The Noisy and Prolonged Death of Journalism

The war of words between the old and the new media is heating up some more. Eric Schmidt has an op-ed in Rupert Murdoch's WSJ (ironic, that) explaining to newspapers how Google wants to, and is trying to, help them. Kara Swisher's BoomTown column translates and deconstructs Schmidt's argument, hilariously. A few days back, the Washington Post's Michael Gerson became the latest journo to bemoan the death of journalism at the hands of the Internet; and investigative blogger Radley Balko quickly called B.S. on Gerson's claim that (all?) bloggers simply steal from (all?) hard-working, honest, ethical print journalists.

Comments

the real threat will be government intervention

[Shivetya]

seeing an "emergency" someone will step in with government money, more regulation, etc, and it just goes downhill from here.

Democrat Henry Waxman says that our imperial federal government will be involved in shaping the future of journalism in this country. He claims that it is "essential to U.S. democracy." John Leibowitz, the Chairman of the FTC says, "News is a public good ... We should be willing to take action if necessary to preserve the news that is vital to democracy."

See one story at http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9CAJBQ80&show_article=1

I am far less worried about big media companies and the like. I am more than inclined to fear the Federal Government getting involved. Worse, they will twist the meaning to lay claim that any press other than "printed" is not covered "exactly" by the Constitution thereby allowing them to "help" out by providing some regulation. Very similar to how they exploit the fact that Radio isn't specifically listed in the Constitution/BOR and therefor they have a right to affect them. Sad is how many cheer it on who don't like AM talk radio without understanding that giving the government a foot in the door opens all to the affect.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[jimbolauski]

The little bit of journalistic integrity left will be destroyed if the government starts picking up the tab. Newspapers will have a vested interest in getting funding so support of one candidate or another will be rewarded with money, instead of just interviews, questions at press conferences, and leaked memos.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[QuoteMstr]

Just like the BBC, that depraved pit of corruption and bias.

Err, wait: I misspelled FOX.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[paiute]

The little bit of journalistic integrity left will be destroyed if the government starts picking up the tab. Newspapers will have a vested interest in getting funding so support of one candidate or another will be rewarded with money, instead of just interviews, questions at press conferences, and leaked memos.

This was actually an issue in Boston recently, when the city gave a small minority paper a loan to stay in business:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/17/menino_offers_loan_to_keep_banner_afloat/

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[ArcherB]

The little bit of journalistic integrity left will be destroyed if the government starts picking up the tab. Newspapers will have a vested interest in getting funding so support of one candidate or another will be rewarded with money, instead of just interviews, questions at press conferences, and leaked memos.

As much as I hate to say it, it's that way now. NBC and it's sister stations are all owned by GE (at least until they sell to Comcast soon). This includes MSNBC. MSNBC is a very left-of-center network. While it has been shown that all media was biased toward Obama in the last election (yes, even Fox News... numbers don't lie), MSNBC went above and beyond the call of duty and by far the biggest Obama supporter of all the major media networks.

Now what does this have to do with GE? Who do you think would give more for green programs, Obama or McCain? Obviously Obama. Who stands to make a fortune off green programs? GE! GE makes the wind generators for wind farms, CFL and LED light bulbs and are well invested in other "green" areas. While it's great that GE is taking such a stance to greenify our world, it's not so great that they use their media subsidiaries to shape public opinion toward favoring one political party over the other to help their bottom line.

However, you are correct that it would get much worse if the government were paying the bills. You could expect that whichever presidential candidate or political party that promised to increased funding to the press outlets would get the more favorable treatment.

With that said, there should be some kind of oversight to prevent the corporations that own the press from using it to drive agendas with the purpose of increasing profits. For that matter, the press shouldn't be driving agendas at all!

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[NoYob]

Sad is how many cheer it on who don't like AM talk radio without understanding that giving the government a foot in the door opens all to the affect.

Isn't that always the case?

When the Bush Admin was grabbing all this power for the Executive branch, those of us that found it disturbing, were called a few things and we didn't understand the necessity of it since we're in a time of war - or some such non-sense.

Now comes the Democrats and the Obama Administration. Do the Republicans get it now? Of course not. The Democrats don't get it either, of course, and if they get their way, the inevitable Republicans that will get back power in some future election, will be able to do that same thing. So, in your AM Radio example, if the folks who want that out of the way, well, we just may see our beloved NPR bite the dust.

Power always flips back and forth - which is a good thing because we'd have a really corrupt government,otherwise - see Venezuela or Iran - if it didn't and I for one welcome the flipping back and forth because in the long run it does limit one sides damage or the others.

But the trouble is, once Government gets power, it doesn't give it up: regardless of who's in power. Just look at how the Obama Administration kept all the executive power that the Bush Admin took.

Change indeed.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[mikael_j]

I take it by your "government is always worse than private sector" bias that you're most likely american.

Here in Sweden the general consensus seems to be that SVT ("Sveriges Television" lit. "The swedish television") is the most reliable broadcaster while private ones are considered a lot less reliable by most people except for the extreme right who insist on SVT being "communist", "leftist" and "government controlled", they even use these descriptions now even though we currently have a right-wing coalition government.

What's important is that there is separation between government-funded media outlets and the government that funds them, not that governments shouldn't fund media outlets (SVT has a lot of advantages over privately funded television networks, such as how they can broadcast shows that only appeal to a fairly small subset of the population while the private networks prefer constantly going for the least common denominator).

/Mikael

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[MikeBabcock]

After Fox News won their argument in Florida establishing there was no need for them to report only the truth or facts, I see lots of room for regulation.

You feel free to believe that a free market can self-regulate, but don't put the media under that umbrella. We all know what sells, what makes money, and its not good unbiased reporting with lots of research and fact checking. Those things were only ever done on the basis of personal or imposed integrity, a sense of honour that seems to be mostly lost.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Jawn98685]

seeing an "emergency" someone will step in with government money, more regulation, etc, and it just goes downhill from here.

Just... [exasperated gasp] fuck. How do you Ronald Regan "all government is evil" fan-boys keep coming up with this stuff? I mean, where, exactly, is there any evidence to suggest that "the government" is going to step in and take over the role held by the free press? No, the article you cite is evidence of quite to opposite (that which you claim not to fear nearly as much), the inordinate influence of big media companies in shaping how, when, and where we get access to information. Sure, the government, having been bought and paid for by those interests, will have a role, but it is the electorate's stupidly steadfast refusal to recognize that their "representative government" has been sold to the highest bidder that is to blame, not "the government".

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Volante3192]

Now what does this have to do with GE? Who do you think would give more for green programs, Obama or McCain? Obviously Obama. Who stands to make a fortune off green programs? GE! GE makes the wind generators for wind farms, CFL and LED light bulbs and are well invested in other "green" areas.

GE also makes jet engines, for example, which military aircraft use. I think they would have been fine with either candidate.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[HangingChad]

seeing an "emergency" someone will step in with government money, more regulation, etc, and it just goes downhill from here.

