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The Internet Is Killing Local News, Says the FCC
Art3x writes "The rise of the Internet has led to a 'shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting' (Here's the AP's version) says a 475-page report by the FCC, and the consequences could be 'more government waste, more local corruption,' 'less effective schools' and other problems. Even though there are more media choices today than ever, newspapers have been laying off reporters, leaving a gap that is yet to be filled."
It's not that the majority of local businesses are multinational franchises with no need for local advertising.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Seems to me the FCC doing a 475 page report on something that was pretty obvious is Government waste.
Well, the problem with citizen journalism is that unless you've got enough eyes peering onto your site to somehow support some sort of revenue stream, you're going to be spending half your day at work, the other half doing reporting and you're going to be pretty burnt out from all of it.
This is the advantage of professional journalists, they get to eat because of their work.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Flat Earth News published in 2008 goes into this in great detail from a British point of view. Interestingly, it's not the internet that started the rot but massive cost cutting - which for ten years created huge profits - started in the mid-80s. By the mid to late 90s serious journalism and local news were already dieing. The internet merely savaged the corpse.
I'm sure there's an objective, non-sensationalist, just-the-facts reporter working somewhere, but to pretend that the internet is the reason these jobs are going away is silly. They're going away because the local reporting is, in the main, just as vacuous as national reporting and probably less well-edited. Factor in that with local reporting we're still getting more government waste, more local corruption, and less effective schools with these programs been cheered on by most of those in journalism, and this seems to boil down to "if that fox stops guarding the henhouse ..."
I agree that the Fourth Estate (right?) is important, but its value is historically overstated, and it is easily co-opted for outright propaganda.
One of the amazing things the internet is doing for us: Helping to get rid of the local news, the #1 purveyor of the idea that fear sells.
If the local news actually did stories about local politics or events then maybe they'd have more viewers. Instead they cover national news poorly and do fluff pieces about the stupidest things you could possibly imagine.
So we might miss out on what Britney is doing this week or that a new hairstyle for poodles is all the rage? The fourth estate has let us down badly, they are supposed to be our eyes and ears to help us hold the governments feet to the fire and keep our democracies healthy. Since they are not doing that, why do we need them at all?
Gosh, I'd almost feel sorry for newspapers, if they hadn't ruthlessly used their mainstream media status to advance personal and political agendas, both through their choice of stories to report as well as deliberate omissions ("that's not a story"). Bizarrely, journalists still cling to the "we are heroes and white knights" self-narrative, and still in the year 2011 have not had a heel realization.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The reason that this is a problem is because all of the other agencies of the government are trying to destroy any possibility of journalism (investigative or otherwise) that is not "professional (paid) reporters working for newspapers".
If the government wasn't so hell-bent on destroying WikiLeaks, and anything that resembles or is associated with it, then it wouldn't matter as much or even at all, because - just as with open source software - scratching your personal itch is in many ways a better motivator than money. There will be some market for paid investigation, but most of it will be ordinary people investigating things for their own satisfaction as to lack of waste, and such.
Where I live the local news has rarely ever exposed anything. In fact, they gloss over the details, fail to provide links to documentation for the reader to learn for themselves, and use so many quotes from the elected officials or city staff members that no true analysis can be done.
One professional reporter suggested to me privately that the public, "read between the lines," in order to see what's really being said. While that's great for someone in the know, it doesn't work for 99.9% of the population.
What has helped are local, non-professional sources who take the time to do what reporters used to do. Researching documents, providing them to the public and going back to school to have an even better understanding of how local government is supposed to work.
While I don't want to toot my own horn or even step on the toes of the pros, the work I do actually does expose the issues in local government and shows their general incompetence when compared to how they are supposed to act.
I am going to school for Public Administration, I use my skills as a data analyst to provide crime dashboards to aggregate data, and I post public documents requested and researched for MONTHS so that the public can ignore my own analysis and do their own if they so choose.
The rise of the Internet has done nothing to change the business model of the print papers. They're still pushing out 500 word blurbs of city council meetings instead of 1000+ word analyses. They are the ones at fault here, not the Internet and shame on the FCC for stating anything else.
FCC approved media consolidation had nothing to do with this?
I stopped watching the news many years ago and never did get a paper. It wasn't because of the Internet. It was because I got tired of hearing nothing but trivial, shallow, or sensationalistic crap. I don't care who slept with whom and soundbites don't do anything any good. Plus, since I live in an area with many connected cities, invariably the remaining content usually didn't apply to my locality, anyway.
Quite frankly, the national news isn't much better in many ways. To me, the fact that there was some conflict in the Middle East is simply not news, it is life. Yes, gas prices are high. Republicans did X and Democrats did Y. Some other bill just passed that either raises taxes, takes away state's rights, stomps on the Constitution, or takes away citizens' personal liberty.
I hope that doesn't make me irresponsible. I do try to stay informed. And usually the things that do matter somehow reach me. I am just burned out from negativity, information overload, and feeling completely apathetic about government in general.
It's not a waste, since that's not the results of the report. Let me help out.
How the Internet Has Improved Journalism
---
Greater Depth
Improved Quality of Commentary and Analysis
Enabling Citizen Engagement
Speed and Ease
Expanding Hyperlocal Coverage
Serving Highly Specific Interests
Cheaper Content Distribution
Cheaper Content Creation
Direct Access to Community and Civic News
Sound different from TFS?
Yep. Same report. Time to fork slashdot to make it less inflammatory. They took the only concern, "lack of clarity how well trained bloggers are" and made it into a siren favoring Big Media.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Right?! Because it is not news if I choose to subscribe directly to things like the county school board news letter instead of watching/reading commercial laden media hype.
Trying to imply that the Internet is to blame for the downfall of investigative journalism is ridiculous, I have seen more expose's as a result of rapid information spread on the Internet than I ever saw from some local yokel reporters drek on how bob's bakery was vandalized last night.
If anything this means that the FCC should be pushing the protections afforded to journalists toward the more independent sources like bloggers and whistleblowers.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Newspapers,TV and magazines have all been victims of the budget cutting mentality until they no longer function well. Newspapers can no longer support reporters to the degree they used to. Local TV and Radio stations struggle to survive and no longer offer the traditional types of programs. Only programs cheap to produce are on air. Magazines have been crippled by the costs of materials and shipping and no longer can fund large reporting staffs. What we are seeing are businesses following the same path that the right wing advocates in government. Budget cuts are the same thing as quality cuts. Quality cuts drive everything further down the sewer.
This could be newsworthy.
"traditional news" outlets stopped being news a long time ago.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
The local newspapers depended heavily on revenue from classifieds. When that was taken by Craigslist, local newspapers went into the red.
What about the mint?
What about Bro'bama's hope and Loose Change?
What about the 50-sq mile "technology zone" self-sufficient City being built south of Boise Idaho by a Chinese Corporation owned soley by the Communish China Government?
None of this is on Slashdot, and none of this is on Lamestream news, but it's on 4Chon /new/.
So long as Fox News is the first to go, I fail to see a problem here.
Considering how badly the 4th estate has been doing its job since the advent of the 24 hour news cycle, I find myself not particularly caring.
OBEY!
SPEND MONEY!
MULTIPLY!
SMO-O-O-O-KE!
I thought local stations broadcasted without needing money, and I'm sure because I never payed for it. At-least now that they are going off the air, they don't need to worry about spending money on something that nobody ever payed-for. I've noticed that the government forced everyone to migrated their Analog Televisions into a Digital Television Feed, while the old spectrum is being used by Mexican television stations all over Los Angeles. Same as for Analog Radio.
There's simply one thing that turns me off from local TV news: That it's dominated by tales of assorted criminal doings, corruption, irrelevant stupid on-goings, or worthless weather forecasting. In one era it was perhaps useful; I don't see "local news" doing anything useful for years to come.
I get "local news" from aggregator's such as Reddit. And you know what? Reddit: Politics makes me truly sad every day. The reason I find aggregators so effective is that of all the local news stories across the nation: they find the ones that stick out enough that people, actual people who could be your neighbor, vote them up.
The source is given for every item, I never click on ones that go to blogs. Someday, perhaps, blogs will be effective just not yet.
Shh.
I had two choices, and neither was palatable.
I could either read what someone else wanted me to read or what I wanted to read. Both have distinct pitfalls.
