Let me say it another way: The barriers of entry into the journalism business have been battered down, making it easier than ever to enter the profession. That will read as small consolation to the journalists who have had their publications shot out from under them--the Rocky Mountain News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Ann Arbor News (come July 23), and magazines too numerous to tally. But please notice that I'm not saying there has never been a more lucrative or prestigious time to become a journalist. The cash and status associated with the profession are fairly recent. Until the early 1970s or thereabouts, the average journalist made an average salary (if that), and his societal standing was modest.
If the downside of the battered-down barriers to entry is less pay and lower status, the potential upside is that a flood of new entrants into the field could portend a journalistic renaissance. No, I'm not saying that every junior blogger and pint-size videographer will immediately stand as tall as Barton Gellman and Errol Morris and that the Washington Post and NBC News should be flushed. But journalism has generally benefited by increases in the number of competitors, the entry of new and once-marginalized players, and the creation of new approaches to cracking stories. Just because the journalism business is going to hell and it may no longer make economic sense to maintain mega-news bureaus at the center of war zones doesn't mean that journalism isn't thriving.
From where I drink, the champagne is still dry, cold, and fizzy.
This seems to me to rather precisely miss the point. The problem besetting newspapers is not that there are hordes of bloggers giving it away for free. Bloggers are, to be sure, great competition for the op-ed section. But the op-ed section is not a money maker, as the New York Times so painfully discovered with Times Select. As I wrote at the time, the Times confused what people were emailing each other with what they would be willing to pay for. If those things were the same, poems about Jesus and pictures of kittens wearing hats would have replaced gambling and porn as the internet's most profitable content.
Journalism is not being brought low by excess supply of content; it's being steadily eroded by insufficient demand for advertising pages. For most of history, most publications lost money, or at best broke even, on their subscription base, which just about paid for the cost of printing and distributing the papers. Advertising was what paid the bills. To be sure, some of that advertising is migrating to blogs and similar new media. But most of it is simply being siphoned out of journalism altogether. Craigslist ate the classified ads. eHarmony stole the personals. Google took those tiny ads for weird products. And Macy's can email its own damn customers to announce a sale.
We could herd every new media type into camps and force them to become shorthand/typists, and newspapers would still be in just as bad shape as they are now. We could take down Google News, and it would barely register in their bottom lines. Even if every newspaper and magazine in the country entered into a binding cartel agreement not to put more than a smidgen of free content on their websites, newspapers would still be losing money, and closing by the dozens. It's the economics, stupid.
We're not witnessing the breakup of a monopoly, in which more players make more modest incomes providing more stuff, and everyone flourishes (except the monopolist). We're witnessing the death of a business model. And no one has figured out how to pay for hard news. Hard news stories take a great deal of time to write--more time than most amateurs can afford, which is why blogs tend to do opinion rather than journalism. Moreover, they are at least greatly improved when their authors are not worried about losing their jobs if what they write pisses off a local power broker.
This is a genuine loss for the American public. Cities without newspapers seem to experience a sizeable increase in insider self-dealing and other forms of corruption--one theory as to why the Federal government is less corrupt than state and local governments is simply that it's more thoroughly covered by the press. I am second to none in my appreciation of new media and its possibilities. But so far, it has proven more effective as a complement to old media than a replacement.
The federal government is less corrupt than state governments?
That is disquieting. Sheesh.
This is a genuine loss for the American public. Cities without newspapers seem to experience a sizeable increase in insider self-dealing and other forms of corruption--one theory as to why the Federal government is less corrupt than state and local governments is simply that it's more thoroughly covered by the press.
You are kidding, right? First, there is a city you should be familiar with since you went to University there. It's called Philadelphia. It has two newspapers, yet there is still plenty of corruption, though rarely prosecuted. And the Federal Government is more thoroughly covered? In what way?
Srsly? Compare the number of news outlets reporting on the federal government with the number reporting on, say, NYC.
