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The hyperlink has dealt a mortal wound to the newspaper industry, and social media will end up dealing the coup de grace. Old media would love to still have the

The hyperlink has dealt a mortal wound to the newspaper industry, and social media will end up dealing the coup de grace. Old media would love to still have the ability to consolidate news into a nice pre-packaged product that they can sell, but the web has destroyed the ability for that to happen. Why have a Daily app when you can have Twitter or even RSS deliver the news? It's hard to pay for something that is just lying around everywhere.

sami36 14y ago
Rest assured, they have a business model in place : Selection Bias, as evidenced by the rise of FoxNews, MSNBC & Glenn Beck's the blaze. With facts & news now getting commoditized, "opinion" & "Analysis" are proving to be lucrative cash cows. pay me X $ & I'll package & interpret the news for you in a digestible way that aligns with your values, biases & preconceptions.
- colkassad 14y ago
  Yes, but it costs me nothing to go to foxnews.com or dailykos. I think something like the Daily would appeal to someone like my father who still places a lot of value in spending $80/month watching news and "analysis", but I think it will be hard for the industry to find a larger audience as time goes by.
untog 14y ago
Thing is, good news isn't just "lying around everywhere". It takes a lot of work to make it. I will openly admit to bias because I work for a newspaper, but I dread the day when the only news outlets we have left are opinionated, biased blogs. No-one in the field actually gathering news, just an endless stream of people interpreting events they haven't witnessed in countries they've never been to.
- TillE 14y ago
  Some of the best investigative journalism I've seen has come from "bloggers" who can make a few phone calls. Traditional media is not doing a good job of this. They can stick a reporter out in a hurricane or a war zone or the White House briefing room, but how often does that produce useful data? So often we get nothing but shallow, misleading information, or a dutiful transcription of statements from "both sides". Professional journalism will survive, but hopefully it won't look the same.
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    It's now a pet peeve of mine to see a reporter in a hurricane/warzone/crime scene telling you something banal they could have told you from a studio. The wasted time and effort for fake "authenticity" totally jumps out at me now.
    - danso 14y ago
      Um...somehow I don't think the cure for banal journalism is to have fewer reporters on the actual scene. And sometimes they say banal things because there is nothing else to day.
    - pcl 14y ago
      Regarding the clichéd reporter yelling into a camera by a pier while the surf churns in the background, that's fair enough. But reporting from war zones and crime scenes and whatnot is something altogether different. If we don't have reporters in those situations, who should we believe? The military? The police? Should we expect bloggers to fill in the gap by jetting off to Syria? Should we expect bloggers to attend state government proceedings day after day, or should we expect our representatives to honestly and completely disclose what they discuss when none of us are present, or to properly notify us ahead of time before anything "interesting" is discussed? Clearly, I'd rather see professional journalism in those roles. Bloggers and social media have important roles in the news industry as well, but I'm concerned by the thought of a future without professional journalism.
      - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
        If recording what happens matters then cheap recording devices in the hands of locals or volunteers should suffice. I'm not seeing how live satellite broadcasts of a talking head from the roof of a 5 star hotel in a warzone or a suburban street as bodies are dug up adds anything but verisimilitude to whatever soundbites theyre spouting.
        untog 14y ago
        You're talking about very different things, though. Not every journalist is a TV, camera-facing talking head. Are you really suggesting that the most journalists ever contribute is the 45 second segments on the evening news? What about the written reports? The field journalists in Gaza, talking to the groups on the ground and giving first-hand accounts of the violence? That's important. Relying on cheap recording devices in the hands of locals is a terrible idea- they are the very people least likely to be impartial. To use the Gaza example, there would be thousands of recordings of Israeli strikes, but very few of missiles being launched the other way because no-one would want to record it. We'd end up with entirely biased coverage. Who would be writing something like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-conflict.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/middleeast/israel-ga... ?
- notatoad 14y ago
  the amount of good news coming out of newspapers is pretty minimal. This sort of snobbery towards blogs one of the big reasons that newspapers are failing so badly these days. The medium is unimportant, the content is what matters. Just because it's printed on newsprint, doesn't make your content good. Just because it's on a blog, doesn't mean the content is bad.
  - untog 14y ago
    You're reading to much into my usage of the word 'blogs', and too little into my usage of the word 'opinionated'. Newspapers have blogs. They make great stuff. There are many great blogs out there that have nothing to do with newspapers and produce fantastic content. However, a lot of self-produced writing out there seems to lean towards being heavily opinionated, with no attempt at objectivity or journalistic integrity. This is what concerns me- not the presentation method. It just so happens that blogging is the most popular medium for this kind of output.