Then how do you explain the BBC? The closest thing we have on this side of the pond is NPR. Any coincidence that the two best pure news sources anywhere both get public funding?

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Raffaello]

CPB, PBS? How has the fact that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS, created by an act of congress and funded by federal tax dollars, in any way stopped public television stations from covering stories critical of Federal Government officials?

If anything, the CPB via PBS stations has funded some of the toughest critics - of the lead up to the Iraq war, the contested 2000 election, etc. - so much so that the right tried very hard to get the CPB and PBS entirely de-funded.

Even the US Congress is more than capable of creating a non-profit, private corporation that funds real, fact-checked, investigative journalism. If this is the only way we can continue to have such reporters, whether they are published in print or on the net, then we should certainly do so.

Such an entity - a hypothetical Corporation for Public Newsgathering - could also fund investigative bloggers. The only criterion would be original, investigative, fact-checked news content, whether published on paper or on-line.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[MikeBabcock]

Neither of you replied to precisely the point I made -- you can't trust anything you read or hear in the media right now because there is no standard of truth to which they are legally bound.

I mentioned only Fox News because they're the ones who fought for the right to lie to the public, not because I think there's any difference between them and the rest. In fact my argument implied the opposite -- that I think all media can and will lie to us at any time for ratings.

You can find the reporting on the case from whichever outlet you prefer by Googling something like "fox news truth first amendment florida court case" which worked for me, although several of the headlines seem to read things like "Fox News gets okay to misinform public".

I love how you put words in my mouth, by the way, without asking what kind of regulation I'd insinuated at all because you believe that government people are inherently more crooked than private sector people.

I believe strongly that Fox News should have lost this case, that knowingly publishing falsehoods and claiming them to be true ought to be illegal for any media outlet, and I believe most of the American public expects this to be the case already when it clearly is not.

PS the First Amendment is government intervention. Jeez.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Bob-taro]

Here in Sweden the general consensus seems to be that SVT ("Sveriges Television" lit. "The swedish television") is the most reliable broadcaster while private ones are considered a lot less reliable by most people except for the extreme right who insist on SVT being "communist", "leftist" and "government controlled", they even use these descriptions now even though we currently have a right-wing coalition government.

Well, that's what the government and the left want us to think here, too. And they also label their opponents "the extreme right".

SVT has a lot of advantages over privately funded television networks, such as how they can broadcast shows that only appeal to a fairly small subset of the population while the private networks prefer constantly going for the least common denominator

So wasting taxpayer money on programs that few people watch is an advantage? The phrase "least common denominator" sounds elitist. Are the people who run and watch SVT better than "common" people? Do they deserve to appropriate "common" people's funds to produce this superior programming?

I watch U.S. public television myself, and I like a lot of the programming, but I would still support eliminating it because I don't think it's a good use of public money.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[tomhath]

Just like the BBC, that depraved pit of corruption and bias. Err, wait: I misspelled FOX.

For every one government owned media outlet that's even-handed I can name ten that are tools of the state, but that's not important.

What is important is the fact that biased news outlets such as Fox or CNN can exist in the private sector.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," - Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[tomhath]

If anything, the CPB via PBS stations has funded some of the toughest critics...

...of the Bush administration, which is why the Republican controlled government tried to reign NPR in, and which is why the Democratic controlled Congress immediately turned NPR loose again in 2006.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[gplus]

I would say that BBC, and other European state financed outlets, are depraved pits of political correctness and fake neutral bias. Masters of dishonest crap journalism.

The only honest TV journalist I know of, is Jon Steward. And he's not a journalist...

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[HereIAmJH]

Probably going to piss off some Neocons, but....

How do you Ronald Regan "all government is evil" fan-boys

Reagonites are about small government, they don't necessarily categorize it as good or evil. Their theory is that a smaller government is less wasteful, and it probably is. But here is where it goes off the rails: while they may be saying they are for less spending and a less invasive government, their actions have been the opposite. What they have done is outsourced what would have been done by the government and reduced the tax burden of the wealthy. Or maybe we just misunderstood, and 'trickle down' was referring to the debt burden.

Some examples would include; warrant-less wiretaps, Haliburton/KBR getting contracts for services the military was already equipped to do (mess facilities, water purification), and civilian military base security.

When the Treasury Department reported the national debt in Sept 1980 we owed $900 billion. In Sept 2008 it was $10 trillion.

President..Overspent..% Debt Increase
Carter.....$ 287b..... 46%
Reagon.....$1,695b.....187%
Bush Sr....$1,462b..... 56%
Clinton....$1,610b..... 40%
Bush Jr....$4,351b..... 77%

On the actual topic of news, I would argue that there is more potential demand for their product thanks to the internet, they just haven't figured out how to monetize it. From my personal experience, I never read newspapers. And I'm old enough that if I had been inclined to develop the habit, I would have before internet news was established. But I read international news online daily, and it includes a lot that would not have made it in a single newspaper. I'm not necessarily against paying for quality news, but no one is offering a compelling solution.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[ShieldW0lf]

So wasting taxpayer money on programs that few people watch is an advantage?

Do you feel the same way about educational resources? Do you feel the same way about scientific research? Given the choice between educational programming that that few people watch, or fart jokes that appeal to a broad audience, which is a better use of community resources? Stretched over a 10 year span, which do you think is a more valuable resource... 10 years worth of educational programming that remains relevant, or 10 years of fart jokes about former celebrities that no one pays any further attention to?

Perhaps we could make the quality programming free, and allow people to take out student loans so they can be institutionalized and watch fart jokes if they are so inclined?

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Ash Vince]

Sounds like the BBC. The BBC is great, but I do wonder about it's future. I hope it survives.

I do too but it unlikely. Rupert Murdoch has done a behind the scenes deal with the Tories: His news empires will do everything legally possible to swing the British public to voting tory if they promise to carve up the BBC when they get into power. He hates having to compete with a huge statefunded body that brings almost the same level of bargaining power to TV program negotiations that his company commands.

Currently the BBC has a huge stock of back catalogue prgramming that he needs to but in order to pad out his satellite network channels. He would rather he could force them to sell cheap but if he refuses to buy the BBC just twiddle their thumbs until he caves in, their is no reason for them to do otherwise. Normal companies on the other hand have to try and maintain a bottom line so have to cave in or try and sue for monopolistic practices.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Vancorps]

Isn't this a sad state of affairs when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are considered honest media? JS even called out Obama for his speech echoing that of one Bush made for the troop surge. I've been trying to watch more of the other networks lately because I stopped for so long, I wanted to see how they'd improved. MSNBC is pretty much the same as it has ever been although they seem to support the Daily Show. Fox has pretty much been doin a nose dive since they were created. Remember when O'Reilly was watchable? Certainly not the case anymore when you have him blatantly asking people to ignore the constitution to state how they really feel public policy should be. They of course do everything in their power to discredit the Daily Show. Then there's CNN, well, they are a shadow of their former selves, the CNN story is the truly sad one as they used to be great! They seem neutral to the Daily Show but the mere fact that all three report on the Daily Show and even go so far as editing clips to make it look like JS is saying something completely different, thank you Fox News, this is what is truly very sad! The show that advertises itself as fake news is considered more legitimate than all the major outlets! Thankfully there are other sources for the rest of us, I'll try again in another year or so to see if there have been anymore changes in TV news. I don't hold out much hope though.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Wyatt Earp]

When CNN started defending the Administration by critiquing a Saturday Night Live skit, I knew they were less honest than Fox.

