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> “At the local level, news doesn’t stop when the news coverage goes away,” Lanane said. “Somebody has to do this work.” And there's the problem: No, somebody

> “At the local level, news doesn’t stop when the news coverage goes away,” Lanane said. “Somebody has to do this work.” And there's the problem: No, somebody does NOT have to do this work. It is beneficial to society if someone does local journalism, agreed. But if there is no viable economic model for it, then it will disappear. Perhaps the most likely alternative right now, if there's going to be significant local new coverage, is government-subsidized journalism, but that clearly will not be doing any in-depth investigation of those in power in that government. And I don't think that most governments are thinking about doing that anyway. I think the most likely outcome is what is happening: local journalism will, for the most part, completely disappear. I also recommend Clay Shirky's "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable" : http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking... - I think he clearly explains why this is happening, not because the newspapers didn't see it coming, but because the fundamental economic forces have proven irresistible.

jrumbut 8y ago
People can live in pretty awful situations, by that definition very few things are necessary. I disagree with the point made repeatedly in the comments here that government funded media can't work. NPR, PBS, the BBC, and CBC all routinely perform investigative reporting on the very governments that fund them. Additionally, it would take a pretty wild set of circumstances for a federal government official to squash reporting into a corrupt water board member in Utah. If that happens, maybe that stone will go unturned, but if we do nothing nearly every stone will go unturned. I would love to live in a world where it was possible not to have the conflict of interest that public funding creates, but it is abundantly clear that the options before us right now are publicly funded local news and very much less local news. I think public funding is the right answer. Maybe we'll get lucky and a plucky Stanford dropout will figure out a way to make local journalism profitable, but I'm not interested in waiting for that.

jrumbut 8y ago

People can live in pretty awful situations, by that definition very few things are necessary. I disagree with the point made repeatedly in the comments here that government funded media can't work. NPR, PBS, the BBC, and CBC all routinely perform investigative reporting on the very governments that fund them. Additionally, it would take a pretty wild set of circumstances for a federal government official to squash reporting into a corrupt water board member in Utah. If that happens, maybe that stone will go unturned, but if we do nothing nearly every stone will go unturned. I would love to live in a world where it was possible not to have the conflict of interest that public funding creates, but it is abundantly clear that the options before us right now are publicly funded local news and very much less local news. I think public funding is the right answer. Maybe we'll get lucky and a plucky Stanford dropout will figure out a way to make local journalism profitable, but I'm not interested in waiting for that.