The Miami Herald (I still call it that), seemed to have articles about either Cuba or gay rights, and the occasional senior citizen shout out. Now I have no problems with who anyone is. I wouldn't even elevate it to a lifestyle choice because I *DON'T CARE* where you're from or what you do. If you're a good person and I am worthy enough to be your friend, so be it. Frankly, from an intellectual standpoint your place of birth or your orientation (sexual or otherwise) is complete irrelevant. In fact, as a free thinking adult, I sympathize with the gay community precisely because no one has any goddamn say in what I do with myself or how I think. Back to the point -- I am neither Cuban nor gay. It will be a couple decades before I am considered a senior citizen worthy of discounts. After picking up the newspaper one day and seeing article after article about Castro and the gay community, I decided I would stop buying the Herald.
On the other side is the "choose your news". People who want to confirm their beliefs end up listening to news outlets that are in agreement. "I don't watch FOX news!" or "I don't listen to NPR" is equally problematic. If you choose your news you miss out on opposing viewpoints. You get sucked into bias willingly. That's almost worse than being led by the nose because you did it willingly.
So what did I choose? I went with the feeds and subscribe via RSS to viewpoints contrary to my own. Not perfect, and a labor of discipline, but I can go to sleep at night.
Statements like this by gigantic Federal bureaucracies always leads to some move against freedom.
They will look to either restrict the ability of the internet to report news (which the government would love, the ruling democrat establishment would love nothing more than to shut down Andrew Britebart and Matt Drudge amongst others). Or they will be after confiscatory taxes on the internet, on news sites, on bloggers, to subsidize "local" news.
As others have said in this story, the lack of support for local news couldn't have anything to do with the fact that businesses aren't local anymore like they were 50 years ago... 50 years ago every town had more than one newspaper. Every radio station had a full airstaff AND a news department. Why? Because local advertisers PAID for this.
The FCC realizes that it's reason for existence (over the air radio and TV) is coming to an end because it's being overtaken by internet broadcasting. They also realize that the chink in the 1st Amendment that was created for them in 1934, the fact that radio spectrum has limits, ie, there is scarcity, which paved the way for the Feds to decide who could broadcast and who couldn't, is mooted by the fact that the Internet has NO LIMIT of channels.
So they have to invent some other form of "scarcity" to give them some toehold on the Internet.
Corporatism != Free Market
Before the Internet local schools were all awesome, local politicians were honest and dutiful, and the zoning board members could never be bought off, because everyone was cowed into sincerity by the local newspaper.
Or am I delusional.
This not a loss of local control, we haven't had that since the 1860's, it is loss of central control by big media companies who are pulling desperately on the strings they still have.
It took a real world war to end the airplane's patent wars. - Fâché Rouge -
Here in Traverse City Michigan, there is the ticker which publishes locally relevant topics on a daily basis. The Record eagle is also online. I don't think local news has been killed off by a longshot. There is just a different paradigm. The need for local news is the same.
I am just glad I can get news which is actual news from the area and not death, mayhem, catastrophe news I was so used to when living in other areas of the country.
While you're talking about print or local TV media, we've also seen a large rise in the number of social media news aggregator web sites. I'm talking about Slashdot, Digg, reddit, and Hacker News.
The communities that have formed around news aggregators often have a very specific set of biases that affect the news items that are highly ranked. It doesn't matter which aggregator this is, either.
For example, there's a very significant pro-Apple bias at Digg, and also at reddit. If you post something that's not absolutely positive about Apple or one of their products, you're often "downmodded" into oblivion. While your opinion is probably perfectly valid, and in fact may be reality, such a viewpoint does not match well with the biases and precognitions of the fanatics at such social media sites. Their attempts at censorship will likely lead to anyone with a different viewpoint quickly leaving such sites. This reinforces the bias, making the situation even worse.
If you live in small and medium-sized communities, local news is often filled with fluff and oddball stories.
Weather reporting is the big draw for local TV news, and sites like weather.com usually tell you what you want to know when you want to know it. Local TV news put the weather segment at the end of their broadcasts and tease you about it throughout their show ("will it be warm and sunny this weekend? stay tuned to find out!")
We'll just make local news a "Right" and continue the programming through government funding. I mean really, it can ONLY be a couple billion right? That's nothing. We have *rights* (and therefore taxpayer funding) to cars, cell phones, houses, high speed internet, schooling, blah blah. See, the trick is to spread it out between several funding souces so everyone pays just a tiny bit: Local funds (oh wait, that's me). State funds (hmm, me again). Federal funds (well crap, i'm one of the 50% that actually pay taxes).
A while ago I pitched a web-based regional news system to cover small and medium markets. The idea was to use new DSLR technology and pay one-person investigators to build up coverage of under-served areas. Shoot the stories to large market standards and make the material available to major market stations for free. A lot of big stations have digital news channels and small to medium markets in the shadows of big cities could use those to improve their coverage of local events. I thought it was a good proposal but it didn't even make the first review cut. Apparently not as good as I thought.
It's not surprising the same thing is happening to small town newspapers. They're just so colonial in their approach to technology. Instead of figuring out how to make money online, they try to apply the print media model online then act surprised when it doesn't work. I think the same type of regional journalism model would work for online print. There just needs to be some way to get it off the ground until the ad revenue became self-sustaining.
Got the idea when I tried TV advertising for one my businesses. It was a dismal failure because I was advertising in a major market, a long way from my customer base. Small town advertisers would love a low-cost alternative that focused on their local market, but there just isn't anything.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If by "local news" you mean Local TV News, well, there's none of that around me. On the other hand, if you mean "local newspaper" and "local radio" then you are sadly mistaken, at least up here in the Adirondacks. We get a high quality locally published and printed newspaper 6 days a week - with a superb website accompanying - but NOT replacing it. And the local NPR station isn't half bad either.
your usual local reporters day used to be filled with taking stuff from news outlets like reuters and formatting them to a news item for the local paper - and writing wishwashshit about local soft issues like how some kids managed to win some local thing. those "reporters" are obviously getting laid off now, who needs a copy-paster on their payroll and who wants to read stuff a day later they read it direct from reuters or some other copy-paste news site? friggin nobody. one thing they did was also affect local politics in a bad way, like by _not_ reporting on things like if local school building is unfit for pupils to sit in due to water damage etc(in a local paper the reporters know the local who's who quite fast and that is natural corruption they can't help, since they're likely to sit at the same dinner tables sometimes with the folk who's shit they should be reporting about). but now anyone can report such stuff and if it's true and sticks then it's doing it's function.
so actually it's leading to more effective schools - or at least the problems are no longer a taboo because the local paper doesn't mention it(implying that it's not true, by not mentioning it..).
OTOH publishing a local newspaper is now cheaper than it ever was before! prints are cheap and editing machinery(computer, doh) is cheap, uploading it to the print is cheap too. (disclaimer, I'm from a 20k+ town that had(still has) a local newspaper, the local articles were about as good as blog postings or worse and the national and international stuff was 1:1 with any other newspaper in the country, it did however have adverts for 'day coffee'(whores) and listings for football etc sports practices for the youngsters. they never ever took a strong stance on the problems in the local schools though - positive stuff was always there though, but what good is that if you're eating potatos that are half green for lunch after being lectured how fantastic the free school lunch system is, just made you feel cheated... had we had cellphone cameras and blogs back then the officials would have been majorly fucked - and that would have improved things.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Do you remember the mainstream media's lead-up to the War in Iraq? WHERE THE FUCK WAS THE FACT-CHECKING THERE? Everyone else in the world could tell that you Americans were being fed one piece of bullshit after another. Hell, even a lot of Americans knew they were getting nuggets of crap. Basically everything that was claimed about Iraq and Saddam turned out to be incorrect. So I'll ask again, WHERE THE FUCK WAS THE FACT-CHECKING THERE?
Whining about biased sites while posting to Slashdot? LOL *head asplodes*
While your opinion is probably perfectly valid, and in fact may be reality, such a viewpoint does not match well with the biases and precognitions of the fanatics at such social media sites.
Just because someone said something negative about Apple does not mean it is probably valid. It is very likely to not be valid considering the rabid anti-Apple nuts. All you've done is expose your own bias.
Here in upstate NY I would say our local news on TV is just as uninformative as most news outlets. I will say there is a AM radio station that provides great local news that is relevant and informative. There are so many shady people in the government and the local news on TV doesn't even pretend to care.
There is so much corruption in this area it should be a news reporters dream, but I have never heard anything but fluff BS on local TV news.