As for corruption, I didn't say newspapers were some magic snake oil that eliminates corruption; I said that the evidence seems to show that cities without newspapers have more corruption after the newspapers close.
Megan has probably read:
http://ideas.theatlantic.com/2009/06/on_discourse_the_local_newspaper.php
"Even so, I know of no government watchdog more effective than newspapers who employ people like Richard Marosi, assigning them to local government beats, where they can break corruption stories and watch closely enough that more local officials eschew graft for fear of getting caught."
The correlation is with the same location gaining or losing a news outlet.
First, the issue isn't does media coverage end corruption, the issue is will there be MORE corruption if there aren't dedicated journalists. Not many people are willing to slog through council meetings, read city and county budgets, and generally do the boring spadework that real journalism entails (as opposed to 'from your den' journalism). The other problem is that of credentials. While you can sneer at journalistic credentials, if its my job to report the news, and I LIE, then I am out of a job. And I will not get another. If its serious enough my managing editor will also be fired. Blogerati have nothing on the line. They have no credibility to lose beyond, maybe, having to find a new hobby.
I don't have a deep knowledge of political reporting, but from a technical standpoint, online media is excellent in this regard. People post about experiences on various forums. People like Richard Stallman advocate for causes. Organizations test hardware rigorously and post the results for free, and consumers of information discuss the quality of that information. This is a far superior business model.
Most news stories contain numerous errors, I forget the exact average per story but I've had enough friends complain that a particular article on things they were familiar with pursued 'an angle' rather than the facts. I've seen a number of stories lie fragrantly about estimates for number of people at a particular rally. There were no consequences. The only solution seems to be multiple voices checking stories, which comment sections provide.
Online media has the only kind of skin in the game that any news organization should have, their reputations. More than that is potentially corrupting.
The only solution seems to be multiple voices checking stories, which comment sections provide.
What? Comment sections are mostly filled up with ... comments, more or less fatuous things people write in between doing actual tasks at work. What comment sections are you reading where people publish their original and accurate reporting that they collect in their copious free time?
Honestly, I don't even know what you're talking about here. Multiple voices checking stories? What facts do they base their "checking" on, and who determines what those facts are? What are they checking them against?
The technical side has little correlation with public policy reporting. I'm a bit of a techie and a working journalist. I rely almost entirely on blogs and small tech sites for info about hardware, software, gadgets, etc. Perfect example of the blogosphere shining.
But in general, local political issues don't have enough salience to individuals to warrant the sort of time-intensive shoeleather reporting required to really cover them on an amateur/hobby/volunteer basis.
These issues affect your life. And you have to know what's going on to have an impact -- even if just by turning out to vote once in a while. Without someone keeping us ALL up to speed on this stuff, only people with a direct interest will make the effort to track the decision being made. And for direct, usually insert "financial." Their interest. Not yours or mine or the public's.
It's a full time job to cover local government well in even a smallish city. In a big city, it's LOTS of full-time jobs. You probably don't have time to take on an extra full-time job.
Why should you care even if you don't have a compelling personal interest? On the one hand, without informed citizens, democracy dies.
If that doesn't do it for you, there's the other side. Self-interest. It's your house that'll burn down because they won't build a fire station close enough (and your homeowners insurance that's twice what it would be if they one was closer). It's not having a playground within walking distance for the kids. Or, out of the hypothetical and to the all too real, it's paying an extra $40 on this year's property taxes to help pay for a nice restoration on the riverfront that I never go to but will sure make things nicer for all the rich people with houses there. Not that I'm bitter about that or anything...
That sort of stuff doesn't have an immediate earth-shattering impact on you personally, but it matters, and it adds up. Some of this stuff can be covered by engaged amateur "neighborhood" blogger types, but I'd argue that it comes without the quality, consistancy, reliability or (especially) objectivity of a dedicated pro.
