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I don't see much crime analysis, deep reporting, and investigative news from those formats. I don't see much from newspapers, either. That's the point of this

I don't see much crime analysis, deep reporting, and investigative news from those formats. I don't see much from newspapers, either. That's the point of this article: The guy is telling us that newspapers are already dead, and the problem is visible right now. I don't see any reason at all why a blogger couldn't be just as effective as a crime reporter. Except for one: They need to have enough money to survive. We're going to have to work that out somehow. But I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter turns out to be a part of the solution. People use the tools they have. Of course, even if we work as hard as we can, the future won't be perfect. But neither was the past. Despite the best efforts of folks like the author of this article, police brutality and corruption weren't exactly unheard of even in the newspaper-reporting heyday of the 1940s and 1950s.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
You can certainly make the argument that newspapers were never that good at these things to begin with, or that this type of coverage is mostly gone, but the fact remains that as a side-effect of paid content you end up with somebody covering local stories -- and local stories usually means crime. Having one person becoming an in-house expert on how to gather crime information, collecting informants, knowing how to work the paperwork, making friends with people in the court system, having a large organization with lawyers backing them up -- I don't see that emerging just from technology. That's no reason to fear the future. We'll figure it out, I'm sure. But it's (to me) a little Pollyannish to assume that because the new media formats are easier to use and disseminate information rapidly, it's all somehow automatically better than older media. Stuff changes, and as you point, out we've got some things to work out.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

You can certainly make the argument that newspapers were never that good at these things to begin with, or that this type of coverage is mostly gone, but the fact remains that as a side-effect of paid content you end up with somebody covering local stories -- and local stories usually means crime. Having one person becoming an in-house expert on how to gather crime information, collecting informants, knowing how to work the paperwork, making friends with people in the court system, having a large organization with lawyers backing them up -- I don't see that emerging just from technology. That's no reason to fear the future. We'll figure it out, I'm sure. But it's (to me) a little Pollyannish to assume that because the new media formats are easier to use and disseminate information rapidly, it's all somehow automatically better than older media. Stuff changes, and as you point, out we've got some things to work out.