Oh, and the AM station that is really good at local content has stated that if the FCC installs something like the fairness doctrine that they will likely close their doors. Way to go FCC you are the problem and the cure....wait a minute??
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
Explanation #1: Car is invented. Buggy whip manufacturers go out of business. Internet is invented. Traditional news goes out of business.
Explanation #2: A free market dictates that the consumer will pay for the level of quality that they want. A trend away from traditional journalism indicates that the consumer is getting sufficient quality from the internet. The consumer is a lot more honest about what the consumer wants than the FCC is.
Explanation #3: Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.
The media has gone from regarding its job as holding power to account to helping power avoid anything it doesn't want to face up to.
And people have abandoned the media in a steady stream ever since.
Quelle surprise?
It's not a waste, since that's not the results of the report. Let me help out.
How the Internet Has Improved Journalism --- Greater Depth Improved Quality of Commentary and Analysis Enabling Citizen Engagement Speed and Ease Expanding Hyperlocal Coverage Serving Highly Specific Interests Cheaper Content Distribution Cheaper Content Creation Direct Access to Community and Civic News
Sound different from TFS?
Yep. Same report. Time to fork slashdot to make it less inflammatory. They took the only concern, "lack of clarity how well trained bloggers are" and made it into a siren favoring Big Media.
Time to insert a Bill Hicks quote - I'll leave it to those with brains to work out the relevance to TFA:-
By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root. I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. "There's gonna be a joke coming..." There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show.
"You know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar, that's a big dollar, a lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research, huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags, quit putting a godamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
Try this site, including this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25223
As we are Turing complete, we process incoming information which if encoded correctly can change our internal processes.
Pretty scary.
The local news is many times in bed with the local people in power. For example:
If the local judge is being investigated by the judical ethics committee it will make papers 100 miles away as a front page story but the local news with his friends will not cover the story.
The Slashdot community doesn't pretend to be unbiased like the Digg and reddit communities often do. The anti-Microsoft/pro-Linux/pro-OSS bias that is common here is pretty well-known. Hell, the Slashdot readers have almost no say on the stories that are posted, and the moderation system isn't available even to many long-time community members.
The Digg and reddit communities, on the other hand, have always tried to portray themselves as more open and "free" than more traditional sites like Slashdot. The ability of just about anyone to moderate stories and comments is much greater there. The bias is there, too, but the communities there tend to turn a blind eye to it.
The GP mentions Apple, but it holds true for other stuff, as well. Reddit's /r/politics is really bad. Unless you submit stories and comments promoting their preferred strain of academic pseudo-libertarianism bullshit, you'll be shunned and ridiculed, and in some cases probably even banned from such subreddits. Regardless of one's stance or opinions, the community bias does exist at those kind of sites.
Shield the bloggers who tend to report the actual goings on.
Local newspapers rarely have the stones or interest to actually go after local corruption. For example, in the case of Ryan Frederick, the local news was basically regurgitating the local police reports until Radley Balko dug into it and found that it was full of corruption. Much of that corruption, I might add, was just barely concealed beneath the surface.
The fact is that the local media outlets have been compromised for a long time. It's not because of "teh corporashunz" it's because they're both too lazy and too afraid of risking local relationships with key officials who might shut them out of future scoops.
I read several news articles a day online, from major websites (CNN, Reuters, ESPN, etc.) One thing I have noticed is that, invariably, there is a major editing mistake in just about every article. I'm talking about cases where structure or tense will change mid sentence, or a preposition or adverb will be leading to a verb but they add a whole different clause or noun.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
"The rise of the numbers of cars has led to a shrinking of horse's usage says a a 475-page report by the FCC, and the consequences could be 'more death accidents, more local air pollution,' 'less effective flow (traffic jams)' and other problems.
that there is nobody left that can take the news seriously. I can be better informed watching sponge Bob Square Pants for .5 hours that I can watching the local news. The one shining light in the sea of trash journalism is the PBS TV News. Not the Radio, the radio program is just as biased and uninformative as Fox or CNN.
Actually the PBS TV programs are a real breath of fresh air. No fancy graphics. Just professionals talking about the news. It is kind of like the rest of the news outlets used to be 20-30 years ago. I can actually watch the program and not think everyone on the program is retarded.
The Major new outlets say they just cater to what the public is buying. Well, I guess they are not buying it anymore. Even if the argument was valid, it would kind of be like one of those faggety ass drug dealers saying, 'well i am just selling what the public wants'.
-The owner of this post is a fagot
-Nancy Grace.
The internet does have limits on channels, Only a few noncompeting bands at 900, 2400, and 5000 MHz over the air, and the (extremely large, but not unlimited) several GHz total on your average copper wire or fiber-optic cable. Compared to the very limited long range bands at AM and FM, this is gigantic, but there are still some fundamental limits. (I in no way want the FCC to regulate the internet, aside from desiring trust-busting on the oligopoly of ISPs)
Local news has been a perp walk, sports and weather for over a generation now.
All local news does is repeat the corporate controlled AP feed, at best.
At least with the Internet you get first hand accounts from where news is happening.
Instead of news being well written and thought out, we get our news in sounds bites that are coldly calculated by producers to be slanted and biased towards a particular point of view in harmony with its respective corporation. What is in print is of such poor quality it is no wonder there are such concerns expressed. It seems like the internet has condoned "internet speak" and I see it appear in what should be formal communication. I would never use abbreviations such as ppl, lol, or thx in formal communication yet it is happening all of the time. I recently turned down a job offer where the author, in the emailed letter, used LOL! To me, that is not avante guarde, but just plain unprofessional and lack of care or concern. This form of informal communication has taken the basic structure of the English language and reduced it to rubble! I do make mistakes from time to time but I have read blog postings that become giant run-on sentences without proper capitalization or some semblence of punctuation. The writing sounds like one long SMS message being sent between friends. You might argue that text messaging and IM is also responsible for this.
It was the decision to allow news agencies to merge across the nation. What was once news is now being switched to propaganda. America has become a neo-con's wet dream.
What's killing all press (from local to world) isn't the Internet -- the Internet is just what's replacing the press.
What's killing the press is that the industry is laced from top to bottom with ignorant Statists capable of neither investigating nor reporting accurately on the events of the day. Almost every news story in existence originates with some Google search by a flunky desperately seeking something for the talking head to say so as to keep butts in the seats and hands off the remotes.
Amazingly, the entire industry is so insular and elitist that is neither capable of seeing its own obvious incompetence nor or recognizing the truth about their entire industry:
That is now nothing more than a batch of scandal sheets and hack-rags, and its former customers are starting to figure that out. Result: they're no longer buying what the press is selling -- because the press is selling total bullshit.
For thirty years, I've made a hobby of de-bunking the press. In the age of the Internet, give me any press story, Google, and fifteen minutes, and I can usually prove that the story never occurred in reality. There's typically a kernel of truth, but it will have been sensationalized and transformed to the point where it bears only a tangential relationship to reality.
Mark this and mark it well: the world beyond your immediate experience isn't what you think it is. Do not assume that anything the press reports is accurate -- in fact, it's a good bed that every report is made up of almost whole cloth.
Microsoft leads to Bluescreen; Bluescreen leads to downtime; downtime leads to suffering.
"serving highly specific interests" sounds like one to be really worried about, like a double edged sword.
They are biased against stupidity, though once in a while you can tell when someone has paid off an organization to rank their stories highly (typically when major Republican news gets to the top of the front pages of these sites).
:P
You can tell that those are flukes/artificially increased because it's not normal when a Pro-Right article makes it to the front page of Reddit. And while there's a lot of "pro right-wing stuff" going on, it's always the *big* articles that make it there, never the small stuff--always the large, provocative things.
Either way, if you think it's biased because the people there are more calculated and logical, then I dunno what to tell you
Local news was killed in suicide decades ago when they stopped reporting actual facts and switched to 'commentary'.
Internet is just helping clean the mess up.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
When "local" news stops being a recap of AP wire stories, and when "commentary" stops being a mix of advertising and thinly veiled slander maybe I'll watch a "local" newscast. Most "local stations" or owned and operated by media conglomerates for the sole purpose of selling advertising space. Actual local news in TV always seems to open with a violent crime, followed by a car chase, followed by pre-weather then a commercial. Then it's part of the weather, sports, cute story, and then the weather recap. There is no "reporting" there is political spin, reporting the news stopped years ago and the public has finally caught on. Now the "local" stations are complaining that the "regional" stations are unfair competition. Well the "local" stations help create the short attention span of the public now they have to live with it.
