DISQUS

MikeRT · 11 months ago

The mainstream media has for too long acted like a combination of a propaganda ministry for the political left and entertainment outlet. The days of hard-hitting investigative journalism are largely over, it would seem. It still appears in niche outlets, but in general the mainstream media is either biased to the point of ruining such reporting, or doesn't dig deep enough.

The media has also refused to take advantage of modern web technologies. I can't even begin to count the number of times that I've found a reference to an article that was pulled a few months after being posted to a newspaper website. I refuse to believe that their costs are so high that they cannot leave up all of their content, indexed on Google and other search engines. It makes no business sense, since they cannot be used as a reliable source of information.

Adam Thierer · 11 months ago

Over at the American Journalism Review site, The Washington Post's Paul Farhi has a sharp essay that is directly relevant to this discussion:

For decades, newspapers enjoyed what economists call a "scarcity" advantage. In most cities, there was only one outfit that could profitably collect, print and distribute the day's news, and it could raise prices even as it delivered fewer readers each year. Indeed, monopoly daily newspapers enjoyed enormous profit margins – sometimes as much as 25 percent or more – until very recently. But the scarcity advantage has faded; the Internet has essentially handed a free printing press and a distribution network to anyone with a computer.

The real revelation of the Internet is not what it has done to newspaper readership -- it has in fact expanded it -- but how it has sapped newspapers' economic lifeblood. The most serious erosion has occurred in classified advertising, which once made up more than 40 percent of a newspaper's revenues and more than half its profits. Classified advertisers didn't desert newspapers because they disliked our political coverage or our sports sections, but because they had alternatives. Craigslist and eBay and dozens of other low-cost and no-cost classified sites began gobbling newspapers' market share a few years ago. What they didn't wipe out, the tanking economy did. During the first half of 2008, print classified advertising nosedived more than 25 percent, as withering job, real-estate and auto listings erased $1.8 billion in revenue from newspaper companies' books. Newspapers have been uniquely hurt -- television never had classifieds to lose.

Make sure to read the whole thing.

WSA · 11 months ago

An interesting model for the future of news reporting might well deviate entirely from the traditional "newspaper" model and move into a model more closely resembling a "law firm." Take the Politico, for example. Reporters who respect each other, who readers respect, and who represent various specialties can become partners in a "news reporting firm," maintaining their standards on a self-policing, and reputational basis. Seriously, might this not be a better way of presenting news than an agenda-setting editor-in-chief?

Danny L. McDaniel · 11 months ago

It is no where as bad as you describe. It is similiar to Ckicken-Little crying the sky is falling. The electronic gadgetry is here to stay but what are all the 20 somethings going to do when they get to be 40 somethings and all those little screens are hard to read? Their only recourse will be eye glasses and newspapers. Newspapers will be around the next one hundred years, right along with the liquid cooled, internal-combustion, piston engine.

Anyway, with the economy in the sad shape that it is in newspapers maybe the only sourse of information the average citizen can afford.

Danny L. McDaniel
Lafayette, Indiana

Police Sunglasses · 5 months ago

When I was a child I like to be a professional journalist but now I forget being a professional journalist because it's a little scarry