The other type of stories just arguably CAN'T be covered by amateurs, and that's the straight up investigative/corruption cases. If the company hired to do that riverfront rehab work has the mayor's wife as a silent partner, you're unlikely to find out from Jane soccer mom's neighborhood blog (ain't dissing Jane.. I love my local soccer mom's blog, covers my neighborhood better than anyone else in a lot of ways).
For the record, I have no reason to suspect the mayor's getting kickbacks on that riverfront job -- but the whole thing's still a rip off. I do know that it took a ton of time and specialized skills to break the story of the local planning commissioner and county supervisor shaking down developers for big money by funneling work through a title company owned by a relative who padded the bills. That raised the prices everyone paid for both mortgages and every good and service in the county by raising the price of real estate there. It also allowed developers to build whatever the hell they wanted, no matter what the neighbors thought. You can't break that story and work another full time job. It took two people about two weeks of work to do it.
The same can be said of the story about the local sheriff who was trading concealed weapon permits for campaign contributions (including to convicted felons! The perfect detail that made the story!)
We need to have dedicated, skilled, pros doing this stuff every day, otherwise we'll wind up an autocratic oligarchy like Russia. I don't know how we pay for it given the collapse of the previous model, but this is not the sort of thing one can do by having "People post about experiences on various forums" or " advocate for causes." The organizations you mention don't apply in this arena, or else they've got an interest, "and consumers of information" won't have any way to learn about the story to "discuss the quality of that information." That may be a superior business model, but it's no way to run a democracy.
The other problem is that of credentials. While you can sneer at journalistic credentials, if its my job to report the news, and I LIE, then I am out of a job.
It took the Libby trial(or was it the Plame case) to smoke out Judy Miller(among others at the Old Gary Lady). Depends on what you call "reporting". Do you call the CNBC gasbags reporting? Because they lie like fireworks going off on the 4th of July.
This post absolutely nails it. There's the sense out there that the crumbling business model could mean the death of the traditional newspaper -- prompting grave-dancing from many new media types -- but what is at stake is the professional newsroom itself.
Megan points out one consequence, increased corruption at the state and local level, which Paul Starr discussed in a lengthy TNR piece. Another consequence may be an exponential increase in the amount of rumor and spin influencing reports of major events. Take the uprising in Iran. Some have embraced unverified Twitter and blog accounts of the action, because those tweets and posts are all they have to go on. They may be all news outlets have to work with for important events in the future, if the looming newsroom apocalypse comes to pass. How easy would it be for the bad guys to manipulate that stream of unverified, anonymous accounts in the future?
This post absolutely nails it. There's the sense out there that the crumbling business model could mean the death of the traditional newspaper -- prompting grave-dancing from many new media types -- but what is at stake is the professional newsroom itself.
The business model crumbled because big conglomerates got saddled with debt when they bought all the different papers. Just look at Sam Zell. It's the debt from acquisitions that killed the newspapers. Not the papers themselves.
True, Zell is insanely over-leveraged. But his wrongheaded acquisition of the Tribune Company is an outlier. Consider that at least 120 newspapers in the U.S. have closed since January 2008. Do you think that's because they were all saddled with debt from bad acquisitions or because the business model they were using didn't bring in enough revenue for them to remain viable?
For things like Iran, there's a lot of anonymity due to fear of security forces, but for most issues anonymity isn't nearly as big a concern. A lot of my info comes from bloggers I've been reading for most of a decade, like Megan - I can be fairly sure that she's not an Iranian agent.
The info you get from bloggers is info they got from professional reporters (with analysis and/or snark added in). If those news sources dry up, maybe they'll do like Andrew Sullivan has done in the case of the Iranian uprising and uncritically post information from blogs and Twitter. Or worse, perhaps the reporters will turn to unverified blogs posts and tweets and present it as verified information, under the imprimatur of their respective news orgs.
