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I think your reply misses a powerful factor: economics. Newspapers used to rely on print advertising to make the majority of their money. And they made enough
by whakim 7y ago
I think your reply misses a powerful factor: economics.
Newspapers used to rely on print advertising to make the majority of their money. And they made enough of it to do a good job.
It's much harder to report original stories when you have no revenue. Nowadays, advertising revenue is mostly driven by clicks, hence the rise in clickbait, reprinting of Reuters/AP/etc. (as opposed to "real" local stories) and fluff journalism as you mention. Local news has been hit the hardest because these newspapers made more of their money, percentage-wise, from advertising and classifieds.
(Also, worth noting: the link I provided contains studies showing that local news nowadays provides an important net good to society. So while you may be of the opinion - anecdotally - that all local news is just PR, that hasn't been found to be true in the academic literature.)
As to your third point, the prosecution of whistleblowers was heavily covered during the Obama administration. While I obviously can't speak to the specific conversations and interactions you had, it seems to me that you're tarring journalism with an incredibly broad brush by calling journalists uneducated based on a few chats (also, journalists cover a wide variety of subjects - were the journalists you were chatting with covering national politics?). There are more and less educated journalists, just as there are in every profession.
Obviously the old models don't work for journalism, and a lot of the onus is on journalism to change and to innovate. But if we value journalism as a society, some of it is also on us to change the way society works. I think the challenge is not dissimilar to what we saw with movies/music in the early 00's when piracy was rampant. The rise of streaming and the willingness of the general public to pay for entertainment media again has been a game-changer in that industry.
- WarOnPrivacy 7y agoThe flaws and issues I brought up weren't caused by post-1995 realities. They were what news consumers had been given for a long time, in exchange for their subscription dollars & eyeball time. The demise of news kingdoms happened when it became impossible for us to ignore what we were getting for our money. Going forward, the economics issues are as stark and complex as you say. A new challenge is they're being used to justify feeding us the same diet of crap (not exclusively - wonderful exceptions abound) that our parents were served. In the midst of all this is a comprehensive lack of self-awareness by news orgs who exist to state reality in helpful terms. Step One should be clearly stating the core reasons that quiet Americans lost their trust in the press. It's been 20 years and news orgs are still unable (again, lots of exceptions like CJR) to discuss these crippling flaws. How can any economic solutions help if news orgs offer little more than fluff, recycled content and 1st-impression reporting?
- whakim 7y agoI don't agree with your assertion that "the demise of news kingdoms happened when it became impossible for us to ignore what we were getting for our money," and I haven't seen any literature which would back up the argument that people suddenly woke and realized "we ain't paying for this shit anymore." There is, however, plenty of literature showing that with the advent of the internet the shortfall in print advertising was not made up for by online advertising. The "diet of crap" that you bemoan has always existed to a certain extent because of economics. More people want to read about celebrity gossip or sports than the CJR. The internet has simply exacerbated this issue because the online advertising model rewards eyeballs and clicks, and what you would call "crap" content generates more of them.
- WarOnPrivacy 7y agoYour rebuttal places responsibility for what news orgs print - on everyone but the news orgs. So your argument seems to be this. News orgs have to defer their 1st-Amendment-inferred duties in favor of printing pap because otherwise they'll go broke. In the mean time they're going broke. Americans have more sources of pap than ever before yet that is the arena where news orgs want to compete. Like news orgs, you appear to have zero concern with this plan. As an aside, did you know that House voted to reauth Sect 215 surveillance? WaPo barely mentions it in their own article. https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/11/19/house-passes-short-term-spending-bill-avert-thursday-midnight-shutdown/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/11/19/house-pa... I doubt you knew because 1000 news orgs are thoughtlessly, compulsively covering [SUPER SEXY STORY] today, to the exclusion of all else. I don't know how much other critical information I'm missing bc (like every day) the vast bulk of news orgs can't be bothered to fulfill their constitutionally-protected purpose for existing. Do you have a specific argument as to why news orgs are not earning their collective death? Other than some belief that they should continue to profit at pap, I mean.