4 ms·

I disagree that papers aren't creating anything. To the extent that todays' news industry just parrots back press releases, you may be correct, but I definitely

by lutorm 17y ago

I disagree that papers aren't creating anything. To the extent that todays' news industry just parrots back press releases, you may be correct, but I definitely think there's a need for not just interpretation but investigation. If there had been no newspapers in 1972, I don't see who would have put in the effort of pulling at the threads until the Watergate scandal unraveled. To take a more modern example, I don't see any bloggers that would have taken the time or had interest in doing the few big investigative stories that the San Jose Mercury has broken in the past few years, the one about people being wrongfully jailed because of bad public defenders and the one about the SJ Police's outrageously high number of downtown disorderly arrests, come to mind. Those are not stories that would have come out in the absence of an operation willing to commit to long-term footwork. They certainly wouldn't have been written by some bloggers looking for news online, because it's happening in the real, offline, world, and you can't just "link" to it. Without newspapers, or the equivalent thereof, these stories would not be told and no one would keep the government honest (to the extent that newspapers today haven't already failed at this). And I think this would be a loss to society.

alanthonyc 17y ago
I've heard the Watergate story used as an example before of a reason why news organizations should "matter." At first thought, it sounds like there is a third value proposition there (the three being fact distribution, analysis and investigation). Upon thinking about it more, don't you think that the value of the Washington Post is a little over-emphasized in that story today? As much as the newspaper itself played a huge part in allowing the story to break - from employing and training their staff, through providing an infrastructure for doing the investigation to publishing the actual piece - they almost had as much of a role in killing the story. If the editor at the time had succumbed to the pressure from the politicians, he may have caused the story to disappear. In the end, it wasn't the "newspaper" who investigated it, it was two guys named Woodward and Bernstein. One thing I believe in is that the internet empowers the individual to do things that were previously impossible to do by one person. Theoretically, I think this applies in this situation as well. As for the SJ Mercury News example, would that not be the same thing here? I'm sure there at least a couple of individuals in that group that are driving this kind of journalism. Maybe the newspaper as an organization helps foster and nurture this type of behaviour, but so what? Couldn't an organization that is not in the business of printing on paper do the same thing? What is the difference between a newspaper and a blogging organization anyway? Is it the salary? Is it the medium? Nobody is decrying journalism, just the old (economically) unsustainable models.

by lutorm 17y ago

alanthonyc 17y ago

I've heard the Watergate story used as an example before of a reason why news organizations should "matter." At first thought, it sounds like there is a third value proposition there (the three being fact distribution, analysis and investigation). Upon thinking about it more, don't you think that the value of the Washington Post is a little over-emphasized in that story today? As much as the newspaper itself played a huge part in allowing the story to break - from employing and training their staff, through providing an infrastructure for doing the investigation to publishing the actual piece - they almost had as much of a role in killing the story. If the editor at the time had succumbed to the pressure from the politicians, he may have caused the story to disappear. In the end, it wasn't the "newspaper" who investigated it, it was two guys named Woodward and Bernstein. One thing I believe in is that the internet empowers the individual to do things that were previously impossible to do by one person. Theoretically, I think this applies in this situation as well. As for the SJ Mercury News example, would that not be the same thing here? I'm sure there at least a couple of individuals in that group that are driving this kind of journalism. Maybe the newspaper as an organization helps foster and nurture this type of behaviour, but so what? Couldn't an organization that is not in the business of printing on paper do the same thing? What is the difference between a newspaper and a blogging organization anyway? Is it the salary? Is it the medium? Nobody is decrying journalism, just the old (economically) unsustainable models.