And the automobile put the larger established buggy manufacturers out of business. Destroyed their economic model. You can not find a multitude of buggies and buggy accessories anymore. But for those buggy makers that are good enough and persistent enough there is still a very small market to compete, the Amish. And I will point out that you can buy a multitude of very high quality whips by going to the correct websites. Which is what newspaper journalism has really come down to these days, a fetish. An acceptable one that has many newspaper curious types still openly subscribing, but a fetish nonetheless.
Newspapers really stared dying with serious TV journalism, imho. I am surprised that print journalism hung on for as long as it did.
The internet killed the traditional music business. The record labels should have embraced the new technology and found a way to make their business model change with the changing times. Ditto for print media. Wouldn't it be better for the NYT if they had made craigslist? Or bought it when it was still small?
Maybe the newspapers/magazines should get every subscriber's e-mail address and e-mail them the hard journalist news story they have before final draft, give them updates, with links back to the story at your website with an ad. Take what you have (hard journalism) and marry it to the new media. Is my idea a good one, probably not, but it is a new one.
Here's another, partner with the biggest blogs you can. Wait, the HuffPo already has the same editorial viewpoint of the NYT. Adding to the appearance of new media the fact (from my perspective) that the old media seem entrenched as all get out to protect their ideological agendas. Fox news is berated by many as a republican network, but their audience for their biggest shows has more self identified non-republicans in their audience as the entire audience of a competing CNN or MSNBC show. Fox does show the conservative side, but they also show the liberal side. Here's an example of the difference between the two, during the bush years every time the death toll in in Iraq neared a number evenly divisible by 1000 the old media got all breathless, FOR DAYS. Fox news was the only broadcast outlet that treated the soldiers like heroes and as far as I know the only outlet that would occasionally give comparison numbers to deaths in other wars including a single training exercise that killed more than 1000 during the second world war. Gee I wonder why CNN and MSNBC lag behind? Peoria dems still want to be patriotic.
Here's another: Rathergate. If you want an opportunity for hard journalism, this was it. This story went for days. I kept going to blogs for updates. I could not find a print or broadcast media that would rip into this story.
Look at how the traditional media handle Obama. Forty-six percent of the country voted against him when he had a weak opponent. Why not try and get those people to be your customers too?
all this, imho.
Here's another, partner with the biggest blogs you can. Wait, the HuffPo already has the same editorial viewpoint of the NYT.
Really? How many Conservatives does HuffPo have? When did HuffPo hire Bill "William the Bloody" Kristol?
Fox does show the conservative side, but they also show the liberal side.
Who pray tell? Identifying Mark Sanford as a Democrat(not the first time they identified a scandalous Republicans as of the wrong party)? Is your only example Alan Colmes?
Fox news was the only broadcast outlet that treated the soldiers like heroes and as far as I know the only outlet that would occasionally give comparison numbers to deaths in other wars including a single training exercise that killed more than 1000 during the second world war. Gee I wonder why CNN and MSNBC lag behind?
WTF are you talking about? Dude, step away from the battery acid!!
Wow you actually sounded like you weren't crazy until this:
Here's an example of the difference between the two, during the bush years every time the death toll in in Iraq neared a number evenly divisible by 1000 the old media got all breathless, FOR DAYS. Fox news was the only broadcast outlet that treated the soldiers like heroes and as far as I know the only outlet that would occasionally give comparison numbers to deaths in other wars including a single training exercise that killed more than 1000 during the second world war.
If you think reporting about an unconstitutional and unnecessary war is wrong and is somehow equivalent to not treating soldiers like heroes, then you are a moron. It's much more beneficial to soldiers who shouldn't be fighting this war in the first place when you bring up that fact numerous times and show how many lives are being lost to it. If you think Fox isn't as skewed and ridiculous as CNN and MSNBC, you're just as bad as the other side.
There is no death of the news. It has just moved to TV and radio.
Further, most of the old media has been derelict in their duties and hopelessly biased. Reminds me a little of GM.