And no, I don't remember when O'Reilly was ever watchable.

Fark headlines are more honest than most of the news media out there right now.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Zalbik]

Fox News fought a fight against government oppression of freedom of the press. Just like freedom of speech, I would rather idiots have the right to say their idiotic things than leave it up to the government to decide what idiotic things can be said.
...

The government should not exist to keep you happy nor to keep you from being sad/mad/whatever other emotion. If you feel a news outlet is lying to you, get your news from a different source. Trusting what ANYONE without verifying is your own damn fault.

Exactly right! And this should not only be true of news journalism, this should be extended to other industries as well...

- Is your doctor is lying to you about your tumor? Go to a different doctor!
- Engineer lying about the safety of that bridge, use a different engineer!
- Is your teacher lying to your children about whether the Holocaust occurred, find a different teacher!

All of these people should be allowed to make up whatever lies they feel like, cause I'd much rather have idiots have the right to say their idiotic things than leave it up to the government to decide what idiotic things can be said. Get yourself a medical/engineering/teaching/etc degree so you can verify everything anyone ever says to you. Obviously nobody should be held to any kind of professional accountability, because freedom of speech trumps all!

P.S.
And because this is Slashdot, I feel the need to point out that the above post is sarcasm...

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[herksc]

I watch U.S. public television myself, and I like a lot of the programming, but I would still support eliminating it because I don't think it's a good use of public money.

Do you realize you are talking about .013% of the federal budget? This means that if you paid $10,000 in federal taxes last year, that $1.30 went to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That's $400 million in total federal tax funding vs. 5.6 billion that the UK government gives to the BBC.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Delwin]

The core of the problem is add driven news.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[stewbacca]

Most PBS money comes from private contributions to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Trying to claim that PBS is some sort of tax money pit is disingenuous, since very little tax money goes to PBS.

Besides, if one can't watch a single episode of Frontline and immediately recognize the journalistic and artistic superiority it consistently displays compared to ABC/NBC/CBS and most cable outlets, then I suppose we have nothing further to discuss.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[operagost]

If anything, the CPB via PBS stations has funded some of the toughest critics - of the lead up to the Iraq war, the contested 2000 election, etc. - so much so that the right tried very hard to get the CPB and PBS entirely de-funded.

So... where's the criticism of the current administration? Or are our President and Congress suddenly flawless?

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[slamb]

I'm not going to believe the media was biased in his favor without qualitatively different evidence what you supplied.

Here's some ideas. You might work on proving that they failed in some of the following ways and that those failures systematically favored Obama.

• the facts they presented were incorrect
• the facts they presented were irrelevant
• they omitted significant facts
• they masked editorial pieces as objective journalism
• the values described in their editorials are not shared by the majority of Americans
• the facts and values described in their editorials do not support their conclusions

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[dkleinsc]

Jon Stewart has made that exact point repeatedly, that something is fundamentally wrong when CNN is looking to Comedy Central for integrity in broadcasting. Whenever he calls someone out for spreading BS, it's truly embarrassing to watch them defend themselves. For instance, watch his appearance on Crossfire (which led directly to the show being canceled), and his very appropriate grilling of Jim Cramer.

Here's my take on why he is so successful at doing this: He, unlike most TV personalities, didn't come up through the ranks at one of the big 3 networks. The people who did had to swallow a certain amount of BS in order to make it to where they are now, and are at least partially complicit. That means that unlike Jon, they are reluctant to call people out for spreading BS because they're doing the same thing, they know they're doing it, and don't want to invite a reprisal.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Penguinisto]

I mean, where, exactly, is there any evidence to suggest that "the government" is going to step in and take over the role held by the free press?

The so-called "Fairness Doctrine" stands out...

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[hrimhari]

Wonderful rhetoric. Except...

Free pizza doesn't have any added value to the public, whereas educational broadcasting does.

Corruption and imperialism destroyed Rome.

Oil helps, but it's no excuse for success or failure. Just see all the oil-rich countries in Middle East. Wait, no need to go that far. Look south, to Venezuela. The people is starving, there's no electricity, but gas costs 10 cents a gallon.

I like education. I like health. Not because it specifically favors me, but because it makes people a little more likely to do conscientious choices than the option. I also love pizza, but I don't see free pizza helping in that equation.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[Vancorps]

Holy crap man, thanks for reminding me about Crossfire, I just went and watched it again. It's hilarious to see how they just don't get it that he's not a journalist.

I think you have a point, but I also think its because he comes from a comedy background where blunt honesty is pretty common.

Re:the real threat will be government intervention

[amRadioHed]

There was that study that shows listeners of NPR were the least misinformed about the Iraq war while Fox News viewers were the most misinformed. Every media outlet has a bias, but they are not all equal when it comes to accurately reporting facts. NPR isn't perfect, but it is by far the best mainstream media source we have.

Rupert Murdock...

[MickyTheIdiot]

...has been more deadly to the art of journalism than all of the technical innovations in the last 200 years put together.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[MickyTheIdiot]

Troll?? Really?

Murdock has ushered in the era of factless journalism and pure opinion as news. Right wing slashdotters might not like that, but that's what it looks like from my POV, ergo this isn't a Troll.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[corbettw]

You made an emotionally charged comment that was designed to illicit a response. That's a classic troll.

I understand it's not always avoidable; I do it myself from time to time. And when I get modded Troll because of it, I might be momentarily upset by it but I generally don't whine about it in a subsequent post. Because that's another classic troll technique.

Try to provide something more substantive to the conversation, and when those times occur when you just can't then don't whine about how others view your opinion.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[mcgrew]

Bad writing has don its damage as well. TFA was BORING. I read maybe the first four paragraphs and almost fell asleep. The guy writes as if he's being paid by the word.

When a blog is informative and readable, and the newspaper article reads like the writer didn't really want to write it but slogged though it for the money, why would I read the paper?

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[LS]

People want to see random strangers hung in the streets for witchcraft.

Murdoch is not to be defended.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[maxume]

I'm not really defending Murdoch, I'm pointing out that the problem is a little more pervasive than the guy who likes to make money from it.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[MattSausage]

I'll bite the trollbait. The WSJ has been embarrassingly lowbrow since Murdoch took over. Constant spewing ridiculous articles about the left and/or the President. And when that doesn't fill enough space, they might as well be friggin TeenScene: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125980303001573939.html

The Wall Street Journal is an example of what happens to a proper and respected news outlet when owned by Rupert Murdoch. No one is suggesting the WSJ is factless other than yourself in your sarcasm. And strawmen such as that is EXACTLY what Fox News is known for.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[10101001 10101001]

You made an emotionally charged comment that was designed to illicit a response. That's a classic troll.