sami36 14y ago

Rest assured, they have a business model in place : Selection Bias, as evidenced by the rise of FoxNews, MSNBC & Glenn Beck's the blaze. With facts & news now getting commoditized, "opinion" & "Analysis" are proving to be lucrative cash cows. pay me X $ & I'll package & interpret the news for you in a digestible way that aligns with your values, biases & preconceptions.

colkassad 14y ago
Yes, but it costs me nothing to go to foxnews.com or dailykos. I think something like the Daily would appeal to someone like my father who still places a lot of value in spending $80/month watching news and "analysis", but I think it will be hard for the industry to find a larger audience as time goes by.

untog 14y ago

Thing is, good news isn't just "lying around everywhere". It takes a lot of work to make it. I will openly admit to bias because I work for a newspaper, but I dread the day when the only news outlets we have left are opinionated, biased blogs. No-one in the field actually gathering news, just an endless stream of people interpreting events they haven't witnessed in countries they've never been to.

TillE 14y ago
Some of the best investigative journalism I've seen has come from "bloggers" who can make a few phone calls. Traditional media is not doing a good job of this. They can stick a reporter out in a hurricane or a war zone or the White House briefing room, but how often does that produce useful data? So often we get nothing but shallow, misleading information, or a dutiful transcription of statements from "both sides". Professional journalism will survive, but hopefully it won't look the same.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  It's now a pet peeve of mine to see a reporter in a hurricane/warzone/crime scene telling you something banal they could have told you from a studio. The wasted time and effort for fake "authenticity" totally jumps out at me now.
  - danso 14y ago
    Um...somehow I don't think the cure for banal journalism is to have fewer reporters on the actual scene. And sometimes they say banal things because there is nothing else to day.
  - pcl 14y ago
    Regarding the clichéd reporter yelling into a camera by a pier while the surf churns in the background, that's fair enough. But reporting from war zones and crime scenes and whatnot is something altogether different. If we don't have reporters in those situations, who should we believe? The military? The police? Should we expect bloggers to fill in the gap by jetting off to Syria? Should we expect bloggers to attend state government proceedings day after day, or should we expect our representatives to honestly and completely disclose what they discuss when none of us are present, or to properly notify us ahead of time before anything "interesting" is discussed? Clearly, I'd rather see professional journalism in those roles. Bloggers and social media have important roles in the news industry as well, but I'm concerned by the thought of a future without professional journalism.
    - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
      If recording what happens matters then cheap recording devices in the hands of locals or volunteers should suffice. I'm not seeing how live satellite broadcasts of a talking head from the roof of a 5 star hotel in a warzone or a suburban street as bodies are dug up adds anything but verisimilitude to whatever soundbites theyre spouting.
      - untog 14y ago
        You're talking about very different things, though. Not every journalist is a TV, camera-facing talking head. Are you really suggesting that the most journalists ever contribute is the 45 second segments on the evening news? What about the written reports? The field journalists in Gaza, talking to the groups on the ground and giving first-hand accounts of the violence? That's important. Relying on cheap recording devices in the hands of locals is a terrible idea- they are the very people least likely to be impartial. To use the Gaza example, there would be thousands of recordings of Israeli strikes, but very few of missiles being launched the other way because no-one would want to record it. We'd end up with entirely biased coverage. Who would be writing something like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-conflict.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/middleeast/israel-ga... ?
notatoad 14y ago
the amount of good news coming out of newspapers is pretty minimal. This sort of snobbery towards blogs one of the big reasons that newspapers are failing so badly these days. The medium is unimportant, the content is what matters. Just because it's printed on newsprint, doesn't make your content good. Just because it's on a blog, doesn't mean the content is bad.
- untog 14y ago
  You're reading to much into my usage of the word 'blogs', and too little into my usage of the word 'opinionated'. Newspapers have blogs. They make great stuff. There are many great blogs out there that have nothing to do with newspapers and produce fantastic content. However, a lot of self-produced writing out there seems to lean towards being heavily opinionated, with no attempt at objectivity or journalistic integrity. This is what concerns me- not the presentation method. It just so happens that blogging is the most popular medium for this kind of output.