Good riddance; here's to the next generation!
This is a genuine loss for the American public. Cities without newspapers seem to experience a sizeable increase in insider self-dealing and other forms of corruption
This would be nice if it were true. I've lived in several major metros (Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Washington D.C.) and have always made it a point to subscribe to the local daily paper. The coverage of local corruption is always severely lacking, commonly only covering a story after someone else has broke it. The normal mode of operation is cheerleading for whatever nonsense local politicos are pushing.
So, yes, in some movie fantasy where vigilant reporters track down corruption, the loss of newspapers would be a loss for the American public. But in reality, all that is being lost is a lot of fluff.
In my experience, frequently the free alt-weeklies do a MUCH better job exposing corruption at the local level than the "real" newspaper, which all too often is captive to powerful local interests.
Certainly the case in my local market (Orange County, California); the OC Weekly runs rings around the OC Register when it comes to real local political reporting. The Register only covers local political corruption when it can no longer manage to ignore it.
Free alt-weeklies also get their money from advertising, which is why many are in danger of closing
I also want to point out that Shafer really nailed something here:
So many writers are offended by the idea that someone without a journalism degree and the marquee of a big city paper could do their job. It is hard finding out you're not special.
Craigslist ate the classified ads. eHarmony stole the personals. Google took those tiny ads for weird products. And Macy's can email its own damn customers to announce a sale. [...] This is a genuine loss for the American public.
Boo-hoo. They failed to adapt.
Craigslist does classifieds better. It's free (to everyone except employers in a few select cities), searchable, instant, anonymous, and infinitely more customizable (pictures, anyone?). Same with eHarmony - you get more than 4 lines to sell yourself. You don't have to spend time browsing personals deciphering SMW, BBW, TBW, MWC, XOP, etc., QED. Demographic criteria, lifestyle choices, interests, disinterests, and preferences are all searchable. And Macy's found a complimentary solution in email/internet advertising. They still advertise in print for their not-insignificant customer base that does not have an email address.
The Washington Post still carries ads for massage parlors.
Since the beginning of the industrial age (actually much earlier) sellers of information bundled the information with the medium on which it was stored. One could argue that the medium costs were greater than the information gathering and formatting. It wasn't just newspapers, it was also the book publishers, the music and movie industry, etc. This gave them a solid, tangible product that they could sell, and gave them great control over the content.
Now technology allowed consumers to un-bundle the information from the media, and also un-bundle the content they want from the content they don't, which resulted in the collapse of a business model.
TV and radio providers haven't always had control over the medium, but they did have a captive audience that they could barrage with commercials. That business model is failing as well.
The thing is, that does not mean the end of news, anymore than it means the end of music and movies. There is still a demand for journalism, and entertainment, and people are still willing to pay for it. Its just a matter of finding a different distribution and collection strategy.
The loss of local watchdogs is a minor point compared with the huge influence of the MSM on presidential elections. Also, they are so consumed with Western guilt that I wouldn't trust them to defend the Constitution against those who want to impose shari'a on us.
I hope the MSM dies.
Hard news stories take a great deal of time to write--more time than most amateurs can afford, which is why blogs tend to do opinion rather than journalism.
The reality is that the hard news story that took a lot of labor and legwork mostly died a long time ago as journalist salaries rose to the point where it wasn't economical to have them spend a lot of time on stories. If you go through even the best newspaper these days you will find that a lot of the content is basically expanded press releases. Some government agency, think tank, company, or other organization announces something, then the journalists flesh the press release out by getting one or two experts to comment on it, and if it affects average people, they get one or two average people to talk about how it affects them. Even the stories that are not obviously instigated by official announcements and press releases are often initiated by some insider leaking something to the media, which then gets expanded in the same way. I think these announcement/leak based stories are going to do just fine without full time journalists. The announcements/leaks will be made to amateurs, who will quickly throw it out there without much elaboration, and then other amateurs will do the work of expanding it. Paid experts from academia, government, industry, think tanks, and special interest groups will comment on it. Average people will say how it affects them in comments. Insiders and experts will leak clarifications or corrections on the facts to amateurs. Some other amateur will summarize all the back and forth, and within a day or two the reader will end up with a story that is the functional equivalent of what they currently get from traditional media.