Yeah, lets force the government to $upport "local news" that will fix the economy and everything.
could be 'more government waste, more local corruption,' 'less effective schools' and other problems.?
Welcome to New York City for the past 100 years.
Problem with newspapers is they are irrelevant. Look at that nonsense with Anthony Weiner. It was even on CNN for god's sake.
Countless times they also on the national "news" dug out the corpse of Michael Jackson, I was waiting for OJ to be talked about next.
The mainstream news, and the local news are a joke.
That pretty much sums up local TV news. If it bleeds, it leads. That being said, local news isn't really local once you live 25-50 miles from the broadcaster. I grew up less than 25 miles from Manhattan and it seemed like anything that was on the local news might as well have been happening in a foreign country. These days, Internet media and local talk radio will have local stories plus, with the Internet, you can search for a story rather than being forced to accept what the anchor is saying, when they are saying it. You don't have to sit through 25 minutes of a 30 minute broadcast to get the story they promoted at the start of the show.
As for mainstream media bias, it's clearly there and can be proven with basic statistics. John Lott's book "Bias" is a great, exhaustively researched treatise on the subject. Accountability? What a joke! A newspaper can publish a false story on page one above the fold for a week before somebody calls them on it and they publish a correction on page 14 two weeks later in smaller type at which point most people have already accepted the falsehood as truth. IMHO, the mainstream media's loss of control over the people is what they're really whining about.
I thought something similar as well when I saw they did this report. Most likely it will start with government funding for the poor down trodden news companies and then move onto something more drastic.
Seriously, outside of just being paid advertisements and shills for the syndicated programming, there's not a lot of reporting going on for local news. The product is just terrible to watch, at least in our area.
I'm sure at some point they're going to say that the Internet is killing CNN. On that, I can fully agree: Reading comments from Twitter, voting on stories via Twitter, and showing cat videos from Youtube will definitely kill CNN dead.
The local & national news are through. They are boring formatted former shadows of what news programs should be & a good number of people feel they cannot get the truth from TV news. I am 60 & of course this is my opinion & many peoplel in my age group still watch TV news. I personally cannot stand the fluff, fake smiles & boring presentation.
Discussed this with the young people in my office & their responses varied: do not believe them, not getting the whole story or I get my news from the internet.
When I asked them about the opinion type shows (O'Relly, Maddow) they say they twist the news to their view. Some say they watch Jon Stewart.
Any Hicks reference needs to be modded up. +1 insightful
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Atlanta's paper while very far to the left has done a good job riding the Atlanta school board's ass over the cheating scandal. At first when our Republican governor pushed even more investigation we had the regular race warlords trot out but they seemed to have taken to the sidelines after the press focused more on the schools than what party the governor was.
Local TV stations do a good job of going after local companies for their misdeeds. Most every city has multiple stations all with their own Consumer Affairs departments. Local governments too have a hard time escaping the ire of the local population because journalist and reporters know where their is strife there usually is news behind it. Like recent assessments claiming homes increasing in value when everyone knows exactly how the market is.
Yes, there are fluff reporters but those stories don't dominate local news. If anything the printed papers did the most damage to themselves with their editorial staff. The AJC was so blatant in their reporting their subs in the surrounding area nose dived because those areas leaned more conservative. It didn't help, or maybe it did, when their lead editorial write took off to Washington DC to be closer to her god; yeah she was that overboard - I was amazed she didn't have official clothing for when writing articles on him.
So if anything the internet fills the need for international news, something that most papers just ran AP stories with anyway. What is also did is open a lot of people's eyes to just how politically slanted many local papers were and how that hid things from prying eyes. In Atlanta it was lack of maintenance on sewers (now billions in work need to be done) to school cheating to the constant use of the airport as family employment agency .
I guess when radio took off people doomed papers too, same when TV stations popped up everywhere.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Ron Burgundy
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"It is very likely to not be valid considering the rabid anti-Apple nuts. All you've done is expose your own bias."
And now, you have exposed your own bias as well. Negative comments about Apple (and others) are just as likely to be valid as invalid.
Networks using the remaining 20 minutes of their broadcast that isn't commercials to add in more commercials by way of promoting shows on their own networks ("Tonight, ABC local news interviews the cast from Lost!", filling it with 10 minutes of sports, then 5 minutes of "IS THE INTERNET KILLING LOCAL NEWS? COULD IT KILL YOUR FAMILY, NEXT?! FIND OUT WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SAVE YOUR FAMILY FROM THIS DEADLY PREDATOR, TONIGHT AT 11!", and then 5 minutes of some ridiciulous local human interest story and some weather. All while there are 24x7 news channels people could watch or - better - plenty of news online from better sources and with the ability to filter out the bullshit cruft as you like, online.
Local news is a fucking joke, because local news is a fucking joke. The reason that they're only expiring in the last fifteen years is that there are finally alternatives. It was still shit when it dominated - it's just that it was the only option we had before the late 90s.
Wherever there are people there is a need for local news. People need / want to know what is going in in the community, with local schools, and local businesses.
All the newspapers in our area (fly over country) have paywalls for online content. They can do it as there is not local news bloggers in most small towns. They have shrunk, but still surviving just fine.
My town has zero bloggers (for local news anyway) and zero newspapers. I once built a site and tried to get a handful of local peeps to add content regularly, but working for free nobody kept it up, and I did not want to mess with selling ads and having employees for a hobby.
Any Hicks reference needs to be modded up. +1 insightful
Here have some more - there's at least one for *every* situation. And why not "We pay for life with death - so everything in between should be free" A man who *lived* life and never backed down despite having a leg broken and a gun pointed at his head.
We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution. ~ Bill Hicks
Even for death:-
I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.
It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.
> Just because someone said something negative about Apple does not mean it is probably valid. It is very likely to not be valid considering the rabid anti-Apple nuts. All you've done is expose your own bias.
My guess is that you wrote this on you Macbook (if you had used your iPad the text would be messed-up because of the shitty spellcheck)
lucm, indeed.
I stopped buying the newspaper fifteen years ago because of the shallow reporting skills, the ink getting on my hands, the waste of paper and having to recycle it, and the fact that I could get most of the news I was interested in online and at work. Yes of course most of the "news" websites today are also shallow reporting slanted towards entertainment, but there are still several sites that do actual reporting without a raging hard-on for biased stories designed to smear their political opponents. However, I don't lament the lack of good reporting because frankly it was never that good to begin with. Local politics has always been corrupt and local schools have rarely been effective. I don't expect this to get better or worse with journalistic accountability.
Except, as pointed out above, the summary is entirely wrong and the report's claim is basically the opposite of what the summary and headline say.
This article was sponsored by NewsCorp.
Local news tv is only of interest to old fuddy duddies. I don't even have a television. And the FCC should be cut up into little bits or scrapped before they find another crusade to go after. Their number one misson since day one was to undermine free speech.
Most of the posts above seem to be individual extrapolations based on the short summary of an LA Times article. The word internet appears exactly once in the LA Times article, "the government regulatory agency, which has oversight over television and radio as well as certain aspects of the Internet." but since the post headline claims "The Internet is Killing Local News, Says the FCC" that must be what the FCC says right.
I'd suggest glancing through the actual report it's actually not bad for a government report. Skip to the conclusions, if there's part that seems problematic go back and read the supporting section. Here's an abbreviated version of the conclusions:
FCC rules
1) Encourage online disclosure by broadcasters. The report (by the FCC) claims the punitive oversight model of the FCC is broken, online disclosure would help consumers do their own oversight and reduce the overhead placed on both the broadcasters and FCC in the current model.
2) Relax quarterly paper report requirements and finish repealing the Fairness Doctrine, it's still within the procedural requirements.
3) Strengthen pay for play rules, corporations, hospitals are increasingly dictating local news coverage in exchange for donations (not advertising)
4) Give greater consideration to local news during next media ownership rules review (the rules that coverage how much of a market a company can own).
Government rules
1) Make it easier for citizens to monitor government by putting more proceedings and documents online.
2) Target local media more for government advertising programs, perceived as money saving and generally more effective
3) Make nonprofit media easier (AP, NPR, Consumer reports etc) by simplifying non-profit tax code
4) Semi lame suggestion to create a non-profit media database by zip code to make it easier for the public to donate as well as listing journalism schools for philanthropists to donate to.
