Explaining the Lack of Quality Journalism In the Internet Age (gawker.com)

schnell writes: While many lament the seeming lack of quality, in-depth journalism today, a Gawker article argues that the inescapable problem is that you need a paying (in some form) audience (of a large enough size) to do it. There are plenty of free "news" sources to be found online, especially blogs simply regurgitating and putting a spin on wire news reports. But as the article notes, "The audience for quality prestige content is small. Even smaller than the actual output of quality prestige content, which itself is smaller than most media outlets like to imagine." Even highly respected news sources like the New York Times are resorting to wine clubs, and the Washington Post is giving free subscriptions to Amazon Prime members to drive more corporate synergy and revenue. Rich parent companies are giving up on boutique, high-quality, niche journalism projects like ESPN's Grantland and Al Jazeera America because there simply aren't enough TV viewers/online ad clickers to pay the bills. So how do we reconcile our collectively-stated desire for high quality journalism with our (seeming) collective unwillingness to pay for it?

Comments

Re:"Social Justice" prevents good journalism.

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Oh, man, I should've kept reading before submitting my earlier comment.

Lately there have been a small number of cases of black youth violently attacking police officers, typically after being confronted for some crime these youth had committed, and then the police officers do the only reasonable thing and defend themselves using their guns.

Yes, the only reasonable thing for a well-trained law enforcement officer to do when violently attacked by unarmed black youth is to shoot them. After all, policing isn't supposed to be a dangerous job, so we can't expect police officers to endure any level of danger, no matter how insignificant. Any threat to an officer, no matter how minor, must be met with gunfire. This is, after all, "the only reasonable thing" to do.

In 2015, 129 American police officers died in the line of duty. 39 by gunfire, 7 by vehicular assault, 6 by bomb, 3 by assault. That's 55 cops killed by some form of violence (the rest died from automobile accidents, heart attacks, 9/11 related illness, etc).

In 2015, 1138 people died at the hands of on-duty American police officers. 554 of those people had firearms, and 223 of them were unarmed.

For every cop that is killed through violence, twenty Americans are killed by police violence. Of those twenty, four are entirely unarmed.

Source for cops killed by people, source for people killed by cops.