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."
Re:Yeah, that's it (Score:5, Informative)
Lets see, if I make a trip outside my local area, working for a multinational. Am I going to want to go to the local news company's website (so the internet is promoting local news), or am I going to go to another news website, although both obviously don't mean reading the local news or watching tv news.
Is that really a surprise in this day and age?
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.
Re:475 Page (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a waste, since that's not the results of the report. Let me help out.
How the Internet Has Improved Journalism
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Greater Depth
Improved Quality of Commentary and Analysis
Enabling Citizen Engagement
Speed and Ease
Expanding Hyperlocal Coverage
Serving Highly Specific Interests
Cheaper Content Distribution
Cheaper Content Creation
Direct Access to Community and Civic News
Sound different from TFS?
Yep. Same report. Time to fork slashdot to make it less inflammatory. They took the only concern, "lack of clarity how well trained bloggers are" and made it into a siren favoring Big Media.
Re:it is a shame too. (Score:4, Informative)
Nonsense. Political corruption is the bread and butter of media because it sells. As noted in the first linked article, the LA Times investigated and broke the Bell corruption story.
Nonsense right back at you. Stories about the tweets and love lives of politicians are the bread and butter of media because it sells, and it creates distractions from the real issues. Actual political corruption, such as Obama secretly negotiating [huffingtonpost.com] with Health care companies, running a covert war in Yemen [reuters.com], and then lying [telegraph.co.uk] about it, and of course I shouldn't even have to mention all stuff that went on under Bush. Actual corruption gets very little, if any, coverage.
Re:Yeah, that's it (Score:4, Informative)
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.
My local internet-only news is actually quite good, but the TV news is exactly as you say. There's usually brief segments of news, weather, and sports, followed by the lengthy feature story about how likely I am to be murdered if I sell something on Craigslist or how terrorists can make my computer explode if I share too much personal information on Facebook.
Re:Yeah, that's it (Score:5, Informative)
That, and the Fox News "We won the right to blatantly lie and call it news" SCOTUS case pretty much clenched it.
Humorously enough, this is a blatant lie. The case you are referring to had nothing to do with Fox News [wikipedia.org]. Also, the case wasn't a SCOTUS case (it was a Florida court case.)