6) Relax FCC rules which limit advertising and fund raising on air by non-profit media
7) Remove obstacles/rules for funding of local media forced on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which is currently stuck in a 75% TV, 25% radio and ignores other outlets
8) Encourage collaboration between non-profit and profit, particularly non-profit investigators and for profit media
9) Various recommendations for making LPFM (low power fm), PEG (public access tv) and SPAN (X-satellite public affairs network) type media more effective
Consumers
1) Make universal broadband more available and open.
2) Include libraries in broadband rollout plans
3) Improve digital literacy programs (ie programs to help seniors and others to adapt to using the internet)
4) Recommend but not require that media outlets, cell phones (web browsing) do more to support visually and hearing impaired
5) Consider programs (spectrum access, tax incentives etc) to encourage small and minority businesses
Despite all the nonsense above they're not recommending the gubment take away your internets. In fact they are pretty clear that the internet is only one factor. They're merely documenting reality and making (some pretty good in my opinion) suggestions.
I'll coin the term "Monte Carlo News".
If I get 100 "OMG 6.8 Earthquake in CA" blips, chances are... there's an earthquake! For news stories like that, "the news is in the title". That's why MicroPosting is becoming a killer app. Because it's a *parallel* phenomenon, it's faster than a news writer trying to find an Angle. Those come later, in the followups.
Sometimes yes, the flashfire effect burns the wrong way on a bad post, but when it burns right, it becomes the news that Big Media loses the scoop on and desperately tries to play CatchUp.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Except there's a huge difference.
With terrestrial TV and radio, every station in the area broadcasts at the same time, so there's a hard maximum on the amount of people who can send content to you at all. With the Internet, you can pick and choose who gets to send data through your line. You may only get X number of "channels" at once, but you can swap them out for other "channels" whenever you like.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Local coverage was abdicated as a business decision of station owners, most of whom are corporations that own multiple stations in different markets. They are not interested in local communities. The economy has dried up revenue for advertising as well, and local news coverage is labor intensive. Policy decisions by the FCC, removing rules such as limitations of station ownership and requirements for news programming content, have gone away along with the Fairness Doctrine, because of ideologies leading to deregulation and the belief that corporations should be free to do whatever the hell they want.
Video killed the Radio Star...
The Internet killed the Weatherman...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I have to laugh, living in "Crook" county near Chicago. The local government has been utterly corrupt for decades, the newspapers and radio nothing but shills for the system.
Are they sure it's the internet, and not just a lack of "professional, accountable" reporters? I mean, have they ever -watched- a modern news show. The era of professional reporters was dying when I was a kid in the 80's. Have we had any truly great, honest, accountable reporting done in this past decade at all?
Weinergate vs Watergate...
Deep Throat depended on competent, informed, professional reporting into a format that had already established integrity and audience. The people IN the news can't write about it... the "unnamed sources" can't self publish. The record of service, background, contracts, education, geology... heck, pick any subject: dedicated professionals, sources that gather quorums consistently, every did into the news is into a new source... who gates the source?
The FCC makes an interesting observation: lowering the barriers to entry has profound effects... it's foolish to splash about and expect it's all good. There's the farmer feeding the rabbits in Watership Down. There's the invasion of non native species. There's the wonderful global economy where the force of the playings fields dwarf not people but their communities, states, nations.
Deep, coherent reporting demands professionals in a clear, open field.
Reporting of news was informally outsourced to the wire services such as Associated Press, Reuters etc. I began noticing this while reading the paper on the train over twenty years ago. There is still some local reporting but it tends to be thin and you have to check a local news site because it isn't on any of the wire services.
Don't blame newspapers being simply not interested in what used to be "good journalism". Ya know, digging up a story, researching it, sending out reporters to interview people, take pictures, the works.
If you browse through your local paper, you'll notice that nearly all stories are either taken from some press agency (most of the time even verbatim copy/paste journalism), pointless drivel about someone's prize poodle having puppies (i.e. crap that some people who take themselves too serious sent them) , some tit pic, crosswords and the weather report (again, stock material you can buy somewhere). If they change the story, it's just to add "flavor" (i.e. opinion, just to save you the trouble of having to think for yourself). Add the commentary column and you're ready for print.
It's not the internet. It's simply that newspapers aren't interested in "investigative journalism" anymore. Their paper sells just as fine with copy/paste stories, why bother employing reporters?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"The Internet Is Killing Local News"
Good. Let's brainstorm other ways we can do it as well. I'll help twist the knife.
Of course the FCC is dead wrong, since the "local news" died out 20 years ago and has been replaced by shambling undead horrors spouting off about puppies and weather, but if the internet can help put them back in the ground a little faster I'm all for it.
> Cheaper Content Distribution *
> Direct Access to Community and Civic News *
* Might not apply in Alaska.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Too big to fail. Or, rather, too important to fail, after all we'll need that emergency broadcasting system when the commu... erh, sorry, old habits... when those terrorists attack!
Imagine it's terror and you're not properly scared!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You might think that specializing in local news would be a way for local media to survive (as opposed to trying to compete with heavyweights on national/world news or something), but it seems they're doing a really hamfisted job of it. Details of that have already been thoroughly mentioned in previous comments.
The local free alternative newspaper sure seems to do a better job focusing on local issues
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
"the ruling democrat establishment would love nothing more than to shut down Andrew Britebart and Matt Drudge amongst others"
Yep, the Republicans shut down legitimate enterprises like ACORN because of a con job by the likes of Britebart and you do the usual projection: blaim the democrats for wanting to do the same thing. Look in the mirror asshat to see who is doing this now.
Thanks FCC. Thanks for allowing media companies to consolidate, thus forcing many local stations out of business. Maybe you can fuck up the internet next by making it a tiered system.
the reporting is as if the stories were outsourced and 10 year olds were asked to read the reports. Not only that, I've seen stock footage shown as representing what was happening instead of footage of the actual event. I find that more and more people are just watching "the news" for the weather or traffic and not the reports. And what is up with local news showing stories of what happened in Timbucktoo when it has no effect or relationship to local events, news, or even culture?
FCC, it's not the internet which is killing local news, they have been killing themselves over the past couple of decades.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Radio has completely replaced television news for me. I live in Minnesota, so our local public radio (Minnesota Public Radio) has very solid news. Commercial news outlets (other radio stations, television) have totally devolved to the point of not really having any actual news to me. Nothing on reporting the local legislature and goverment, nothing on local happenings aside from "people stories" and an increased take on always pushing whatever big crisis is going on.
What's sad is, most of the broadcasters are the same, and over the years I've seen worse and worse stories pushed on them, and you can see a sinking feeling on their end as things change up. They have gotten a little better lately, which is good, but they still obviously have awful stuff pushed on them by their parent company (which is sadly... Fox News)
There are tons of local accountability broadcasts on a variety of media.
The problem that the FCC is pointing out, is that corporate media is dying.
Nobody wants to listen to canned spoonfed BS news anymore when you get crap like, "Oh listen up!! Unemployment is getting better, a bunch of little people who bought homes caused the world wide banking crisis and if you don't pay your carbon taxes, the earth will over heat and kill us all."
FoxNews and CNN can suck it.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
In the past, the gap between the big media and the common man was filled by the local media and small-time professional journalists. Now it is filled by citizen engagement through the social media. If an event is worthy of mass recognition then people will now tweet and blog about it enough for it to get on the radar of the national media.
Best slashdot post I've read in a long while. The full name of advertising is, "Psychological manipulation and exploitation of insecurities to make a buck" (I'm not bothering to make an acronym outta that)
TFA may have a (very) small point in that the Internet, by bringing news from all around the world faster, has a large scale homogenous effect tending towards more global type stories with less localized focus; but much more significant, I think, is that the net also gives a voice to everyone, whether they're "qualified" -for lack of a better term- to make an accurate, objective news report or not. It may not be what was meant by the article, but rumors, lies, urban legends, misunderstandings, and misquotes -as well as good information- are also spread around the world via the Internet at lightning speed and in record numbers, via social networking and email, and many people fail to question the "information" splashed across their monitor or withhold judgement until other perspectives are presented. There is no accountability, yet a lot of people will take a friend's email as gospel, particularly if their political or religious inclinations are aligned. It's unfortunate that too often, "news" that simply arrives first manages to establish an exclusive foothold against better, more thoroughly researched information.