Not quite. It's one thing to make an emotionally charged comment in the middle of a discussion and another to make an emotionally charged comment to, as you state, illicit a response. Only the latter is trolling. Intent is the main factor in trolling.

I understand it's not always avoidable; I do it myself from time to time. And when I get modded Troll because of it, I might be momentarily upset by it but I generally don't whine about it in a subsequent post. Because that's another classic troll technique.

A more appropriate reason, IMHO, to not respond is because it's pointless to try to defend your intentions with statements about your intentions, especially to people who have already decided how they wish to interpret your statements. The one general exception is a miscommunication, but that involves rewording what one says, usually.

Try to provide something more substantive to the conversation, and when those times occur when you just can't then don't whine about how others view your opinion.

Providing some substantive to the conversation and how people view you aren't necessarily related. Consider how people would view Charles Manson's comments in a discussion of manipulation of others. Quite simply, emotion tends to override the better judgment of many people, regardless of how relevant or insightful comments are. It really doesn't matter how politely you state what should be said. Of course, I agree that whining doesn't interject anything useful.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[Raffaello]

You obviously don't understand Murdock very well if you think that Government funded journalism would be his dream.

Hint: we already have government funded journalism - it's called The News Hour on your local PBS and CPB funded public television station. This is what government funded journalism looks like - fact-checked, truly balanced (not merely in name only like FOX), with no fear of taking on strong vested financial interests, and bureaucratic government interests.

Now, compare the content of the News Hour with the content of FOX News. Is the News Hour even remotely like anything Murdock's FOX would put on the air?

Governrnent funded journalism is Rupert Murdock's worst nightmare, not his fantasy, because more government funded journalism would mean more of those independently verified, pesky facts that contradict FOX's loudly trumpeted, absurdly biased bullshit.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[Raffaello]

The problem is that the FCC gutted the requirement that broadcast networks run their news divisions as a community service, even if this was at a loss. Once network news divisions became profit centers rather than pro-bono losses, they were financially required to present as news that which people wanted to see, not what is actually true. (i.e., corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to maximize profit - they can't run their news division at a loss without the risk of shareholder lawsuit).

It is sad that what most people want to watch as "news" is not actually true, but there is and always has been a corrective to this: require that that which is labelled "news" actually be fact checked and balanced, and require networks to provide such real news as one of the requirements for holding a broadcast license.

Return news divisions to their former status - i.e., one of the community service requirements for the granting of a broadcast license - and we will return to the days of responsible, fact-checked, balanced journalism.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[Saint Stephen]

Really, that's such a naive point of view. Of course Fox has an obvious opinion, but it's also quite full of facts. Exactly like PBS news.

C-Span is an example of something that doesn't have an opinion; not Fox or CNN or CBS or ABC or PBS or MSNBC or anybody.

All the rest of them are exactly the same; Fox is just more obvious because they don't hide behind the appearance of self-grandeur the rest of them do.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[Idiomatick]

CNN>MSNBC>Fox in terms of embarrassingly bad reporting. Not that I think CNN is any sort of shining beacon.

Re:Rupert Murdock...

[Cytotoxic]

C-Span is an example of something that doesn't have an opinion; not Fox or CNN or CBS or ABC or PBS or MSNBC or anybody.

Somebody find some mod points for C-span! If you really want unbiased coverage - at least in the coverage itself if not in the choice of what to cover - you need to watch C-span. If you spend a week or two following their coverage, you'll soon discover who is a talking-point party monkey and who isn't, because they air the briefings without edits.

You'll often see the spokesman for party X briefing reporters about the issue of the day using an obviously poll-tested turn of phrase that you've never heard before. That night on the news you can flip channels and hear all of your favorite unbiased news anchors using exactly that turn of phrase in their own "unbiased and objective" coverage of the news. (and I am talking about news here, not opinion pieces)

You'll even get to see source of the latest phenomenon in news - the story of the day or week. Ever hear those commentators telling you that "the White House will be focusing on Issue X this week"? Ever notice that the unbiased and objective news organization suddenly shifts their stories to cover Issue X, even though nobody at all was talking about it last week? Watch C-span and you'll actually see that sausage being made. You get to watch the policy makers tell the media what issues to cover and which sources and angles to cover. Then you can tune in your favorite stations and watch them do exactly as told.

I guess it might have always been that way, but C-span certainly gave us all a new level of visibility to the lack of personal initiative in the press corps. Both left and right you can come up with examples of this strategy at work.

Kara who? Boomwhat?

[Rogerborg]

Well, I guess whoring your own clumsily written anti-aggregator OpEd to an aggregator site is one way to get traffic and survive in the Google age.

They ignored "The Third Wave" to their peril.

[MtViewGuy]

I think in retrospect, the mainstream media should have heeded the warning of one Alvin Toffler, who wrote in The Third Wave in 1980 that as communication technologies improves, the days of the the mass media controlling media distribution will come to an end.

With cable TV, small-dish satellite TV and the public Internet, Toffler's warning has become 2009 reality. The only survivors will be those who can quickly embrace taking full advantage of today's communication technologies, and Time, Inc.'s recent "fantasy demo" of an electronic edition of Sports Illustrated designed to take full advantage to future tablet computers (such as the much-rumored Apple tablet) is proof there are some in the mainstream media who understand they must change with the times (pun not intended :-) ).

Re:They ignored "The Third Wave" to their peril.

[Quiet_Desperation]

I think some of the cyberpunk writers had it right. Has the "information" age made people better equipped with, well, information? Are people more knowledgeable? Or are they retreating further and further into their own private virtual reality bubbles. Are they seeing the infinite shades of gray in this world, or is it all just angels and demons, black and white and us versus them?

And none of this finger pointing at one side or the other. Just aboput everyone is guilty. The moment you start identifying with a political party or an ideological label, or thinking you're better because of your choice of operating system or the car you drive or books you read you have become part of the problem.

All this tech has done is feed into the antiquated tribal mentality that might have served us well 20,000 years ago, but now it's just ripping everything apart. Watch yourselves closely for the next couple of days as news stories appear. See if you catch yourself just making huge, broadly based assumptions about certain people. Question every assumption. Be skeptical about *everything* just for a while.

It's impossible to be an independent thinker any more. If I praise Obama on one thing, I get called a socialist. If I criticize him on another thing, I'm called a right wingnut. There is no correct side here- they are all profoundly effed in the head.

It's not the death of journalism

[davidwr]

It's just the death of journalism as we know it.

Print, TV, and radio news outlets are going to have to decide if they are in the print/tv/radio news or if they are in the business of news.

If it's the former, they will die. If its the latter, they can survive if they pay attention.

Re:It's not the death of journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same mistake railway companies did. They thought AND insisted that they were in the business of trains and railroads instead of a CARRIER, or cargo transport. Now Fedex, UPS, airlines, cars, et al, have taken over the business of "transportation," something that was once a monopoly for the rail systems in the industrial era.

