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Newspapers Are Dying, Blog At 11
Posted by
kdawson
on Sunday March 30, @02:36PM
from the news-that-fits dept.
from the news-that-fits dept.
The New Yorker is running a long and thoughtful piece by Eric Alterman on the death and life of the American newspaper. It's not news that newspapers are dying, but the acceleration of the process in the last few years is startling: "Independent, publicly traded American newspapers have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three years... The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death, that the newspaper companies' solution to their problem was to make 'our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.'" The article goes on to profile The Huffington Post as exemplar of what is replacing paper and ink. "The Huffington Post's editorial processes are based on what Peretti has named the 'mullet strategy.' ('Business up front, party in the back' is how his trend-spotting site BuzzFeed glosses it.) 'User-generated content is all the rage, but most of it totally sucks,' Peretti says. The mullet strategy invites users to 'argue and vent on the secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp.
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Plus Ads (Score:5, Interesting)
So, to make up for their lack of "real" content, the companies are sticking ads in there. Sad really.........I remember in the 80s that the newspaper had extremely few ads.......
On News (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now the only papers I read in the morning are the Financial Times (which does not count as an American Paper for reports like this, right?) And once a week I get the Sunday Times from a newspaper importer. While I feel the Times has fallen harder then all the others, it still has my crossword, and gives me the Murdoch point of view for the world.
I mainly get my news from reading the BBC website daily, and 20 minutes on Slashdot.
Re:On News (Score:4, Informative)
CNN.com:
Iraq PM welcomes al-Sadr call; curfews ending
- News, borderline propaganda piece
Home inspection nightmares
- Not news. Fluff piece, mild fear-mongering
March Madness
- Not news. Fluff, Entertainment
Celebrity makeup bag
- Not news. Fluff, Entertainment
FOXNews.com:
Should She Stay or Go? (about Hillary Clinton)
- Not news. Right-wing propaganda piece
'Clear and Present Danger'
- Not news. Right-wing propaganda piece
'Muslims Have Overtaken Us'
- Not news. Right-wing propaganda piece
MSNBC.com:
Proposal would give Fed wide new powers
- Not news. Fear mongering (read it)
Another jobs loss may sink stocks again
- Not news. Editorial speculation.
How Clinton, McCain and Obama would tackle the U.S. economy
- Not news. Political propaganda.
Memphis advances to Final Four
- Not news. Fluff, Entertainment.
USAToday.com:
Al-Sadr pulls militia, offers Iraq deal
- News, borderline propaganda
CIA chief: Al-Qaeda has safe haven
- Not news. Propaganda, fear-mongering
'Killing Fields' survivor passes
- News.
Doubts raised about Vytorin, Zetia
- Not news. Speculative, fear-mongering
caveat (Score:5, Insightful)
television was supposed to kill both radio and the movies. well, we don't see movie news reels anymore, and we don't see radio serials either, but you can't watch tv while driving to work, and no one wants to see indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull in your parent's basement by yourself on a 19 inch monitor
what new media does do is dramatically alter the audience and purpose of old media. so newspapers will come to see the point where their income from online content will eclipse their income from print content. so then what is the purpose of newspapers without the actual newspaper?
one answer: trust
like the story summary suggests, user generated content sucks. in terms of quality and in terms of partisanship. so newspaper sites will still be the place people go for breaking news and truthful reporting. you can't beat a salaried professional news gathering organzation in terms of trust. nothing the internet can spew forth threatens that
the internet has merely created lots of partisan fiefdoms with an agenda and user venting. much of it rambling, illiterate, unhinged, and mostly useless. usless to readers, not those who vent: that's the psychological value of catharsis. that is, user generated content is usually more useful for whomever is commenting than anyone who reads the comment. this form of online content obviously isn't a threat to anything newspaper's do, merely a weird ecological tweak to how they fit into the media universe. the internet makes newspapers part of a loud room of noisy feedback, rather than the lonely ivory towers they used to be
and so the newspaper will morph into a less prestigious role in society, but it will never die, and will still be vital in a modified way
Re:caveat (Score:5, Interesting)
So have newspapers. I was reading an editorial in the WSJ about the how successful "the surge" allegedly is, and found it to stretch things and manipulate quotes. I decided to abandon it out of frustration. While moving my eyes away, I happened to glance at the author: "Karl Rove". R. Murdoch has Foxitized it, as feared.