So I'm not sure that Internet based, official news sources are a problem, but typical social networking presents issues of it's own - no matter which side of the aisle you prefer.
And yet, taking away the common people's voice is certainly unacceptable; but a simple willingness to evaluate or question information and it's source will go a long way towards better clarity.
I also have to disagree with TFA a bit on the grounds that a local TV station of mine is always looking into (and finding lots of) local corruption, such as the DRPA mess (Delaware River Port Authority). They're always doing investigative reporting.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
That conclusion is supported by the extremely poor posters summary of an equally poor LA Times article. It is almost entirely counter to what the actual FCC report had to say.
Mostly the report was about how to encourage and facilitate alternative outlets and non profits (including ones like Britebart[sic] and Drudge). I listed the conclusions from the actual report in a different post. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2232180&cid=36417376
Its not the internet killing our business. Its the economy. Our advertising has dropped immensely - a large part of the advertising being real estate. Our paper grew in size dramatically during the real estate boom as property agents purchased ad space in our paper. When I started working at my paper, 20 pages of our 60 page paper was filled with real estate. Then the crash came. Now its somewhere between 3 to 4 pages. The resulting recession hit other business around town, and not only did our real estate drop, it became difficult to get anyone to buy advertising and/or pay for it later. People got laid off. Not only that, the few advertisers we do have, we tip toe around to keep them happy. This is why the quality of the news in local papers has dropped. Not competition with the internet. For larger newspapers with a larger proportion of state/national/world news, sure there is competition from the internet. But for a local community, who is going to report on local events except for the local newspaper? There is no competition. Its the economy, not the internet.
It's ironic in a way that the FCC is pointing this out.
What has more of an impact on my life? My local government or the higher levels of government?
When most decisions were made locally, sure then local news coverage is important. I'd care about my local politician as they would be the major policy drivers that affect my life.
But so many issues are now the domain of state and federal governments that local government are don't really do much. The things they do are pretty much routines these days (roads, water, parks, a small part of transit).
All the big issues and the big money are at higher levels of government. Healthcare, education, military, regulation, bailouts, big transit...
The internet didn't kill local news... I stopped watching local news a long time ago. Long before the internet become popular. Local news died because it is irrelevant.
Local news is killing itself. You get maybe a 5 minute top story of whatever murder, rape, or robbery happened recently. Then a thinly disguised commercial masquerading as investigative reporting. Then some human-interest story (probably also a thinly disguised commercial). Then sports (usually at least as long as the entire rest of the newscast). On a "slow news day", the top story will be the weather or a human interest story. Why bother watching?
Were called "communists" etc. & put down in the MAINSTREAM MEDIA no less... guess who was right in the end? NOT THE MEDIA (bought & paid for by "the powers that be" to corral the rest of us with "their brand of information" ala Orwell's 1984)
I mean - Sean Penn (despite his "Spicoli" role in Fasttimes @ Ridgemont High) is an INTELLIGENT MAN! Very intelligent... & he went over there, himself, and checked it out.
He quite rationally stated "Look, I didn't see a thing" & Susan Sarandon said "Why are we attacking these people?" (not direct quotes, but the gist of it's there).
They were right.
(So was the nation of France (who was also put down in the US Press) when they said the whole IRAQ mess was based on UTTER LIES!)
I love my country, we're the best on earth (because we are ALL OF THE EARTH'S PEOPLES in a 'great social experiment' to prove we CAN all "live together as one"... but we get the wool pulled over our eyes, & a LOT, via the media itself!)
APK
P.S.=> The world today makes me sick sometimes... all the friggin' deceits used to fool the rest of us, & where does it come from largely? The "greatest puppet master of all" the mainstream media...
No - The internet & its news is @ the VERY LEAST, a contrary opinion you can examine on an INTERNATIONAL LEVEL, & make decisions based on it, yourself... not that it's the "word of God", it's not, but then, as you can see from above? Neither is the mainstream press! Why do you *think* the "powers that be" HATE the internet people??
...apk
From Ted Koppel on the death of news.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111202857.html
Is that why construction experts even saw girders sheared off and CUT in the WTC's foundations? Not destroyed by heat or plane collision, but, with CLEAR CUTS put into them?? In case you didn't know, that's EXACTLY what demolition experts do before placing charges to destroy a building "in place" (so it collapses into its own space, rather than scattering & destroying things around it). The guy who posted what you replied to? The planes DID hit it, but they weren't what knocked it down (even people who were in the building heard explosions BENEATH where they were, some on the lower lobby levels). That means it was taken down in its FOUNDATIONS, first.
Actually, reddit is pretty anti-Apple, but your main point about the hive mind is correct.
How about every news network be forced to use a twitter-like formatting? That way they're required to cut the BS and over-dramatization of the media and get right to the specifics of the issue. I for one don't care to hear about how 'This food ingredient may be found to kill you.' and then the actual broadcast that goes into detail on the matter says 'No, it doesn't.' The summary is I just wasted an hour of my time on nothing but scare tactics. This is why I don't even watch the news or read newspapers anymore.
The reason people use the internet at all to get news is because then they have several places to get the news so they can acquire the facts and filter out the opinions, lies, and BS for themselves. Which wouldn't have to happen if the news distributors were honest and forthright to begin with.
tl/dr
'nuff said.
and it certainly has nothing to do with deregulation in the Regan era that let clearchannel buy up all the local stations and newspapers, outsource everything and then control the politics to their benefit. No siree! Seriously. I don't read the newspapers because there's nothing their for me. Just the same bull$%@! telling me to work harder for less and nevermind my wages falling since 1970.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The report says digital "in part because of the digital revolution, serious problems have arisen" - other, much more important, reasons I can think of that I stopped watching the local news...
1) Sensationalism - overblowing the importance of a story, sometimes even adjusting facts, for shock value
2) Oversimplification - anything that doesn't fit into a 3 minute segment gets truncated or ignored
3) Commercialization - too many "this business is doing x, y, z" advertising disguised as news stories
4) Repetition - news programming runs from 5am to 8am, then 11:30am to 1pm, then 4:00pm to 6:00pm - all with similar if not identical stories, weather, etc.
5) Delay - "this story is *super* important, but we're going to make you wait until 11 to hear it"
These days my news comes from:
1) A *weekly* local news show on PBS. They take the time to really delve into the issues, and much more often than not present multiple opinions.
2) Weekly "alternative press" paper - they do actual long-term investigative stories, and don't pull any punches
3) The local NPR affiliate for "breaking" local news. (bonus, no commercials - except for pledge drives)
4) wunderground.com - just the facts, exactly when I want them, without the pretty talking head blocking the map and being friendly
It was very easy for me to give up local news. More than 10 years ago now. Shortly after, I gave up on the national programs as well - substituting NPR, PBS News Hour, BBC, and Al Jazeera English for national/international news. Despite being a former CNN junkie (it used to be on almost 24/7, even if muted with captions enabled) I have completely ignored CNN and MSNBC too, except maybe during special events. (last time I remember using CNN was 9/11 - when they still had no details, and included the fact the empire state building survived that bomber crashing into it in the story) Haven't missed the major networks one bit.
It was the Telecommunications Act of 1992 (do I remember correctly?) that (a.) paved the way for the internet, and (b.) did away with the Fairness Doctrine for broadcasters. On the one hand, it gave us this medium. On the other hand, local tv and radio no longer had to scrupulously demonstrate they did not take sides on matters of debate in the debate but instead provided access to all sides without "spin." And they didn't even have to staff local news-gatherers at all. Without having broadcast news constrained by this doctrine, constructed to protect the intellectual "commons" of news, then print news --which never had such constraints-- didn't at least have those broadcasters with their icky "fairness" compelling them to at least TRY to be fair.
Remember, it's like anything... opinions and conjecture. Once you get past that, you can see the discussion more clearly. You also can safely assume that EVERYONE has a bias. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to hide their bias(es).
Never let it be said that any community (online or otherwise) is unbiased... it's simply not true.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Its the scourge of the egalitarian terrorists: Their promoted wicked progress of our industries is killing the slave trade throwing thousands of slavers to unemployment.
Translation: "The old media order is dying and, we, as members of the old order know that this will mean the death of our society because we are so important."
*YAWN*
This is only not boring because the old order will soon be demanding tax payer subsidies in order to keep themselves alive.
Is this the same FCC where Comcast bought a commissioner, and no one batted an eye? They're saying it's the internet killing local news is causing local corruption?
