Print News Fading, Still Source of Much News

CNet's Dan Farber took a look, not only at the popular news of how print media is dying a slow death, but also what contribution to the news print journalists are still making. According to research quoted, while the physical publications are quickly becoming a thing of the past much of the news that makes its way into circulation via blogs and other means still originates from the hard work of those print journalists. (We discussed a similar perspective on the news a week back.) "While the Internet is growing as the place where people go for news, the revenue simply isn't catching up fast enough. The less obvious part of the Internet overtaking newspapers as the main source for national and international news is that much of the seed content--the original reporting that breaks national and international news and is subsequently refactored by legions of bloggers--comes from the reporters and editors working at the financially strapped newspapers and national and local television outlets. [...] As the financial pressures mount--the outlook for 2009 is dismal--and the cost cutting continues, we can only hope that the original news reporting by top-flight journalists is not a major casualty."

Comments

What a sad world

[phorest]

The quick and the easy = AP, Reuters
The long and difficult = Local Reportage

When the metro newspapers finally figure out that a lot of folks actually like non-national stories again, they may be able to save themselves. Uniqueness and specialization are the drivers of everything online. Just running AP feeds will NOT bring in quality revenue.

Re:What a sad world

[WindowlessView]

That Indian webcam parrot isn't gonna have to explain himself in the hallways, or over drinks at the local watering hole, thus can be legitimately more objective.

There is a difference between reporting and stenography.

This system adds no value. Even if people had the time to watch the House and Senate in session all day, it would provide very few and only the most superficial and unimportant facts of a story. Some outsourced entity simply summarizing the activity just gives me a condensed version of the unimportant.

Real reporting involves digging up the story below the surface. C-SPAN can show people the southern Republican senators pious "free market" words on a Detroit bailout but without knowing how deeply their hands are in Toyota's, Honda's, etc., pockets you have just consumed so much hot air.

Re:What a sad world

[rtechie]

My website is basically an aggregation of local news sources from all over our area and encompasses some 15 different local news sources.

So you're a thief.

People seem to want that and while I wish I wasn't leeching I just don't have the budget, time or staff (I'm one person doing this in 1.5 hours a day) to "report" on stuff.

Exactly, you're a thief. The real work that newspapers do is REPORTING, actually calling or talking to principals in question, doing investigations etc. EVERYTHING else the newspaper does from classifieds to comics to sports scores is intended to support those tasks. If you're reprinting the actual work (the reporting) without reprinting the advertising and additional bullshit YOU ARE STEALING and YOU, and you personally, are going to put them out of business.

I'm looking at the front page of your site right now and it's about beer and stories ripped out of the local police blotter, hardly incisive journalism there. OTHO, when you venture into original reporting (as you did with the superintendent story) the site becomes non-crappy.

Is any of this sinking in? If you want to run a news site you have to do your own reporting, PERIOD, otherwise you're at least as bad as the Pirate Bay or similar sites. If you don't have time to do much original reporting, ONLY do the original reporting. There is no rule saying that your site has to be updated every day. If you want to drive more traffic to your site see if you can get your stories LINKED on other local news sources.

Personally, I would STOP and join a larger news organization like IndyMedia. If there's no IndyMedia site in your area you can start one.

Painful evolution

[DoofusOfDeath]

This issue scares me. We need more, not fewer, journalists to watch over our government and businesses.

Hopefully, people will eventually realize that one way or another, we need to pay for reporting to get done.

My fear is that we won't realize that, and figure out a way to pay for it, until too late. That is, until legions of seasoned investigative journalists have left for greener pastures, and many good journalism schools have been shut down.

The demise of our media baron overlords

[presidenteloco]

I for one welcome.

Here in Canada our mainstream newspapers and main news TV programs are all owned by two large corporations, CTVGlobeMedia and CanWestGlobal, whose editorial stance is somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.

I mean the term democratic socialist media mogul is kind of an oxymoron isn't it.

It will be interesting to see if the blogosphere ends up with any particular bias that is different than what good citizens are pablum-fed in their daily TV news broadcast.

I surely hope so.

Although I am not sure that the move from people all having one spoon-fed opinion to a state of truthy factoid bombardment from all sides leading to a catatonic equal acceptance of or non-committal to any old statement or viewpoint is really a victory.

Crowd chants:
"WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS"
"WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS"
"WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS"

Pathetic squeaky voice in background:
"umm, errr, I'm not."

Re:"Top-flight journalists??"

[earlymon]

It's not just objectivity - it should also be about insight, intelligence and analysis. My personal citation - Edward R. Murrow. (The irony that he was a broadcast journalist is not lost on me.)

Got a new political or skulduggery scandal? Add a "-gate" suffix to it. Great. No intelligence there whatsoever. Woodward and Bernstein WORKED for their insights. Now I see/read/hear yearly about a "-gate" with no effort by the reporter, yet - what is it? - in their minds they're the new W&B?

Dan Rather became popular - IMO - or for me at least - because he was the young reporter always calling Nixon to task during Nixon's press conferences - and getting it right.

Later, in the 1991 Gulf War, Rather said, and I quote from memory - "the F-15E - the E is for Eagle - blah blah blah." Ludicrous. I would want to fault Rather's intelligence, but it may have been the whole broadcast journalistic system that led to someone feeding him that nonsense into his earpiece for him to parrot.

I've talked to reporters, socially - a LOT of them. They have one thing in common and that's a general "I'm going to trick you" or "I'm smarter than you" attitude. That's my experience anyways. Unlike their better predecessors, they aren't smarter and they don't think things through.

Short attention span thinking does not lead to incisive reporting.