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Ultimately, mass media journalism is losing audience because it is missing on its number #1 mission: information. Let's remember 2003. It doesn't matter that n

by vidoc 12y ago

Ultimately, mass media journalism is losing audience because it is missing on its number #1 mission: information. Let's remember 2003. It doesn't matter that not a single metropolitan newspaper was against the war in Irak. After all, that's just opinion. What's really bad is that serious newspapers such as the NYT actually sold grotesque articles about links between Sadam Hussein and Al Qaeda, or uranium tubes being sold secretly in Nigeria... Any semi educated person in any other country were laughing about those ridiculous assertions. Over the last couple of years, the coverage on Ukraine and Syria hasn't been much different. In a way, I think that what's scary is that this was achieved without a dictatorship.

cafard 12y ago
It is losing audience because information is quicker to get elsewhere--the TV stations weren't beating the papers on quality--and because ads are quicker to find on-line.
superuser2 12y ago
The less money newspapers have, the less independent work they can do. When you're a newspaper hemorrhaging revenue, what do you cut? Not sports. Not style. Not the stuff people read. Not the ability to report rumors faster than the next guy. That's your bread and butter. Editors. Fact-checking. You can clean up your balance sheet without threatening business continuity by "improving efficiency" and getting all those layers out of the way. Validating claims about Hussein and Al Qaeda basically amounts to foreign intelligence work. That costs expensive people's expensive time with a very high risk that they won't be able to arrive at any conclusions. Do you expect a manager to authorize a sat-phone when he can't even make payroll? Newspapers in general do the best they can afford to. They're not the world's advertising platform anymore, so what they can afford to do is of course declining.

by vidoc 12y ago

cafard 12y ago

It is losing audience because information is quicker to get elsewhere--the TV stations weren't beating the papers on quality--and because ads are quicker to find on-line.

superuser2 12y ago

The less money newspapers have, the less independent work they can do. When you're a newspaper hemorrhaging revenue, what do you cut? Not sports. Not style. Not the stuff people read. Not the ability to report rumors faster than the next guy. That's your bread and butter. Editors. Fact-checking. You can clean up your balance sheet without threatening business continuity by "improving efficiency" and getting all those layers out of the way. Validating claims about Hussein and Al Qaeda basically amounts to foreign intelligence work. That costs expensive people's expensive time with a very high risk that they won't be able to arrive at any conclusions. Do you expect a manager to authorize a sat-phone when he can't even make payroll? Newspapers in general do the best they can afford to. They're not the world's advertising platform anymore, so what they can afford to do is of course declining.