The Internet Is Killing Local News, Says the FCC 271
Art3x writes "The rise of the Internet has led to a 'shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting' (Here's the AP's version) says a 475-page report by the FCC, and the consequences could be 'more government waste, more local corruption,' 'less effective schools' and other problems. Even though there are more media choices today than ever, newspapers have been laying off reporters, leaving a gap that is yet to be filled."
Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
Flat Earth News [amazon.co.uk] published in 2008 goes into this in great detail from a British point of view. Interestingly, it's not the internet that started the rot but massive cost cutting - which for ten years created huge profits - started in the mid-80s. By the mid to late 90s serious journalism and local news were already dieing. The internet merely savaged the corpse.
Perfect (Score:1, Interesting)
One of the amazing things the internet is doing for us: Helping to get rid of the local news, the #1 purveyor of the idea that fear sells.
Re:it is a shame too. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, the problem with citizen journalism is that unless you've got enough eyes peering onto your site to somehow support some sort of revenue stream, you're going to be spending half your day at work, the other half doing reporting and you're going to be pretty burnt out from all of it.
This is the advantage of professional journalists, they get to eat because of their work.
On the other hand, a citizen journalist is going to be less careful about sources and fact checking. The citizen journalist is going to blog their suspicions and air unfounded allegations. A low signal-to-noise compared to a legit newpaper, but a lot of tip of the iceberg stuff which might appear earlier.
Remember that the two-newpaper town is only the news paradigm we can remember. Until about the time Hearst figured out how to make money out of buying up papers, there were hundreds of small run papers, many full of partisan vitriol. It was the internet without a net.
Grab your ankles... They're after freedom or money (Score:4, Interesting)
Statements like this by gigantic Federal bureaucracies always leads to some move against freedom.
They will look to either restrict the ability of the internet to report news (which the government would love, the ruling democrat establishment would love nothing more than to shut down Andrew Britebart and Matt Drudge amongst others). Or they will be after confiscatory taxes on the internet, on news sites, on bloggers, to subsidize "local" news.
As others have said in this story, the lack of support for local news couldn't have anything to do with the fact that businesses aren't local anymore like they were 50 years ago... 50 years ago every town had more than one newspaper. Every radio station had a full airstaff AND a news department. Why? Because local advertisers PAID for this.
The FCC realizes that it's reason for existence (over the air radio and TV) is coming to an end because it's being overtaken by internet broadcasting. They also realize that the chink in the 1st Amendment that was created for them in 1934, the fact that radio spectrum has limits, ie, there is scarcity, which paved the way for the Feds to decide who could broadcast and who couldn't, is mooted by the fact that the Internet has NO LIMIT of channels.
So they have to invent some other form of "scarcity" to give them some toehold on the Internet.
Because it used to be so much better (Score:5, Interesting)
Before the Internet local schools were all awesome, local politicians were honest and dutiful, and the zoning board members could never be bought off, because everyone was cowed into sincerity by the local newspaper.
Or am I delusional.
This not a loss of local control, we haven't had that since the 1860's, it is loss of central control by big media companies who are pulling desperately on the strings they still have.
Re:Yeah, that's it (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, shitty/shoddy reporting has killed news in general, not shortages of staff. Considering that they wont' even cover tough topics pretty much sealed the deal for any form of regular news website being considered legitimate or worth a glance. I'd sooner read fark than new york times, since at least I can get more info from fark, such as when they actually covered iran protests and NYT/CNN/Fox news/ABC/NBC/AP were nowhere to be found. Only Al Jazeera has been stepping up as a news org.
Personally, I have long since ignored local news media outlets because of the level of bias they all seem to carry. There are more choices for national and international news, you can find more sources online and sources based overseas, but here in America most of the media is pushing the same agenda - why would I waste my time watching what are essentially 20 minute news-based political cartoons?
The internet didn't kill local news or newspapers, they killed themselves by deciding to stop reporting news and start shaping and creating news.
Re:it is a shame too. (Score:4, Interesting)
a citizen journalist is going to be less careful about sources and fact checking
Often stated, rarely proven. "Proper" news organizations aren't exactly paragons of virtue here, as anyone with detailed knowledge of a complicated story will tell you. Sometimes, they'll just publish anything at all - this [wikipedia.org] example by CBS is just one of the most egregious.
Re:Don't forget the inherent bias of the communiti (Score:2, Interesting)
Whining about biased sites while posting to Slashdot? LOL *head asplodes*
While your opinion is probably perfectly valid, and in fact may be reality, such a viewpoint does not match well with the biases and precognitions of the fanatics at such social media sites.
Just because someone said something negative about Apple does not mean it is probably valid. It is very likely to not be valid considering the rabid anti-Apple nuts. All you've done is expose your own bias.