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Seems clear to me!
However, the owners of traditional media are working to reduce choice. Three times this week, my browser reported that the content I wished to view was not available in Canada. By example, someone has decided that I cannot watch clips from Jon Stewart's Daily Show from Comedy Central's website. Instead, I must look for the material at Canada's The Comedy Network.
Will Canwest Global or Bell Media convince authorities that I shouldn't be reading articles from the NY Times, the WA Post or The Guardian online but should only read them at Canadian websites or in Canadian papers, if they choose to publish those articles?
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=...
and
http://www.calgaryherald.com/News/Herald+newspa...
I don't think the first link has much to say that is interesting. Citing the number of Canadians who pick "a" newspaper at least once a week? Almost certainly the majority of which are the free Metros... These are not stats for the industry to seek security in.
The second piece is also troubling. The 7.3% growth rate in people who look at the newspaper "once a week" includes online growth! Once you break down the numbers the newspaper experienced an actual growth (again in the number of people who looked at the newspaper at least once(!) a week) of 2.86%. This from a city that has experienced one of the fastest growth rates in the country. Moreover, just because someone looked at your newspaper once a week, doesn't mean they paid for the privilege. Indeed, newspapers have been known to give away copies during ratings periods to "boost" their numbers.
More instructive then asking "did you look at the newspaper at least once this week" is to examine subscription rates. Here the numbers are more bleak for the Herald. According toits own marketing materials they had a subscription base of 126,052 in 2006. Today, wikipedia lists their subscription base as 115,612. That's a decline of 9%. It's also lower than their 2004 numbers of 119,476. These aren't figures that are going to save the industry. My strong suspicion is that even Calgary, this is a business that will struggle.
I still believe in market forces and ‘quality will out’ people still look for well written content, healthy debate and expertise, arguably it’s easier for people to ‘vote with their feet’ on the internet and new business models will follow. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with new media businesses companies like citizen journalist site http://www.demotix.com and peer to peer lending site http://www.zopa.com. Or a twist on David's comparison, http://www.demotix.com is to democracy what http://www.zopa.com is to capitalism, the new order.
More importantly, congratulations on being an entrepreneur not becoming a priest (like Taylor and I did for a little bit with the Missing the Link piece).
About : “If print newspapers disappear, it will be a fundamental threat to our democracy.” : as if democracy had waited newspapers to start or even flourish in the world... really. It's about exchanging ideas (agora, forum, age of enlightenment and first encylopedias, newspapers - as a means to make ideas circulate) not about printing news.
+ Surely journalists and journalism will not end with newspapers. Still I am uneasy at how they seem to believe that they have been around since forever.
Up to now, newspapers/TV/ wire services were the best we could manage. That's changing, and that's good.
But it's not perfect.
When the last newspaper folds, it's going to take a class of information gathering with it. The new models simply will not support news gathering of the scope that the old ones did. Look for a lot more noise and nonsense in your daily news feed without those "authoritarian" and un-democratic gatekeepers on the job.
Scott - just cause you haven't imagined it, doesn't mean it won't come to exist.
and
"look for a lot more noise and nonsense in your daily news feed without those "authoritarian" and un-democratic gatekeepers on the job."
I've found that humans are pretty good at cutting out the noise. I don't buy "US" magazine or subscribe to news feeds that are junk...
These feels like two pretty linear quotes about a chaotic environment.
Take TV news versus print, for example. TV is more immediate than print, it's more engaging and it's easier to digest -- those are all good things. But it tends to be ankle deep, on balance, and more emotional. That's not a slap on broadcast, just recognizing inherent flaws.
We know professional journalism has had plenty of flaws, but news without news professionals will put the onus on readers to discern what is actual information and what isn't. That's good thing, and I'm sure people are up to it, but don't deny that it has its drawbacks. If want some concrete examples, go pick up Farhad Manjoo's "True Enough."
Citizen journalism sounds great, but it has flaws. Don't ignore them now, when its early. Figure out what those flaws are while we can still fix them.
