything is covered and nothing is missed. A fixed staff also guarantees a consistent supply of news because the people writing it receive consistent payment and benefit packages. Furthermore, questions from several students reflected the concern that it is difficult to verify the truth and lack of bias in citizen journalism in the absence of confirmation by a trusted news industry authority.

However, it must be observed that using freelance journalists would cut costs, while making use of the valuable skills of citizen reporters. New media sources are not exempt from the fact of limited revenues available to news sources, as society comes to expect the daily news at their fingertips for free. Huffington sees news sources, in the long run, as being “a combination of for profit and not-for profit.” The Huffington Post itself is funded by a combination of ad revenues and venture funding. Some news sites, such as Respublica are entirely not-for-profit. Traditional media sources, which employ more people and have the additional overhead cost of printing a newspaper, suffer even tougher margins. Just today, New York Times slashed wages and laid off 100 employees.

There have been several structural proposals to “save” traditional news coverage. Senator Benjamin Calder of Maryland has recently proposed a bill that would permit news outlets to choose to incorporate as nonprofits. Bruce Ackermann and Ian Ayres have proposed a national endownment for news, which would pay news outlets by the numbers of clicks that they received on their websites daily.

Huffington admits that “we cannot predict” exactly what news outlets will be like several years down the line. However, “what’s certain” is that people are used to getting news for free online, and that models that attempt to make consumers directly pay for access will not succeed. Greenhouse also acknowledged the large staff-based, subscription based model is “economically unsustainable.” She, however, warned of the danger of losing in-depth news analysis in the online quest to get stories up fast. The new media’s practices, if it is not careful, could crowd out in-depth analysis. This is an outcome that both journalists hope to avoid. “I hope, as we move forward, that there will always be a place for the journalism that you did,” Huffington told Greenhouse.

It is worthy of note that the strongest contrast between the two journalists could be found not in their positions, but in their communication styles. JE Master Laurens gave Greenhouse and Huffington the floor for a few remarks at first, then opened to questions. Greenhouse offered an account of her career and opinion on the past and future of journalism in first five minutes, and expanded on the account in her responses to questions. Huffington, by contrast, spoke little about her career or ideological positions during her initial five minutes, using her time instead to ask Greenhouse several questions about an article Greenhouse recently authored. Later on, however, Huffington responded thoughtfully and at length to questions posed by the students at the event. We learned her positions and opinions during the interactive question and answer portion of the talk. Huffington seems to thrive in terms of both imparting and receiving information in the give and take of a conversation. Their approaches, both effective, were somehow paradigmatic of the media forms they represented.

These two women, with their contrasting yet complementary styles and backgrounds, allowed the audience to understand where the news industry has come from, and where it might be headed. It seems like the old media’s dedication to reporting and thorough analysis will join with the new media’s dedication to free distribution, real time interaction, and citizen journalism. This is the only way we can develop a ‘new’ new media that is creditable, democratic, and sustainable in the digital age.