Disclaimer: I have worked in the newsroom for a mid-size newspaper.

Likewise, journalism is the business of gathering and disseminating news (supported by ad revenue). Old schoolers are still tied-up to the medium which they see as an investment, and who can blame them since they poured millions for new printing presses in the 80s'; full computer infrastructure changeover in the 90s', all of which should be done paying for itself off by now. And only now this is when they can sit back and relax, and let the machines and its people work itself to make profit for the owner, similar to a landlord. But nope, the internet is here and they need to change everything again. They can either whine and cry to congress, or get on with the times.

Another astoundingly stupid move by the newspapers is undercharging ad rates for online editions. They thought because internet is so "new" with so few readers, and afraid the advertisers wouldn't buy this "virtual" space which doesn't use ink (but does use electricity and CPU cycles, however....), they could "experiment" with charging $50 for 100x100px space for a month, whereas a business card size ads on newsprint would cost $150 for two weeks. Newspapers have really shot themselves in the foot with this introductory rate which has lasted for several years, whereas the smart organizations know their true online operational costs, and these late old-timers will have an uphill battle convincing advertisers that their online space rate is worth the same or greater than their print spaces.

I, for one will not miss newspapers. I will miss journalism.

Re:It's not the death of journalism

[Chris Mattern]

It's just the death of journalism as we know it.

And I feel fine!

EXTRA: towncriers out of work due to printingpress

[emptybody]

The internet does not replace the journalists aka reporters.

it is merely changing the distribution.

The town crier was replaced by the paper boy but journalism, gathering the facts, reporting on events, has lived on.

it is not the printing press that makes a journalist.

My big wish is that factual reporting would regain its place ABOVE the opinionated offerings seen on places such as FOXnews.

Not the Death of Journalism ...

[eldavojohn]

The Noisy and Prolonged Death of Journalism

In Schmidt's piece, he used the word 'journalism' once:

I believe it also requires a change of tone in the debate, a recognition that we all have to work together to fulfill the promise of journalism in the digital age.

Don't ever kid yourself that journalism will die. It's certainly changing but the thing that might die is the old model of power structures and funding around journalism. Journalists will still do reporting and writing for a monetary sum. The channels where that money comes from are rapidly changing ('rapidly' is relative to how historically slow change has been in this world). This friction is creating the death throes of (most) companies involved as money makers in the traditional channels.

It's change, it's probably for the better (as Schmidt notes) but one thing's for sure: it's unavoidable. Adapt or die.

One more thing:

Eric Schmidt has an op-ed in Rupert Murdoch's WSJ (ironic, that)

Never forget that Murdoch still sells eyeballs--at all costs. If it meant betraying a political party or betraying his core values or even displaying another side of the debate, he's here for one thing: money. What we see in the op-ed piece is actually one of the few positive effects of Murdoch's greed. I offer him my rare applause if he had anything to do with this being printed in the WSJ although I'm certain the WSJ printed it to generate revenue and he merely approved of it.

Re:Not the Death of Journalism ...

[paiute]

It's kinda like a turkey in the rain. It gets hit on the head by a drop of water and looks up. As it looks up water drops run down its nasal passages. It continues this strange curiosity til it drowns.

As someone who worked on farms where they raised turkeys I had never noticed large heaps of dead turkey carcasses when it rained. But perhaps this happens with wild turkeys which would make survival in the wild a short experience. So I looked it up.

Of course this anecdote is hilariously false.

Benjamin Franklin would like a word with the original poster.

hard-working, honest, ethical print journalists

[dkleinsc]

Who exactly are they referring to?

- Political journalists, who help their sources insult people and ruin careers anonymously? Or do what Stephen Colbert pointed out was "the White House tells you what to write, you write it down, and print it."
- Sports journalists, who basically are professional sports fans, desperately clinging to rumor, conjecture, and hearsay?
- Business journalists, who often act as cheerleaders for a company's stock more than anything else?
- Slashdot editors? (enough said)

These are not the days of Bernstein, Woodward, Hersch, etc.

Re:hard-working, honest, ethical print journalists

[alen]

perfect example is the congressman from california a few years ago who was thought to have had an intern killed that he was supposed to have an affair with. the media "alleged" he was guilty before he was even arrested

Re:hard-working, honest, ethical print journalists

[corbettw]

Don't kid yourself that there was ever a time when ethical journalists were the norm. There's a reason the most highly coveted prize in journalism is named for a notorious muckraker and yellow journalist.

Re:hard-working, honest, ethical print journalists

[R2.0]

"These are not the days of Bernstein, Woodward, Hersch, etc."

To the contrary - these are EXACTLY the "days of Bernstein, Woodward, Hersch, etc." They are the ones that issued in the modern area of "investigative" journalism (inadvertently or not). The modern journalist's daydreams consist of being the one to take down a presidency and having to decide if Hoffman or Redford will play him in the movie. Given that, what else do we expect from them?

It's a Changing World

[flyneye]

The wonders of the internet and the change they have brought about.(sigh)
When Ford mass produced the "A" and "T" a lot of buggy whip mfg., saddle mfg. and liveries went out of business. Hay production declined in favor of food crops.Horse breeders and trainers suffered. You might say a big industry went teats up. We simply didn't need their services or needed limited quantities. Before that Coach services were displaced by Rail services.
        When News, Music and Movie industries cannot adapt to serve the needs/desires of their benefactors , they die like dinosaurs in a glacier. Of course there will be a lot of whining about lost jobs and hyperbole about the affected economy, but all in all, it's for the best and I welcome it. These were industries that were not friendly or really helpful to the benefactors (us) so their passing for something better is to be welcomed with open arms, minds and hearts. As for the displaced...They too will have to adapt. In the words of the Judge Smales character in the Movie Caddyshack " Well, Danny, the world needs ditchdiggers too."

How about literal death of Journalism?

[roman_mir]

While the Internet may cause 'prolonged death' of traditional journalism, in various countries of the world journalists are being actually killed. In Russia alone, during the years of Putin/Medvedev about 300 journalists died under various violent circumstances.

the newspapers screwed up their business model

[alen]

for years the model was to sell the newspaper for the cost of print and let advertising cover everything else including the profits. in the late 1990's the newspapers should have bought up Ebay and Craigslist or at the very least started a competitor. instead the trust fund babies who run most of the newspapers allowed their content to be commoditized by Google, they lost the advertising market probably because they thought it was beneath them to go online. and now they are crying. the WSJ was an exception to this for a few years, but there are some good financial bloggers out there now that will give them a lot of competition.

I remember 10 years ago if you wanted to sell your apartment in NYC you had to advertise in the NY Times and pay their ridiculous rates. and the supposedly liberal pro-blue collar newspaper that the NY Times is supposed to be has the snobbiest RE section i've ever seen. on sundays you would see people walking around with a copy of the Real Estate section checking out buildings to buy in. these days the realtors still advertise in the NY Times but it's a generic add with the same properties that probably aren't on the market anymore and the goal is to get people to call the office. not to sell a specific property. all the properties for sale are listed on redfin, craiglist, MLS which is open to everyone now

and there have been so many new immigrants in the NYC area lately that it makes sense to advertise in their ethnic non-english newspapers as well.

