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I don't think this is happening to journalism as much as journalism as an industry is doing it to themselves. I say this with the perspective of starting a loca

by zdean 10y ago

I don't think this is happening to journalism as much as journalism as an industry is doing it to themselves. I say this with the perspective of starting a local magazine in the early 2000s and running it for 10 years (and it's still going relatively strong after I moved on). Over the past couple of decades, I've watched as media companies with legacy business and editorial structures are (largely) unwilling or unable to adapt to new channels of disseminating important information or driving revenue. At the same time they've eroded trust with their audiences through efforts like advertorials in magazines and over-reliance on syndicated national/regional content in newspapers...and pandering in both. The ones that haven't are doing well. I remember a few years back reading a great piece by the great late writer David Carr who talked about SXSW and the local paper in Austin that spawned it as a great counter-example for how modern journalism as a business can be done well and successfully: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/business/media/23carr.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/business/media/23carr.html Those running the big media properties are either going to finally wake up and adapt or die off...meanwhile, there are lots of niche publishers (and I use that term very broadly in terms of channels) will step up and successfully fill the voids they're leaving behind.

colechristensen 10y ago
I know of three journalist outlets I'd be willing to pay for: * LWN https://lwn.net/ https://lwn.net/ * Harper's Magazine http://harpers.org/ http://harpers.org/ * Nautilus http://nautil.us/ http://nautil.us/ I'm not interested in paying for any current-news journalism because as far as I can tell nobody does a good enough job to warrant my money.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  I think it says something when "the news" is competing with shows that are primarily comedic like Last Week Tonight and The Daily Show. Those shows are definitely as much entertainment as they are news, but they still seem to have as much actual journalism as broadcast news sources. My mom sits down every night to watch World News on ABC, followed by the local news. I can't stand watching either. There's very little content, every segment is interrupted by ads, and the interesting content is put at the very end so they can tease it before every commercial break. First Commercial: "Coming up after the break, we did some investigative journalism for once" Second Commercial: "Coming up: That investigative Journalism" Third Commercial: "Still after the break: What you actually want to see" 45 minutes and 10 commercials later: "And after this break, the investigative piece." And the investigative piece is 30 second long, says that the one person of interest wouldn't comment, and has less information than you could find out using a public portal on your local government's website. Then you get a 2 minute clip of a funny video from the internet chopped the hell up, with the anchors talking over it the entire time. "Tune in next week. More Americans get their news from ABC News than any other source."
  - apendleton 10y ago
    > they still seem to have as much actual journalism as broadcast news sources I don't think that assertion holds water, and if you broaden beyond "broadcast" to "mainstream," even less so. I love Last Week Tonight, and they do some genuine investigative work, but a lot of their news coverage is parroting/spinning other people's coverage that they find especially insightful. I'm glad that they're giving broader voice to some of that material, but it would be much more expensive were they to produce it all themselves. Foreign coverage, in particular, is extremely expensive, and almost nobody in the new media space is throwing serious money at it; it's super important and kept afloat almost exclusively by old-media behemoths who maintain scores of foreign bureaus all over the world -- CNN, NYT, NPR, etc. (Vice is the one possible new-media-company exception, here, in that they do foreign investigative work at all, but they don't maintain a permanent presence anywhere, I don't think.)
  - vinay427 10y ago
    That's why I've recently gotten my parents to change their schedule slightly to watch PBS NewsHour. Easily the nicest TV news in the US with its relatively condensed yet exploratory methodology. Personally, I peruse the PBS NewsHour website for news and the New Yorker for editorials.
- sean_patel 10y ago
  > I know of three journalist outlets I'd be willing to pay for: Good to know, but you ( and I and most of us here ) are in a minority. You must realize that intellectual people like us are a very small fraction of the internet. The majority of the internet is people who get their "news" from Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and now from SnapChat. Most can't even differentiate between news, journalism, advertorials, sponsored post and such.
  - nothrabannosir 10y ago
    > intellectual people like us Speak for yourself. I'm as dumb as they come.
- tsieling 10y ago
  Nautilus has such amazing content and such a bone-headed staff managing distribution. Their web store is so problematic, and when I changed addresses they stopped sending 3/4 of a whole year's subscription, with a response that boiled down to 'sorry don't know'. The content made me fall in love, the logistics drove me away from subscribing :(

by zdean 10y ago

colechristensen 10y ago

I know of three journalist outlets I'd be willing to pay for: * LWN https://lwn.net/ https://lwn.net/ * Harper's Magazine http://harpers.org/ http://harpers.org/ * Nautilus http://nautil.us/ http://nautil.us/ I'm not interested in paying for any current-news journalism because as far as I can tell nobody does a good enough job to warrant my money.

Declanomous 10y ago
I think it says something when "the news" is competing with shows that are primarily comedic like Last Week Tonight and The Daily Show. Those shows are definitely as much entertainment as they are news, but they still seem to have as much actual journalism as broadcast news sources. My mom sits down every night to watch World News on ABC, followed by the local news. I can't stand watching either. There's very little content, every segment is interrupted by ads, and the interesting content is put at the very end so they can tease it before every commercial break. First Commercial: "Coming up after the break, we did some investigative journalism for once" Second Commercial: "Coming up: That investigative Journalism" Third Commercial: "Still after the break: What you actually want to see" 45 minutes and 10 commercials later: "And after this break, the investigative piece." And the investigative piece is 30 second long, says that the one person of interest wouldn't comment, and has less information than you could find out using a public portal on your local government's website. Then you get a 2 minute clip of a funny video from the internet chopped the hell up, with the anchors talking over it the entire time. "Tune in next week. More Americans get their news from ABC News than any other source."
- apendleton 10y ago
  > they still seem to have as much actual journalism as broadcast news sources I don't think that assertion holds water, and if you broaden beyond "broadcast" to "mainstream," even less so. I love Last Week Tonight, and they do some genuine investigative work, but a lot of their news coverage is parroting/spinning other people's coverage that they find especially insightful. I'm glad that they're giving broader voice to some of that material, but it would be much more expensive were they to produce it all themselves. Foreign coverage, in particular, is extremely expensive, and almost nobody in the new media space is throwing serious money at it; it's super important and kept afloat almost exclusively by old-media behemoths who maintain scores of foreign bureaus all over the world -- CNN, NYT, NPR, etc. (Vice is the one possible new-media-company exception, here, in that they do foreign investigative work at all, but they don't maintain a permanent presence anywhere, I don't think.)
- vinay427 10y ago
  That's why I've recently gotten my parents to change their schedule slightly to watch PBS NewsHour. Easily the nicest TV news in the US with its relatively condensed yet exploratory methodology. Personally, I peruse the PBS NewsHour website for news and the New Yorker for editorials.
sean_patel 10y ago
> I know of three journalist outlets I'd be willing to pay for: Good to know, but you ( and I and most of us here ) are in a minority. You must realize that intellectual people like us are a very small fraction of the internet. The majority of the internet is people who get their "news" from Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and now from SnapChat. Most can't even differentiate between news, journalism, advertorials, sponsored post and such.
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  > intellectual people like us Speak for yourself. I'm as dumb as they come.
tsieling 10y ago
Nautilus has such amazing content and such a bone-headed staff managing distribution. Their web store is so problematic, and when I changed addresses they stopped sending 3/4 of a whole year's subscription, with a response that boiled down to 'sorry don't know'. The content made me fall in love, the logistics drove me away from subscribing :(