you have a common misperception (Score:5, Insightful)
once upon a time, all media was unbiased and neutral. then fox news came along and made it into propaganda. really? go into wikipedia and type "yellow journalism". read up on the uss maine and why the usa went to war with spain in 1898. you think the manipulating of facts to start a war is a new invention? please! story as old as time. every regime that has ever existed has engaged in this. go further back in history, all the way to the printing press, and earlier: there never has been, and never will be, such a thing as fair and balanced media (pun intended). ever. in any country. in any era. that ever was or ever will be
why?
that gets us to misperception #2:
that a neutral unbiased media is even possible. it is impossible. the media is made by human beings. all human beings are biased in one way or another. everyone has an agenda. those who claim they are not biased, or actually fervently believe they are not biased, are in fact probably the most biased of all: blind to one's own nature
so what does one do in a world with bias everywhere? answer: they develop a good bullshit detector
and making peace with this fact of biased media is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. do you honestly believe it is a better world where everyone just took something written by a media mouthpiece as solid gold truth, and never questioned it? isn't it better to have a well-read populace who disbelieves and doubts everything? and how do you train such a populace? you throw bias at them from every monitor and printed word, and you train their mind like a muscle to develop an extremely strong and sophisticated bullshit detector
those who argue for censorship do so in the name of preventing the spreading of lies, from the right or the left. but when they do this, they actually show little faith in the general populace. they don't save the populace from themselves this way, they merely breed zombies and sheep. in the name of preventing lies, they create the environment for more lies. this is the true value of free speech: a darwinian competition of ideas. to let out all of it, all the bullshit, let it all be spoken. even the biggest lies and the most vile words. in this way, the general populace can decide for themselves, and you get a general populace that values critical thought. you never get critical thought in a society where unbiased media existed. in fact there is societies today where "unbiased" media exists: iran, china, russia, etc.: the places where freedoms are the least. and the people there, unfortunately, have very weakly developed bullshit detectors, and are therefore prone to the kind of pies manipulation and propaganda that makes your concerns over fox news look quaint. just look at china's one sided coverage of tibet: all they show is ethnic colonial han getting attacked. as if that is all that is going on and the tibetans aren't being attacked! propaganda. half-truth. beijing understands the idea very well
a world of biased media everywhere is actually SUPERIOR: it trains the minds of the general public to have a healthy bullshit meter. so while some people lament things like fox news, i, as a liberal in the deepest sense of the word liberal, am thankful for fox news. because fox news serves as a cautionary tale, an innoculation device. it weans people off propaganda, by being propaganda. fox news is a training device fro stronger minds to overcome. and for all those who believe fox news 100% and look no further for the "truth": do you honestly believe that in a world of "unbiased" media they would be flower children? no. a right winger is not made. it's like being gay. their minds are just made that way
your comment asumes something (Score:3, Insightful)
random demagogues exist in every society, because they satisfy a portion of the audience. but they don't appeal to all of the audience, NOR can the audien
NY Times was Foxitized well before Fox (Score:4, Interesting)
So have newspapers. I was reading an editorial in the WSJ about the how successful "the surge" allegedly is, and found it to stretch things and manipulate quotes. I decided to abandon it out of frustration. While moving my eyes away, I happened to glance at the author: "Karl Rove". R. Murdoch has Foxitized it, as feared.
The New York Times, LA Times, and many other newspapers were "Foxitized" well before Fox. Most of Fox News's popularity comes from people who were sick of the rest of media being so ridiculously biased in one direction.
You know it is bad when Hillary Clinton is complaining about the general bias in media towards candidates. And somehow I don't think she is apart of the "Right Wing Attack Machine". Of course, you only complain when you are not benefiting from the bias...
You also have to consider the effects of the out and out lies---Stephen Glass, the doctored photos from Adnan Hajj, the recent admission the LA times made that they were duped on FBI records on the death of rap murders, etc. The argument against blogs is that they are amateurs who cannot be believed, yet they seem to be the ones doing the best fact checking against the so-called professionals!
We are lacking a maturity in our analysis abilities that allows us to identify bias both FOR and AGAINST our positions. People who lack this maturity think that everything that agrees with their point of view is somehow "in the middle" and everything else is "to the left and right". This two dimensional egotistical thinking is causing deep divisions in our country that really scare me. It's like this is some sort of sporting competition with teams and a winner and a loser. You are not allowed to have any beliefs of the "other side", not allowed to compromise or cooperate for solutions. Not allowed to understand that you have a point of view, and it may be reflected in a newspaper or TV programs, but it is not the only point of view and it is equally valuable to listen to both sides. Or to have a newspaper or news show report with a neutral point of view, to use a wikipedia term. But the media today wants to push an agenda and "tell a story" (aka "Narrative") rather than report facts. So people vote with their dollars and abandon those newspapers, because they aren't providing them with news!