Paradigm shifts

[bbbaldie]

Not the death of journalism, just the end of old-style journalism. Nearly every industry in the world has been forced to change with time, but journalism was pretty much TV, radio, and print for 50 years. Now the web is out there. Deal with it.

People want to participate

[xzvf]

We used to yell at the TV, complain at the breakfast table to our spouse, hit the steering wheel. If we were really engaged, we'd write a letter to the editor or call the radio station. There was no option for TV, except being in the right place at the right time (the tornado hit my trailer). Now, we can respond within seconds of an article being published, vent anger or correct mistakes. Add insight and expand the story. I find the comments more interesting than the story a surprising amount of the time.

Original blogger reporting

[michaelmalak]

1. WorldNetDaily.com does its own investigative reporting and is always trying to get press credentials to events. Sometimes they get them, and sometimes they don't since they are not "traditional media".
2. We Are Change is an entire nationwide network of aggressive news gatherers.
3. One of Alex Jones' early exploits was to crash the Bohemian Grove and report on it.
4. Many of the armchair bloggers such as myself (when I ran underreported.com from 2002-2004) simply read government websites and scientific literature and report on it. Journalism seems to have this code of ethics that says you have to get a quote from a human being before you can report on it. That's nonsense -- all this stuff is out there on thomas.loc.gov and everywhere else and the traditional media ignores it -- and when they do report on it they don't even bother to link to it.
5. So much action gets recorded on cell phone videos now. Important stuff gets bid out to the traditional media because they're willing to pay more. After they die, the popular bloggers will take it, or it'll just end up on YouTube and bloggers will link to it there.

Hello, I am a professional journalist

[Tobor the Eighth Man]

Let me begin by saying that most comments on /. dealing with traditional journalism quickly turn into a bonfire, cheering the death of traditional journalism and heralding blogs as a bright new dawn with untold promises. I think this is wrongheaded, for reasons I'll get to quickly.

I work for a pretty niche tech magazine as a writer and editor. Much of what I cover is business tech., a lot of venture news and business tech products. It might amuse people how traditionally we do things from a journalistic point of view, since we're frequently writing about the technologies and sites that are changing journalism - editors comb leads and find stories, hand them off to writers who do interviews and then pass the copy back to the editors, who fact-check and rewrite. etc. We have an online component, but we're still very definitely a print publication first.

I think blogging and new journalism has a lot to offer. The distribution method and quick turnaround is great. They can get and exchange news much quicker than I can, although in my particular niche there's not much urgent news, so being a monthly pub. isn't really a problem. But I also think new journalism has a downside, and I think Gerson is right about many of the things he says (never thought I'd say that).

First off, objectivity is not dead. No, you can never be perfectly objective. And objectivity doesn't necessarily mean never expressing an opinion. But it does mean disclosing conflicts of interests (not that traditional journalism has always done a good job of this - it hasn't) and trying to be as honest as possible with your readers. My biggest problem with blogging in general, at least as far as replacing traditional journalism, is that so much of it is done by interested parties. Sure, you can get great info about goings on directly from CEOs and the people involved, but oftentimes it's like hearing about a break-up from only one half of the couple. Business being the way it is, once you're working in an industry, you've got some kind of relationship - however tenuous - with everyone else in it.

I'm not going to name names, but especially in venture and business journalism, many apparently disinterested blogging parties have a history in business themselves, and many are currently engaged in business ventures of their own. There's plenty of people who aren't going to let this cloud their judgment or color their writing, but how can you tell? People talk about new journalism like there's no gatekeepers, but companies and organizations and PR agencies are always going to have gatekeepers. And if it's someone in an industry writing about goings-on in that same industry (which many people see as a big plus for blogging - since, they say, a participant knows more about the situation than an uninvolved third-party journalist), they're going to have a vested interest in not causing too many waves. Sure, some people get big enough or well-read enough that it doesn't matter, and admittedly plenty of lowly traditional journalists have been forbidden from doing a hit piece because they don't have the clout (or their pub. doesn't), but that added conflict of interest certainly can't help matters.

People like to heap scorn on traditional journalism, but there's a very good reason for fact-checking, and there's a very good reason for objectivity. I'm all for new journalism and I read plenty of blogs. I do think that form of journalism is, more or less, the future. But let's not be quite so hasty to discard everything that made traditional journalism what it was (even if it's tarnished, in this day and age), and let's not be quite so quick to put all our faith in blogging. I'm confident that a more concrete code of ethics will develop in blogging, and bloggers who lie and distort will get weeded out just like traditional journalists who've committed the same transgressions tend to be (eventually), but I'm not quite ready to hang up my sad little hat with the press pass or my dreaded red editor's pen just yet.

Re:Hello, I am a professional journalist

[Tobor the Eighth Man]

Oh, and another thing... most of the misdeeds people in this comment thread are attributing to journalists are really the work of columnists. A columnist can write about whatever he wants and is probably the closest thing to the stereotypical blogger in traditional journalism. Columnists aren't journalists (although many of them used to be) because they're writing opinion pieces, mostly, instead of proper journalism. Michael Gerson is a columnist. Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann are the cable equivalent of the columnist. Edward R. Murrow was also a columnist, at least in terms of the work people most remember him for. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke Watergate, those guys are journalists.

I think it says a lot about the state of media in this company that many people can no longer tell the difference.

Re:Hello, I am a professional journalist

[photozz]

I'll address the Objectivity thing. Ok, here's two scenarios:

Print media - Writer and editor let a story slide through with factual errors (IE: most of FOX news). 20 years ago, how would anyone know? Unless we had direct knowledge of the facts, most people would not know the difference. Newspapers at the time were the equivalent of a deaf man on a soapbox yelling at people. One way communication that the majority of people had to take as the truth, regardless of the actual facts.

Online media - Writer and editor let a story slide through with factual errors - The Internet collectively calls bullshit and the writer/editor/blog is discredited. The truth makes it out in the time it takes to type it in. We see it every-single-day. A piece of news becomes a discussion and the truth is generally revealed for all. News is reported, investigated, vetted, buried in peat moss and dug back up before being framed for all to see. This is the advantage of the on-line media and one of the reasons I think print media is scared as hell. They can and have been called out on hidden agendas and sloppy reporting.

Journalism is not dead, just your ability to be the lord high gods of information traffic. I don't mourn it.

Mot of your comments above boil down to "You can't trust bloggers, they might be sleestak, but you can trust us, cause we're not sleestaks."

If all print media disappears tomorrow, thousands of other sources will spring up in it's place. It's time to close up the buggy shop and learn to make cars.

