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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."
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.
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!
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?
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.
They gave up a long time ago, and now they're paying the price. Rather that doing journalism like a profession, they went for the lazy option and reduced news to celebrity gossip, and even using forum posts and twitter as items within their pointless articles. Tough titties, these "journalist" are getting exactly what the deserve.
I'm 55. I'm also a voracious reader. I've read many, many US newspapers, certainly all the really big ones -- and I've never seen such a thing. What I see are papers that won't address the real issues, papers that kowtow to the superstitious, papers that throw up "the other side" even when there's absolutely no facts on the ground supporting the other side, etc.
Newspapers have a conflict of interest: They have to make money; and in order to make money, they have to leave a very large number of readers content with what they've read. So they can't honestly address political corruption, unjust wars, affronts to liberty, superstition, the fact that the legal system has devolved to corporate and moneyed-group serving process, and no longer even pretends to implement justice for the citizens at any level... I could go on, but the point is made: newspapers are pap-filled rags written for the lowest common denominator in their audience.
A blogger doesn't have to be dependent upon how many people read. zero, one or a thousand, it's all the same. So they can -- and do -- say whatever they think. Then we, as netizens, simply find the ones that are thinking clearly. The difference is that there are actually things worth reading on the net. In newspapers... not so much. I can point you to quite a few blogs where the reading is interesting, informative, pertinent, and well thought out, and few, if any, subjects are "off the table." I can't point you to even one newspaper where the same is true.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.