Brian EllenbergerTrust? (Score:3, Insightful)
There aren't as many total lunatics in newsrooms, maybe, but repo
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The people working for the newspapers aren't all that different from the people writing blogs.
I don't think most journalists like to admit this, but I think you're actually right.
The BIG difference between the newspaper writers and the bloggers is funding
Re:Trust? (Score:5, Interesting)
Counting the Iraqi bloggers, military bloggers, and contractors?
How many have the resources, capital, lawyers, and clout to investigate Watergate, or The Pentagon Papers?
How many newspapers have done that kind of investigative reporting in the past 20 years? If they had been doing it a few years ago, we might not be in Iraq in the first place.
I don't recall hearing about any bloggers able to get into the white house press room (but hey, traditional journalists haven't exactly been all that great when they ARE there).
Not yet, no, but that's not because they don't have the resources. If it was just money someone would have bought their way in by now. It's because they're not seen as reporters, kind of a catch-22 situation.
My point is that the bloggers aren't going to ever replace professional journalists.
I don't know if they will be able to or not. The more interesting question is, will they have to do it anyway?
Re:we have the same beliefs, but different conclus (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether they are honest or not (and you know, I hope, they aren't always honest) doesn't change the fact that the result is an illusion. I've blogged about that before... the
I stopped reading at (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ever have seen the documentary Spin or just really paid attention you know the mainstream media including the newspaper is as far away as you can get from "objective." It annoys me that they and the nightly news toot their own horn with that BS every chance they get -- and unfortunately they are fooling a few others.
If they want to pretend that they don't shape the news, fine, but I think that's a big reason why people are leaving in droves to get better news online.
There's no news in there (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course nobody is reading newspapers any more. There's so little news in them.
In the SF area papers, the "Food and Wine" section is thicker than the "News" section, and the "Cars" section is thicker than both together. What's the point? Especially since, if that's what you want, there are better sources for information about food, wine, cars, sports, and classified advertising.
The whole point of newspapers is that they send people out to dig up stories, and you pay to read the results. That's fine. As advertising-delivery vehicles, they're obsolete.
Journalists are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me when my rabbit can crap on the internets.. (Score:5, Funny)
Until my bunny can defecate on the internets, I'll keep on subscribing to old fashioned newspapers.
Do people prefer already-digested news? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it seems to me that people in the U.S. are increasingly divided. We want our viewpoints affirmed - not challenged. When was the last time you heard someone say or write "That makes sense. Maybe I'm wrong."
When I worked as a reporter, I always judged my job on controversial issues by the number of complaints I got from both sides. If they were nearly evenly divided, I knew I did well. Those I offended used almost exactly the same wording except for changing x for y in their complaints.
Maybe people are giving up newspaper for blogs because they want to hear the digested version of a story. Skip the thinking and just go to the umbrage.
Local News (Score:4, Informative)
The Newspaper has a cute little 1995 style website, but it is less comprehensive than the paper.
That said, I rarely care what is going on around here, and therefore buy the paper nearly never. Although I do scan the headlines at the convenience store.
The web allows me to read the NYTimes, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, The BBC and a thousand blogs a week. I love new media, but Ii still respect the old guild.
Let's Clarify. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's be clear here. To the New York Times and every Internet blogger who fancies themselves the Times-killer, all American newspapers are publicly-traded, big city dailies.
Unfortunately for the Internet, this isn't even close to being true. I've personally helped start several small-town weeklies/dailies in my area (I do Websites as well, so no bias here), and although one startup over the past 5 years has folded, we've got a net gain in my county of two community newspapers over what we had in 2002. Plus one very high-end magazine aimed at folks with $100K+ annual incomes. And this is not unusual across the U.S., where small community publications are still going strong.
The real story is that the Internet, over the past decade, has failed completely as a local news/information delivery system to the average consumer. And, bear in mind that although the Internet is good at delivering on my $1,000 computer, at much higher cost and bother, what my $30.00 radio delivers every day for little cost or bother — national/international news briefs — it's next to impossible to find out what's happening in my town on the Internet in any detail or in a timely fashion. And, lo and behold, what few sources that do exist to find out are, (are you ready, now?) those put up by — you guessed it — my local community newspapers. And those sites normally only have "teaser" versions of the story. You have to subscribe to the Dead Tree Edition to get the full story. Very clever, no?
