7 ms·

My hometown newspaper has been completely gutted since the late 90s. It's not just FB's fault. There are other factors. The Internet in general. But it is d

by pevey 4y ago

My hometown newspaper has been completely gutted since the late 90s. It's not just FB's fault. There are other factors. The Internet in general. But it is disturbing to me. The local politicians are more corrupt than ever because nobody is watching. The only local journalism now is the evening news, and viewership of that declines and skews older more and more each year because of cable cutting. A few reputable news outlets have survived on a national scale, but local journalism is mostly dead. And this is normal for younger people, so they don't even realize what they are missing.

CabSauce 4y ago
The decline of newspapers, and journalism in general, is 100% due to the now common practice of writing a story that says "<another outlet> reported ...". Why would anyone spend the time money to do actual journalistic research when it's so much cheaper to steal someone else's work. When stories became a commodity, it became a race to the bottom.
dpkirchner 4y ago
The local paper around these parts charges about 4x what I'm paying for a high quality national paper. I'd pay a little more for local (economies of scale pretty much guarantee their marginal costs are higher) but not that much more. Especially because even at that higher price it's still filled to the brim with advertising and copies of news from other sources.
bko 4y ago
I've heard an argument that more disclosure and coverage on local politics actually leads to more accountability, but not the way you think. If no one reads and makes decisions based on local news or the dump of accountability disclosures, then it doesn't do anything. But lobbyists do follow these. So it helps a lobbyist to see which senator amended the bill or proposed what kind of spending. It helps the lobbyist keep the politician accountable. Most people are caught up on national politics for some reason. I see people in NYC protesting laws in Texas while they neglect real issues affecting their quality of life.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Yep. Local corruption was already fairly bad but is gonna get a ton worse now that local papers are all but completely dead, and that shit's corrosive to democracy. [edit] and a huge drag on economic productivity, for that matter. In 20 years of thinking about this stuff I've gone from being a huge Internet optimist to wondering if the open Internet is even compatible with a healthy, free society, at all. I'm starting to lean toward "no". McLuhan nailed it, and the message of the medium of the Internet may not include liberal democracy. What happens when instead of killing bookstores, the market "decides" to kill something absolutely necessary for democracy's health?
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  I strongly agree with the corruption bit of your statement while strongly disagreeing with the rest of it.Newspapers were begging to be killed because they have been abusing market power to drive large profits for decades because the controlled the main chokepoint for the average person to learn about world and town recent events. They grew their wage/benefit structure to eat a lot of their monopoly profits and that killed them when their ability to abuse their chokepoint for excess profits and that killed them. There are lots of citizen and independent journalists popping up to fill in their place these days with much more streamlined cost structures. The really big problem is lack of effective self directable filtering and aggregation of news for the average person. Nerds like me can kind of make it work with an rss reader, rss bridge and hundreds of rss feeds across broad content sources (i.e. websites, twitter, youtube, specific mastodon users, etc.) combined with a service like ground news to give some feedback on who is promoting what and point to other sources for the same story, but it's really hard to impossible for the average person. Instead what the average person has are echo chamber creating things like their facebook feed that tend to amplify the loudest, often cringiest voices.
- bombcar 4y ago
  If something beyond individuals voting is absolutely necessary for democracy's health, then it is already dead. Because however you provide that thing, it will be co-opted and controlled.
  - 4y ago
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
People don't pay for newspaper subscriptions either. I have coworkers whose kids have grown up without ever getting a paper delivered to their house. It's a totally foreign concept to them, an anachronism you see in movies from the 80s/90s. I'd lament about how kids nowadays never get to experience the Saturday morning comics in them but they've got webcomics now, which are debatable better quality than the dull, mass appeal cartoons found in papers.
dnissley 4y ago
Are we sure it's not that politicians seem more corrupt because everybody is watching their every move?
- whakim 4y ago
  Harvard's Shorenstein Center has studied this, and there's a strong correlation between local newspapers closing and corruption in local politics increasing. (You may be addressing national politics which is a different matter entirely.)
  - dnissley 4y ago
    Tried to find the study you're referring to by googling but came up empty handed -- could you point me in the right direction? Funnily enough the closest I came was another comment of yours :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30561773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30561773
    - groffee 4y ago
      Lots of resources on the actual site mentioned https://shorensteincenter.org/?s=corruption https://shorensteincenter.org/?s=corruption
      - dnissley 4y ago
        Nothing about a link between corruption and lack of local journalism, however
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        I found this: https://shorensteincenter.org/solutions-americas-local-journalism-crisis-consolidated-literature-review/ https://shorensteincenter.org/solutions-americas-local-journ... > Research shows that the disappearance of credible local news and information contributes to widening political polarization, increasing costs for local government and meaningfully suboptimal community outcomes as independent oversight decreases or, in the worst case, evaporates entirely. I guess the "increasing costs for local government and meaningfully suboptimal community outcomes" bit. It's worth noting that I can't seem to find anything in the references that specifically links that with a decline in reporting by local news.
criddell 4y ago
> There are other factors. Like Craigslist. I think loss of classified ad revenue was the first deep wound.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Local news has been dead for decades from Craigslist; this howling is because national news is dying, and they will not go quietly into that dark night.
rr888 4y ago
I subscribe to 5 online newpapers. I wish more people did.