Or maybe it's just that shit rolls downhill.
I dunno, I mean it's easy to shake a finger at anyone who has ever handed out flyers for their business or run a radio advert, but I've no idea how you are meant to build a business without advertising. Word of mouth can play a part, but it's prone to shilling and character assassination - is advertising that much worse? If you're talking about psychological manipulation to make people buy rubbish they don't need, well you can take two approaches on that - either Bill Hicks is right or people need to take some adult responsibility for their purchasing decisions. Probably a little of both.
Hey, I heard they found 30 dead bodies at a farm in Texas. (Newspaper One: "According to Radio1 police have found 30 dead bodies..." Radio1: "According to TV2 police have found 30 bodies..." TV2: "According to Newspaper One, police have found 30 bodies..." Police: "Some nutbar who says she's a 'prophetess' says she 'saw' 30 bodies at a farm, but nobody asked us what we thought or found... go figure!"
Do you see a pattern? Who the hell trusts reporters and news organisations who won't bother to fact check themselves (and no, the other news channels don't count as sources). How about these local 'news organisations' actually find some news to report instead of going after the low hanging fruit.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Since the expansion of the internet, and the porn it provides, my penis has been taking a literal beating, and is now red and sore. Prior to this, my penis was just peachy.
(Might as well, it's basically along the same lines!)
It killed the profession of scribes who in his time had
very comfortable life for their families.
The problem with my local news broadcasts is their insistence on filling 2 hours with 15 minutes of real local news and a bunch of fluff or national news from yesterday. The worst part is the break it up into segments so if you want local events you have to watch the first 15 minutes...if you want weather its about an hour in and finally if you want local sports you have to wait until the last 15 minutes. In between they run the expose into the dangers of sniffing paint, how copper thieves could steal your air conditioner and other paranoia pieces along with the latest stories about puppies, kittens or how local businesses donated a computer to a handicapped kid.
I haven't watched local TV news in years because I got sick of all the senseless, meaningless time-wasting banter, fluff, chuckles, and other diversions that reduced the amount of product.
That's funny, I read all of my local news on Facebook.
The Chronicle is not conservative or liberal so much as "owned" by the Houston powers that be. You can count on them to be "for" whatever the Houston elite is for.
The other articles they run are...
1) Syndicated national columnists
2) Syndicated national news (why do I care some mom murdered her kids in kentucky more than I care about the business dealings of my city councilmen?)
3) Syndicated national comics
4) Some local sports (I don't watch sports)
5) Syndicated religious columns once a week.
I.e. We have a 3+ million person market and mostly they feed us regurgitated national news, opinions, sports and comics.
The ads are tough for them- more people buy online and hence don't care about local advertisements as much as they used to.
But to the point of the post...
The Houston Press produces more investigative LOCAL (City and State) investigative articles per year than the Chronicle does. And it's just a local paper with restaurant, medical study, and "adult services" advertisements.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The actual article/report doesn't seem to blame the internet much, it just says "in a broadband age." Otherwise, it seems to support the opinion of most people here-- local news vacuums, more or less.
Why? Lots of reasons. Not much of an independent revenue module-- local news organizations tend to lack tech skills. Local channels are the low end of the heap, meaning my local channel makes racist and other gaffes (recent: they broadcast that they don't have soap in a mid-east country) that alientate anyone but the lowest common denominator of "viewers." Lack of actual journalistic standards and willingness to follow them-- trying for the momentary splash, not to deliver excellence.
Of course, Internet "news" and culture... how much better?
Oooooh the anger dollar. HUGE market!!
My local The Toronto Star's quality has gone down hill. I do think it has to do with a lack of funds.....how else would they end up with such low quality people? I mostly read it online now and maybe it is just the online quality that is really bad:
-Bad or no fact checking (yes, worse than slashdot) /thinks says he got of speeding ticket because of his GPS evidence contrary to judges statement...wtf???)
-Stories/reports being changed significantly but no statement saying they were changed.
-Lame stories (man in california
-purposely misleading and erroneous article headlines/titles
I can imagine the stuff people will get away with because there are no reporters to hide from when this new form of quality becomes more popular.
cc
Central planners report that the amount of a good or service is not optimal. But don't worry, they know what is the optimal quantity and how to get it produced, thereby bettering the world.
I feel the internet is an enhancement. I work strange hours with the military and i can catch up on the news from my computer or my smartphone from anywhere.
Like the FCC's own rules about how many stations somebody can own in a particular broadcast market has helped.
Way to go, FCC. Blame the Internet for your own fuckup.
I find the opposite to be true; while MSLSD, the ClintonNewsNetwork, and the like, are quite biased and censor certain news, I find local news to be more accurate and unbiased. However, local news is that, and they generally don't cover as much national and international news as the big players.
My ideal news outlet would have the accurate, unbiased, uncensored news, which they currently broadcast, but with a broader scope. Most of the big, national news has some level of bias which results in deceitful censorship. Corruption may be major as well.
I don't know about that
Heck I think /. is a little to pro-apple as well.
So lets see
1: Most Apple products are overly expensive
2: Iphones/iPods try to hard to force users to use iTunes
Time to see how badly this post gets modded down for speaking badly about Apple.
I dunno, I mean it's easy to shake a finger at anyone who has ever handed out flyers for their business or run a radio advert, but I've no idea how you are meant to build a business without advertising. Word of mouth can play a part, but it's prone to shilling and character assassination - is advertising that much worse? If you're talking about psychological manipulation to make people buy rubbish they don't need, well you can take two approaches on that - either Bill Hicks is right or people need to take some adult responsibility for their purchasing decisions. Probably a little of both.
Advertising is telling someone that the product is available. eg. room to rent.
Marketing is creating a want eg. livestyle accomodation.
When my mailbox is stuffed full of unsolicited mail - whether it's scams, advertising, free samples, or marketing - it matters not. It's littering. It used my space. Try it in the physical world and it'll threaten the health of those that litter Right or wrong - it's a simple fact.
Marketing is the rattle of a stick in a swill bucket ~ George Orwell (any inaccuracies are due to my recall)
The Internet put the power of reporting the news in the hands of anyone, not just the ivory-tower, credentialed journalists. That was half the death knell. The bigger issue, however, is the fact that by then, mass-media outlets have become opinion grinders, shaping and making the news rather than reporting it. If it wasn't for CNN/ABC/CBS/etc filtering what they didn't want to report, and spinning the few bits of info that they did decide to let through, people wouldn't have latched on to Drudge, Breitbart, and others.
And now, faced with a quantum-leap catastrophe, instead of recognizing their mistakes and learning from them, they fight the new wave rather than embrace it. They're making the same mistake manufacturers of horse-carriage-related goods made when they protested the advent of cars. The coachbuilders who embraced the new paradigm went on to become the premier suppliers of custom interiors and/or bodies for luxury cars (Vanden Plas, et al) - the others perished.
just before internet proliferation. seemed more related to the we-are-all-replublicans-now movement with the chant about liberal media. might also be related to fact that this big town (never a city) has been dying for last 15 years.
At one time I worked for a local news paper that has a domain associated with them. During the introduction period the publisher (read CEO) had a conference with all the newhires. During the conference he stated multiple times that the paper was better than any other media outlet because it was faster and more accurate. At the end of the conference he asked us what we thought of the paper and how we thought it could improve. Silly little me with my grandios ideas recommended that the paper should change its online presense from being a for purchase environment to a free and open environment. My actual recommendations were:
- Make the online experience for the REPORTERS easier. Give them blogs and make it very obvious that the blogs are commentary/editorial. If the reporters with the education to know what real news was and how to fact check are blogging about the same thing that the average citizen is but with more facts, people are generally going to go to their blogs and read it (which is where you make your money later).
- Write concise accurate and decent articles that answer the basic questions along with some details. Quit writing online articles that are "There was a 4 alarm fire at . There are 2 reports of injuries, more in tomorows paper." - The local TV news station puts more out in less time on the internet or TV than the supposedly timely paper does.
- When you setup to advertise, which is where your money comes from, ensure that you are giving the option to advertise on the web page concurrent to the page the ad will be on along with the number of hits it receives rather than "You will pay us N dollars for a web ad that will be on every page a total of N times." If you can get more hits on the web page, you can charge more for the ads.
- Allow for the entire news paper to be downloaded in an electronic format so people dont have to have a news paper daily. I dont know about everyone else and I honestly dont care but I do know I would subscribe to the paper if they would stop dropping that kindling in my front yard even though I dont have a fireplace.
