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The Internet Is Killing Local News, Says the FCC

Posted by timothy on from the locality-locality-locality dept.

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."

3 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Old news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Because it used to be so much better by Moe+Taxes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 -
  3. Re:Yeah, that's it by tripleevenfall · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Meanwhile, shitty/shoddy reporting has killed news in general, not shortages of staff. Considering that they wont' even cover tough topics pretty much sealed the deal for any form of regular news website being considered legitimate or worth a glance. I'd sooner read fark than new york times, since at least I can get more info from fark, such as when they actually covered iran protests and NYT/CNN/Fox news/ABC/NBC/AP were nowhere to be found. Only Al Jazeera has been stepping up as a news org.

    Personally, I have long since ignored local news media outlets because of the level of bias they all seem to carry. There are more choices for national and international news, you can find more sources online and sources based overseas, but here in America most of the media is pushing the same agenda - why would I waste my time watching what are essentially 20 minute news-based political cartoons?

    The internet didn't kill local news or newspapers, they killed themselves by deciding to stop reporting news and start shaping and creating news.