by pevey 4y ago

CabSauce 4y ago

The decline of newspapers, and journalism in general, is 100% due to the now common practice of writing a story that says "<another outlet> reported ...". Why would anyone spend the time money to do actual journalistic research when it's so much cheaper to steal someone else's work. When stories became a commodity, it became a race to the bottom.

dpkirchner 4y ago

The local paper around these parts charges about 4x what I'm paying for a high quality national paper. I'd pay a little more for local (economies of scale pretty much guarantee their marginal costs are higher) but not that much more. Especially because even at that higher price it's still filled to the brim with advertising and copies of news from other sources.

bko 4y ago

I've heard an argument that more disclosure and coverage on local politics actually leads to more accountability, but not the way you think. If no one reads and makes decisions based on local news or the dump of accountability disclosures, then it doesn't do anything. But lobbyists do follow these. So it helps a lobbyist to see which senator amended the bill or proposed what kind of spending. It helps the lobbyist keep the politician accountable. Most people are caught up on national politics for some reason. I see people in NYC protesting laws in Texas while they neglect real issues affecting their quality of life.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Yep. Local corruption was already fairly bad but is gonna get a ton worse now that local papers are all but completely dead, and that shit's corrosive to democracy. [edit] and a huge drag on economic productivity, for that matter. In 20 years of thinking about this stuff I've gone from being a huge Internet optimist to wondering if the open Internet is even compatible with a healthy, free society, at all. I'm starting to lean toward "no". McLuhan nailed it, and the message of the medium of the Internet may not include liberal democracy. What happens when instead of killing bookstores, the market "decides" to kill something absolutely necessary for democracy's health?

snapplebobapple 4y ago
I strongly agree with the corruption bit of your statement while strongly disagreeing with the rest of it.Newspapers were begging to be killed because they have been abusing market power to drive large profits for decades because the controlled the main chokepoint for the average person to learn about world and town recent events. They grew their wage/benefit structure to eat a lot of their monopoly profits and that killed them when their ability to abuse their chokepoint for excess profits and that killed them. There are lots of citizen and independent journalists popping up to fill in their place these days with much more streamlined cost structures. The really big problem is lack of effective self directable filtering and aggregation of news for the average person. Nerds like me can kind of make it work with an rss reader, rss bridge and hundreds of rss feeds across broad content sources (i.e. websites, twitter, youtube, specific mastodon users, etc.) combined with a service like ground news to give some feedback on who is promoting what and point to other sources for the same story, but it's really hard to impossible for the average person. Instead what the average person has are echo chamber creating things like their facebook feed that tend to amplify the loudest, often cringiest voices.
bombcar 4y ago
If something beyond individuals voting is absolutely necessary for democracy's health, then it is already dead. Because however you provide that thing, it will be co-opted and controlled.
- 4y ago

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

People don't pay for newspaper subscriptions either. I have coworkers whose kids have grown up without ever getting a paper delivered to their house. It's a totally foreign concept to them, an anachronism you see in movies from the 80s/90s. I'd lament about how kids nowadays never get to experience the Saturday morning comics in them but they've got webcomics now, which are debatable better quality than the dull, mass appeal cartoons found in papers.

dnissley 4y ago

Are we sure it's not that politicians seem more corrupt because everybody is watching their every move?

whakim 4y ago
Harvard's Shorenstein Center has studied this, and there's a strong correlation between local newspapers closing and corruption in local politics increasing. (You may be addressing national politics which is a different matter entirely.)
- dnissley 4y ago
  Tried to find the study you're referring to by googling but came up empty handed -- could you point me in the right direction? Funnily enough the closest I came was another comment of yours :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30561773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30561773
  - groffee 4y ago
    Lots of resources on the actual site mentioned https://shorensteincenter.org/?s=corruption https://shorensteincenter.org/?s=corruption
    - dnissley 4y ago
      Nothing about a link between corruption and lack of local journalism, however
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        I found this: https://shorensteincenter.org/solutions-americas-local-journalism-crisis-consolidated-literature-review/ https://shorensteincenter.org/solutions-americas-local-journ... > Research shows that the disappearance of credible local news and information contributes to widening political polarization, increasing costs for local government and meaningfully suboptimal community outcomes as independent oversight decreases or, in the worst case, evaporates entirely. I guess the "increasing costs for local government and meaningfully suboptimal community outcomes" bit. It's worth noting that I can't seem to find anything in the references that specifically links that with a decline in reporting by local news.

criddell 4y ago

> There are other factors. Like Craigslist. I think loss of classified ad revenue was the first deep wound.

bombcar 4y ago
Local news has been dead for decades from Craigslist; this howling is because national news is dying, and they will not go quietly into that dark night.

rr888 4y ago

I subscribe to 5 online newpapers. I wish more people did.