Now, this is not merely academic to me. I own a small advertising agency. I absolutely can not get my local businesses to do much advertising on the Web, other than building their own Websites (another interesting topic, but not for this post). Sorry, but they're just not interested in reaching folks in Botswana and Poland. Can you blame them? The overwhelming majority of American businesses (according to the US Dept. of Labor/Census Bureau) are small businesses, defined as having less than 100 employees. The much-glorified Huffington Post is completely useless to most all of my 300+ small-business clients, as is the New York Times. Without advertisers willing to spend on the Web, Web news sources will stay pretty much as they are now — Digg with the same rehashes of UPI/AP/Reuters feeds, repeated ad nauseum with posters trying desperately to add a sentence or two summary spin to the canned article hoping to reach the site's front page. Internet News is depressingly incestuous, sketchy, amateurish, and a couple of hours behind my local NPR radio station.
What media pundits seem to be missing out on is that the American consumer is more and more interested in what's happening in his own county/town/neighborhood and less and less interested in what is happening in The Big City or on the other side of the planet. We're getting less centralized, folks. Most of the US population has been diffusing from the big cities and spreading out into the surrounding countryside for the past few decades. I'm here to tell you that the Big City Daily has been dying since the 60's, mostly due to cable television news channels and the advent of 24-hour all-news radio. I'm in a rural county just on the edge of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Sprawloplex, and we've got no less than three 24/7 all-talk radio stations who are getting their quota of advertisers, last time I checked. Plus two 24/7 all-sports stations. Yes, they stream on the Web. No, it's not an income source for most, but a loss-leader supported by over-the-air broadcasting.
I do think that eventually, most all news will be delivered via network. In about 30-50 years. Right now, Google and the porn industry notwithstanding, nobody has really figured out how to make money off the Internet in the more localized news market, where the majority of advertisers (small business) and consumers are. We've got several itty-bitty print publications in my county that can draw enough revenue to pay for professional writers, design
Re:Ha Ha (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So I read the SN&R instead, for free. Not the best, not my politics, but almost
Re:Ha Ha (Score:4, Informative)
Advertising is of fundamental importance, it allows the employ of journalists, graphic designers, printers, admin, call centre staff. Modern newspapers are more about the overarching marketing and advertiser strategies as about news.
People have been predicting the death of the newspaper for a while and it is true that major newspapers are saving a large amount of revenue by going digital. The ball game is entirely different for smaller publications.
PS I am currently Production Manager for a large local publication with a publication run exceeding 120,000 and have worked in newspapers my entire adult life.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ha Ha (Score:5, Insightful)
People who invite development projects do not necessarily welcome military action.
Female genital mutilation does not [speroforum.com] occur in Afghanistan.
Do you have evidence of mass starvation in Syria? There are loads of tourists there these days, and no one is reporting famine and misery.
While other countries give less in total dollars amounts to aid, they quite often give more in percentage of GDP.
Your post deserves to get modded down because it is poorly thought out. You could make a case that America is doing good in many parts of the world, but when you should such shoddy arguments you hurt your own cause.
Re:Ha Ha (Score:5, Insightful)
When the Kurds were getting gassed in Iraq. Most major newspapers in Europe made it front page. In the US, there was no mention of it, or if there was, the story got buried so deep -- most American people -- even the ones who do manage to read Major American newspapers on a daily basis -- couldn't tell you what had happen.
Furthermore, when the issue came up in front of the UN security council to impose sanctions, only one member was totally against it and -- that was the US. Once again, this brings us back to this information asymmetry. When I tell my American friends this, they have no idea of what I'm talking about. Once again, there seems to be some information asymmetry going on here. Before we ousted their democratically elected President and installed a puppet of our own choosing, Iran was a SECULAR country in every modern sense of the word (i.e. women went to school, women were doctors, gays didn't get publicly executed, etc.), the only crime they had committed was that they nationalized their own oil fields and kicked out British Petroleum. That's when everything started going to hell. And that's only then that the religious nationalist nut-jobs rose to power.
Think of me as a "troll" if you will. Assume that I'm just like another liberal whack-job, that will distort and romanticize past history to maintain his own distorted sense of reality. But whatever you end up believing about me, realize that the poster you just replied to -- didn't deserve half of the insults and the condescending remarks -- you gave him. And nor did that poster need to imply that all the people who disagreed with him were racists either. There are no winners here. In either case, there is no need to demonize someone because they disagree with you, or because they may know less than you do. This kind of inflamed discussion leads nowhere.