Re:Hello, I am a professional journalist

[Tobor the Eighth Man]

I wasn't saying that bloggers aren't objective. Many are. I am saying that objectivity should be kept as an ideal - which is something many people want to throw out, saying that you need to be subjective and speak truth to power and tell people your opinions. That's fine for opinion writing, but it's not journalism. That's all I'm saying about objectivity. That it's good and that we need it. From your comment, you seem to agree. I also think that journalism has done a terrible job at it, recently.

The only reason I brought up business blogging and objectivity is that many people explicitly say that the fact that things can be written by insiders is a big plus for blogging, and argue that the whole idea of a third-party journalist is obsolete. I think that's a lot of bunk.

Re:Hello, I am a professional journalist

[dkleinsc]

As one of those who put up some gripes with modern-day journalism, the biggest problem I was alluding to was not the censorship by the news organizations, which blog-based journalism could remedy, but 5 much more critical problems:
1. The mixing of editorializing and reporting. The telltale sign for that is only 1 major source for a story rather than 2 or 3 sources (some of whom disagree with each other).
2. The mix of advertising and reporting. This is the big one for the business press. For instance, a story with a headline of "CEO John Doe of Initech announces launch of FlimFlam" combined with an advertising link to buy shares of Initech.
3. The dependency of journalists on their sources. This causes all sorts of problems, the most common of which is that the source can threaten to cut off the reporter if the reporter doesn't print something favorable to the source. This is a huge problem in political reporting, because reporter's careers tend to depend on getting and keeping insider sources.
4. If 2-3 sources say the same thing, and it's not dug into more deeply, reporters will not infrequently incorrectly assume that the 2-3 sources aren't organized. A classic case of this is the Pentagon paying retired generals to stick to a party line, while reporters were using the retired generals as independent analysts (kudos to the reporters who did look more deeply and figure that one out).
5. A perception by a lot of news organizations that speed beats accuracy.

Re:Hello, I am a professional journalist

[Anonymous Coward]

People like to heap scorn on traditional journalism, but there's a very good reason for fact-checking, and there's a very good reason for objectivity. I'm all for new journalism and I read plenty of blogs. I do think that form of journalism is, more or less, the future. But let's not be quite so hasty to discard everything that made traditional journalism what it was (even if it's tarnished, in this day and age), and let's not be quite so quick to put all our faith in blogging. I'm confident that a more concrete code of ethics will develop in blogging, and bloggers who lie and distort will get weeded out just like traditional journalists who've committed the same transgressions tend to be (eventually), but I'm not quite ready to hang up my sad little hat with the press pass or my dreaded red editor's pen just yet.

Events in recent memory when the "traditional" press has failed us:

• Presidential Election of 2001 (Bush was an idiot, but the press gave into threats that critical coverage would result in less access in the future).
• Iraq (the press gave into the administration's spin and failing to report the intimidation that led to many editors shying away from critical reporting, particularly about the credibility of "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction, the cost the war, incompetence surrounding the post invasion period and far too many more to list here).
• Domestic wiretapping
• A general failure in critical reporting regarding the housing boom and lending practices that lead to the current economic failures
• Presidential Election of 2008 (it was only after the campaign ended that it was revealed how truly incompetent both the McCain and Clinton camps were...The voters should have known about that as it was happening).
• Continuing interviews with Palin and Cheney - why are these people given air time or column inches? They no longer hold positions of authority and people report their quotes without challenge. They get more air time than Al Gore (who is also largely irrelevant to the political process). Why?

How many times can you expect to fuck up and still receive a pay check? The press played a role in the eight year clusterfuck of the Bush administration. Too bad if you're out of work, too. Payback's a bitch, aint it?

Re:Hello, I am a professional journalist

[Hatta]

People like to heap scorn on traditional journalism, but there's a very good reason for fact-checking, and there's a very good reason for objectivity.

I think you entirely miss the point. People cheer the death of traditional journalism because they do not perceive traditional journalists as objective or as doing much fact checking at all. In most cases an article from a blog is going to be better supported with citations than a newspaper article. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw a citation in a newspaper article. Show your work. Put in notes that say "we checked, this is true(or not), here's the reference". THAT will make it worth my while to read a newspaper again.

Re:first post

[Pieroxy]

Regular journalism has been dead for a long time in my country (France). So called "journalists" just take Reuters & others news and republish them, adding in the process useless rants and made up facts. If that dies, we'll all be better off.

Already tired of these stories

[smchris]

It's like the newspapers were the last to notice that they were dying. Which _so_ highlights the underlying problem.

Let's break it down, shall we?

[MikeRT]

I won't regurgitate most of what Radley Balko said, as his post is probably one of the most insightful I've ever read on this subject, but there are two functions that the papers do or are supposed to do, not one:

-Aggregate news
-Investigative journalism

Very few do investigative journalism anymore. Most of it is just aggregating and writing up some additional filter around press releases and such. The average crime story is no more nuanced and investigative than regurgitating what the police, prosecutor and defense attorney have to say. Most newspapers do so little investigative journalism that they are, quite frankly, as useless and vestigial to our society's continued liberties as tits on a bull.

What most newspapers are upset about is the fact that new media is more efficient at cheaply aggregating raw information and sprucing it up with some additional verbage. It's not like they're losing money because others are stealing the hard work of their investigators.

Synergy: The Sports Analogy

[davide marney]

I have yet to see any major newspaper actively recruit and develop the legions of amateur reporters out there armed with a computer. Major league sports has a farm system for developing and identifying talent, and bringing it into play. Newspapers need to embrace what's happening, not compete and complain. They're the experts. They should be leading the exploitation of the Internet for the delivery of news and information.

Truth be told, tiny C-SPAN is far and away the best in the news business at getting this right. Their use of all the means of modern communication -- radio, TV, Internet -- is outstanding. They run contests to develop young reporters. They have blog aggregation pages. They run dedicated news dashboards during special events such as elections. They have call-in shows. They are scrupulously even-handed in their coverage, which is not only the best way to be objective, it makes for a lively and interesting show. Watch and learn, guys. It's not rocket science.

Respect for pulitzer's yellow journalism eulagized

[cybereal]

Respect for Pulitzer's form of yellow journalism was a eulogy in action for journalism 100 years ago. The fact that journalism still exists is only a testament for the public's continued desire for era-appropriate mild fiction and sensationalism. The fact that we huzzah at the awarding of a prize named after the man considered the inventor of what non-news non-journalist pundits like Bill O, and Sean H thrive on is enough evidence to show that real journalism hasn't been a public concern for a very, very long time.

So don't shed a tear for journalism now. It has already been dead for very nearly a century.

FOX News is indeed the best choice

[us7892]

My big wish is that factual reporting would regain its place ABOVE the opinionated offerings seen on places such as FOXnews

FOX News is better than all the other news channels. Certainly leaning right, no doubt about it. But, overall, a much better window to view our blathering leaders and crumbling nation through.

MSNBC is a disaster. CNN is scrambling, trying to retreat, if only modestly, from its left-lean. ABC is trying to claw its way back off the ledge. CBS has simply given up.

Some of my favorite people from other networks are joining FOX. I love it.

