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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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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 -
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!
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.