I don't care whether newspapers live or die. It's just a medium. (Yes, the singular of "media.") It may well be it's an outdated medium. It's certainly a wasteful, expensive and environmentally harmful medium.
However, when newspapers die (so what? good riddance) the services that newspapers have traditionally supplied - such as serving as watchdogs for even the smallest municipalities, taxing bodies and so on - remain necessary to a functioning democracy. What happens when governments make decisions with no one watching?
And it's tedious, people. Maybe some of you are experienced with this. Sitting through three-hour meeting of county commissioners, poring through stacks of facts and figures, following up to ask questions, finding alternate points of view - this is time consuming and not a whole lot of fun. When there are no reporters at these meetings, who will do this? Do you think it is no longer necessary? Will citizen journalists spend hours - unpaid - going line by line over the police board's budget?
It's not all about national politics. Yeah, that's exactly. It's sexy. But only a tiny percentage of reporters cover national politics. Only a small percentage work in major cities. The majority are in small cities and tiny towns across the country. When the newspaper dies in these small cities and towns, will bloggers attend all the board meetings? Investigate the documents? Will unpaid citizen journalists do it? Maybe. Maybe this will be the case. I don't see anyone addressing this issue.
And no, this stuff doesn't have to be published *on paper*. It isn't the publication process CJR was talking about. It isn't the medium. It's the reporting process, the mission and function of journalism. That must change also, I agree. Still, don't you want someone watching your police board? Your school board? Your park commission? I do.
I had been under the impression that the First Amendment read that Congress must not pass any law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
The Founding Fathers may only have had Gutenberg's press to refer to but they weren't stupid.
But this is besides the point. Your comment doesn't engage the thrust of our argument - that the constitution does not state that the news media (or even journalism for that matter) is necessary for democracy. It says that freedom of speech is. Yes, newspapers enjoy that freedom - like the rest of us - but that doesn't mean they are necessary.
As to your broader argument, I can speak, as a working newspaper journalist for nearly 30 years, of endless brain-dead corporate decisions and the publication of appallingly stupid and shoddy prose. The collapse of the newspaper industry has a pronouncedly self-inflicted element.
That apart, I'm afraid that I'm dubious about your glowing hopes for the new democratic age. As a copy editor, I have been fighting a rear-guard action these 30 years to ensure that the newspapers for which I worked published rpose that was factually accurate and clear. What newspapers offer is information that someone has made an attempt to verify. The uncertainty of verification is what leaves me suspicious of many blogs, Internet site, Wikipedia entries, and other manifestations of the New Order. "Messy like democracy" glosses over this point. To make informed decisions, people need reliable information.
Perhaps the news industry's collapse is self-inflicted, but I suspect some strong structural forces are at play. Moreover, I'm sure some big players may survive (and possible evolve beyond recognition). More exciting is the new players will emerge. As Steven Johnson argues, I think we'll back in 30 years and see a written media that is richer, more diverse and healthier than the one today. We just can't imagine what it looks like.
That said, no one is arguing that there is going to be a glowing democratic utopia - just that the future is going to look different, better in many ways, possibly worse in others. Democracy, however, isn't going to collapse if newspapers disappear. That was the offensive and specific claim we were targeting.
"While technological and economic forces certainly battered newspapers, journalism also delivered a one-two punch to its own jaw.
First, financially strapped newspapers undermined their comparative advantage by replacing audience-attracting local exclusives with cheaper national content. Then, the providers of that national content diverted resources from tough-to-report investigative journalism that builds loyal readership and into paparazzi-like birdcage liner that unconvincingly portrays politicians, CEOs and their minions as celebrities.
The most preventable tragedy was the deterioration of quality. Downsized local publications were all but forced to rely on more national content, but that content didn't have to become so vapid."
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Sirota is speaking of the USA, with an eye particularly on Washington DC. He is a progressive voice who was a steady and effective critic of the Republican administration. I agree that newspapers have been damaged severely by decline of quality local content. Radio broadcasting is the same. Spreading common content across a chain is understandably desirable for the operators but does not serve the consumer well.
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thank you
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