Re:FOX News is indeed the best choice

[Straif]

The GP is probably referring to the various studies by Pew and UCLA (to name the biggest) which, while using completely different forms of measurement, all came to pretty much the same conclusion, Fox leans slightly right while almost all other stations have a strong left lean.

The studies focused on news broadcasts and not their opinion shows.

There are also numerous studies about the past election cycle which showed pretty much the same thing.

It's can be a bit of a pain to find a direct link to the original summaries of the PEW or UCLA study so I'll leave it to you to just google them and find a source which references them that you'll accept.

journalism is already dead

[david_bonn]

Let's see, the big news stories this week: (1) Tiger Woods gets in a fender bender after he gets in a fight with his wife, and (2) the White House party crashers apparently lied about other stuff, too.

Journalism is already dead.

Re:Internet killed the Video star

[pedestrian crossing]

One model I've seen is for a newspaper to provide free access to a pdf of its full print edition. Just like reading the old-fashioned newspaper, print ads and all. Nice thing for the newspaper, the reader can't block the ads so they can charge regular print advertising rates and the distribution costs are lower. Nice thing for the reader, it doesn't cost anything and is just there on the computer whenever they want it in a form that they are used to.

Fear is the problem.

[FatSean]

Pants-shitting cowards afraid of gay marriage, pot, change and any boogeyman they learn about so long as it can be 'fought' by the military. The boogeyman of climate change is of course not real because tanks and guns cannot stop it in any way.

Liberals won't cut social spending for fear of Americans starving because they have no money for food conservatives won't cut military spending for fear of attacks by groups against which traditional military is fairly useless.

It's all fear. We need to harden the fuck up as a country.

Re:EXTRA: towncriers out of work due to printingpr

[MobyDisk]

Factual reporting will still exist. It will remain in paid journals, newspapers, etc. Even today, people who pay attention to such reporting are actually in the minority. To most people it is really nerdy to read the Wall Street Journal or something like that.

Most Americans aren't interested in that: they want to hear someone loudly spew oversimplifications and accusations that they can rally behind. "The [other party] is a bunch of [insult]! Next up: Best and worst dressed celebrities!"

Overreaction... as usual.

[cuby]

Journalism will never die... As the vinyl didn't died either. Why some activity far more important will?
This is stuff printed by hysterical people. There will always exist some form of journalism. The more independent ones (thank good!) will undoubtedly have more success than the mass market ones because there will be less competent bloggers of that type. Mainstream news are more like entertainment, and are suffering just like big music editors or film distributors.

Before Murdoch There was Hearst and Pulitzer

[cshbell]

Murdock has ushered in the era of factless journalism and pure opinion as news.

"Reinstated," not "ushered in." Before Rupert Murdoch, there was Hearst and Pulitzer, whose yellow journalism more or less defined the conditions to which Murdoch is now returning his media empire.

The good news is that these things seem to be cyclical. The bad news is that, if Hearst and Pulitzer are any indication, it takes a somewhat cataclysmic event (such as the Spanish-American War) to shake people into their senses and start demanding across-the-board accountability.

Re:Internet killed the Video star

[paiute]

Videos were a good promotion outlet for music, but the Internet effectively killed music videos on television.

As I recall, MTV killed the music video by transitioning its programming over to game shows and reality shows until eventually you could not turn on the channel and see a music video for hours. This change was made way before the Internet got big enough tubes to flow a music video to your house.

News corporations, not 'journalism'

[sherriw]

News corporations and journalists are not the same thing. Where a news corporation's primary concern is to make money by selling information, a good journalist is most interested in discovering truth and making that truth available to the public. The more people the better.

The Internet has caused a major shakeup, and from the sounds of it a break down of the entities known as news corporations. Will these die at the hands of an open web? Maybe. Most likely if they continue to stubbornly refuse to change.

However the existence of the dedicated, skilled journalist will only be at risk if he or she insists on tying their fate to the new corps. Twittered and blogged amateur 'news' only goes so far. Ultimately the most reliable, accurate and compelling sources of news will bubble to the top of the public's attention. Will news reporting be as lucrative as it once was? Probably not... but maybe it will become something that the talented journalist does as a side job rather than a full time one. Maybe a new profit model will emerge- who can know what will be needed or wanted in the future. We may reach a point where companies, organizations or individuals will pay by contract for a respected journalist to investigate and report on a specific news item for them. Who knows?

The point is, I don't see the 'death of journalism' coming, but rather the death of the current news corporation model.

Prolonged Death of bad Journalism ?

[formfeed]

Murdoch's business model is based on withholding information. Since his sources are accessible to others just as well, this won't work anymore. On the same note, I'd also welcome the death of the local TV news: "There's something in your drinking water. More after this short break."

That said, I agree with the warning about blogging: first person accounts can't replace objective journalism. One of the attractions of bloggers is the seemingly "authentic" view of a person involved with the topic, versus the 3rd person account a journalist offers. And yes, the "true authentic" is often an illusion. Industry is already influencing bloggers, and not everyone discloses their "free samples" they got before writing a review. - Or just the fact, they are writing a review on a sample they got without comparing it to the competitor. Bad bloggers aren't an improvement over bad journalists.

However, there are many cases where the blogger is better than the traditional journalist: An IT-blogger usually provides better information about a new software release, than the tech column writer in the local paper, who got moved to the tech column last month, because he did such a good job with the obituaries.

So, why read the paper if I can get the same or more online? Why watch the news about a land slide in South America, if local bloggers have more information available? Yes, these are rhetorical questions. The answer of course is: Because a journalist offers more. Or to turn it around: Where journalism doesn't offer more, it will die. A journalist can connect the dots, analyze, ask questions: Land-slide - Population growth? Deforestation?

Where journalists are doing that, journalism still adds value. But, you can't ask good questions about things that sound jibber jabber to you and you can't even achieve anything that resemble an objective presentation of different options, if you are too undereducated (or under-experienced) to realize that there might be more than one way to look at it, or that the opposite of main-stream isn't always "crazy". So, good journalism requires journalists that know things about the things they are reporting, not just how to present things that might interest people who are into these things. That again is bad news for Fox News, but also for people who think, that a CJ-BA will be all it takes to become the next investigative wonder, or that the semester of Japanese will let you write articles that are better than the political blog of a Japanese ex-pat with a PoliSci degree.

I hope for the death of bad journalism. Whether this will help good journalism, I don't know. There are journalists I find worth reading. I lived in the US and Germany long enough to know both countries, but Marcia Pally still gives me things to think about. Her articles are also on-line, does that make her a blogger? While missing the boat on some topics, Scholl-Latour usually points out political crisis years before they become daily news. But he too isn't in the daily-news business. He writes books and does documentaries.

What about newspapers? I don't know. A local paper can't feed an expert journalist and her family, but it's its access to local news, that keeps the paper alive. Germany has newspaper cooperatives, where international and national news are done in a central office with the local papers then adding their local content before print. The only major American paper I know of, that does that, is The Onion..