I was fired.
Moral of the story: do what the big guys want not what will help their business.
There's a reason why the FCC is saying this. They know they were the real killers, and they are trying to make you look elsewhere. Preferably at some target like "the Internet" that has no good way to speak up for itself.
The FCC killed local news themselves, by allowing all the local papers to consolodiate into one owner starting back in the 80's. It was always competiton with the other city dailies that drove all the tough reporting back in the day. Back when people had a choice, if you could get a good juicy expose or two, you could get people into the habit of chosing you instead of one of the others papers. Now that there is no competition, the local newspaper's main concern is to not tick anybody off. So the only contraversy it is ever OK to stir up will be about outsiders (eg: Shock Rock Musicians), or about those already locally despised (eg: "sex offenders", "criminals", poor drug users). It is no coincidence that the US prison population skyrocketed in the 80's at the same time local competition in news disappeared.
So now that the death of local reporting has become clear for all to see, the FCC is trying desperately to point the finger somewhere else. It figures.
The reason people are abandoning the TV stations for the internet is that the TV news claimed Saddam had nuclear weapons, while the internet sources reported correctly it was all a hoax. Just last week the TV news was all a twitter about the persecuted lesbian blogger in Syria, while the internet was already suspicious of a war-starting hoax, which turned out to be the case as the Syrian Lesbian Blogger turns out to be a married guy in Georgia.
TV News is dying because nobody likes a liar.
When television news stops lying to us, then maybe they'll get their viewers back.
I guess so, but I think there are all these things call "advertisements" in mags and on billboards that feature semi-naked chicks selling perfume, watches, cars and beer. So it may not be technical advertisement, but that's the word we're stuck with to describe those things. The ads are certainly not there to let us know of the existence of those watches and beer, they are to a) get noticed; b) generate interest/arousal; c) cause us to change our buying pattern/decisions as a result. In that sense it's marketing - so I think you're making a good point, but I think the words you're using to distinguish between the two concepts don't work.
Local news censors stories. This is all about limiting Free Speech. After all, censorship is everywhere. The gov’t (and their big business cronies) censor free speech, shut down dissent and ban the book “America Deceived II”. Free speech for all.
Last link (before Google Books bans it also]:
http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000190526
Everytime I have known someone involved in a news story, the local media got the story wrong, badly wrong. Usually on a fundamental level, mostly because they were trying to sensationalize to gain ratings other times because they were tryign to promote an agenda. The handful of local news people I have known were vain ,shallow and obsessed with ratings. They did not give a damn whether the stories were significant, accurate or even true. Just where their ratings were this period.
Just because someone said something negative about Apple does not mean it is probably valid. It is very likely to not be valid considering the rabid anti-Apple nuts. All you've done is expose your own bias.
And you just exposed yours.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Local news is just fine. National news and the FCC are broken beyond repair. "Government waste?" "Damage to schools?" Right. I guess it took a 475 page report to determine there may be government waste (lol). AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES THE ABSURDITY AND HYPOCRICY on top of the obvious grift?!?! It's a shame. The FCC should be a good thing, but this is what happens when administration after administration appoints foxes to watch henhouses.
Sincerely,
Rampaging Manatee
I dunno, I mean it's easy to shake a finger at anyone who has ever handed out flyers for their business or run a radio advert, but I've no idea how you are meant to build a business without advertising. Word of mouth can play a part, but it's prone to shilling and character assassination - is advertising that much worse? If you're talking about psychological manipulation to make people buy rubbish they don't need, well you can take two approaches on that - either Bill Hicks is right or people need to take some adult responsibility for their purchasing decisions. Probably a little of both.
Advertising is telling someone that the product is available. eg. room to rent.
Marketing is creating a want eg. livestyle accomodation.
Marketing and advertising go hand in hand. When you advertise a room for rent, you highlight the positive features of that room to get more potential renters. That's marketing. You would not advertise a room for rent without listing all of the positive features. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of calls asking about features that could easily be listed in the advertisement.
If people are so weak as to buy things they don't need because of marketing, they deserve to go into debt. It's the "keeping up with the Jones'" attitude that drives many people into debt. Stop worrying about what your neighbor has and enjoy the things that you have. They may have a boat, big fancy car, and a big house, but they also probably have a lot of debt.
How many times have you heard the 11 o'clock news "teaser" for an interesting story they wait until 11:28pm to put on the air?
Usually if you have your laptop, you can go to a news website and, boom, there is the story without waiting 28 minutes through commercials and a dozen local crime reports.
Local news needs to adapt. The "string you along so you keep watching commercials" passive-watching business model is gone for good.
I'm a 2000 man.
No one likes a liar.
my local news runs bullshit pieces like "underage college hockey players caught drinking alcohol". who the hell would want to watch that garbage? it is certainly not newsworthy on any level.
...
As stated before the lack of real news killed it for me, I really don’t care if a kitten was saved from a tree by a four year old with one arm. The main thing I hate with a passion is the dumb ass banter between the news people or the lame ass puns..dear god make the bad man stop!!!
Accessible digital medium replaces outdated, schedule-based medium. News at elev... er, whenever you feel like checking your smartphone.
/* No Comment */
Pick almost any free-time activity people used to do before the Internet, and I'll bet they're doing less of it today, because free time is a finite resource. New alternatives always compete with older ones.
I sure hope you're not lumping local TV news into the category of "professional journalism." Local news is like a high school version of "real" news -- for example, the ubiquitous "Live Report!" in which a reporter goes out to a location where nothing is happening at the moment, and narrates a tape about something that happened earlier in the day. What a joke.
I dunno, I mean it's easy to shake a finger at anyone who has ever handed out flyers for their business or run a radio advert, but I've no idea how you are meant to build a business without advertising. Word of mouth can play a part, but it's prone to shilling and character assassination - is advertising that much worse? If you're talking about psychological manipulation to make people buy rubbish they don't need, well you can take two approaches on that - either Bill Hicks is right or people need to take some adult responsibility for their purchasing decisions. Probably a little of both.
Advertising is telling someone that the product is available. eg. room to rent.
Marketing is creating a want eg. livestyle accomodation.
Marketing and advertising go hand in hand. When you advertise a room for rent, you highlight the positive features of that room to get more potential renters. That's marketing. You would not advertise a room for rent without listing all of the positive features. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of calls asking about features that could easily be listed in the advertisement.
If people are so weak as to buy things they don't need because of marketing, they deserve to go into debt. It's the "keeping up with the Jones'" attitude that drives many people into debt. Stop worrying about what your neighbor has and enjoy the things that you have. They may have a boat, big fancy car, and a big house, but they also probably have a lot of debt.
I suspect that Jared Diamond doesn't post to Slashdot... but if he did, he'd probably point out the unlikeness of that ever occurring. Aside from the evolutionary drives that make it more rewarding to carry debt than not to (it's about what the credit can purchase, the consequences of debt are separate) - there's the drive to gain an advantage over other gene pools (more return for less effort, 2nd Law of Thermodynamics etc). eg, The fellow with the yard full of leaves..... who then sells the leaves as mulch, but only after selling the "advantage" to the buyer. Which is all good until he sells the leaves that fell from the tree he poisoned... but it's not going to bother the fellow selling the poisonous mulch, because the buyer "is not his kin".
---
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are.
~ Bill Hicks
Maybe, if we made 2011 the year of Bill Hicks, 2012 won't be worse. It's just a thought you know? You do what you can ;-p
I guess so, but I think there are all these things call "advertisements" in mags and on billboards that feature semi-naked chicks selling perfume, watches, cars and beer. So it may not be technical advertisement, but that's the word we're stuck with to describe those things. The ads are certainly not there to let us know of the existence of those watches and beer, they are to a) get noticed; b) generate interest/arousal; c) cause us to change our buying pattern/decisions as a result. In that sense it's marketing - so I think you're making a good point, but I think the words you're using to distinguish between the two concepts don't work.
Now if you just replace "advertising" with "marketing", and then correlate that with the sale of "wants" over "needs" - you'll have something.... when you "want" something you don't need because you feel you're missing out - that's marketing (creating the desire).
---
See we just had a misunderstanding. I thought we lived in the U.S. of A., the United States of America. But actually we live in the U.S. of A., the United States of Advertising. Freedom of expression is guaranteed? If you've got the money!
~ Bill Hicks