What Megan posted and this quote above seem rather odd. In an earlier missive, Megan opined that the media were only giving us the sort of coverage that we asked for(Whitewater, et all), and that if that if people didn't like it, they'd take their eyes and dollars elsewhere.
So it would seem that by this older post, people don't like the product, and are behaving accordingly. Now the tune has changed, and it's the advertisers that are paying the piper. What's happened in the time between these two posts?
You get advertising dollars by getting eyeballs
So are we saying that my dream to become a Town Crier has been dashed?
Has a monopoly been dashed? Yes, to some degree, and Megan contradicts herself by saying otherwise. BECAUSE newspapers were the de facto single-point-of-contact with the consumer base, they were the de facto spot to advertise. In 1900 there weren't a lot of other ways to get your message out, barring hand-bills and billboards.
The monopoly eroded over time: Radio had a large impact. Television had a large impact. Does the internet finally kill the monopoly? If you include the devices that people will use to *access* that information then, yes, it does.
Why would any sane person choose to carry a large lump of paper, printed with news that is at best 10 hours old, when they can have up to the second reports from their iPhone (or kindle, or whatever)? Plus their iPhone plays videos, music, and games, and allows them to network with their friends - all in real time.
This is such a fate accompli I'm at a loss to understand why people are even trying to resist it. There is simply nothing, other than lighting fires and lining birdcages, that a newspaper does better than on-line devices.
Journalism has been party to its own destruction. As others have noted, so-called hard journalism hasn't been doing a very good job. Stories are full of errors or deliberately misleading statements. There have been a number of notable major failures (Rathergate) of supposedly well-researched in-depth reporting. I think a lot of people don't have much faith in the media right now. If some media organization could establish a reputation for integrity and quality, I wouldn't be surprised to see it make money, either in print or online or somehow.
Except pay reporters. As far as I can tell, that's Megan's entire point. Whether you think that's important determines whether you think the death of newspapers is important.
Previous comment in response to RobM1981, not Earnest Iconoclast.
In my experience, frequently the free alt-weeklies do a MUCH better job exposing corruption at the local level
I agree, but I wonder how much longer they can hold out. Hookers can do online ads pretty easily, after all.
In this respect, the bullying of Craigslist into dropping its adult services categories by the state attorneys-general is a godsend for the alt-weeklies, provided it holds up.
Though I'd say that the plastic surgery ads in the OC Weekly must pay a lot more than the hookers.
I see journalists and educators as having analogous issues. Reporters and teachers used to need some real knowledge of their beat/subject to be successful. Once these became aggrandized by journalism and education college degrees, topic knowlege was replaced by process knowledge as essential criteria for success. Neither is subject to a real market or accountable for results. Reporters knew how to get the facts. Journalists know how to craft a story. Teachers knew how to impart a skill. Educators know how to craft a lesson plan. Proper credentials and conformity to the norms of their peers are what is required.
It is past time that this edifice cracked and fell.
First, I agree with your basic premise that the business problem is less about content and more about the advertisers abandoning the medium for better opportunities.
However, I do take exception to your "bloggers are mostly opinion writers" meme. Even though bloggers write plenty of opinion, most are also doing a ton of deciphering and analysis. Maybe it just hinges on whether a "journalist" can ever have an opinion. Personally, I find that the MSM excels at reporting raw news stories while bloggers excel at analysis. I'm not sure where investigative work comes in, but there doesn't seem to be much of it going on these days.
When the credit crisis hit, IMO, the most robust journalism came from blogs rather than the MSM. There was a ton of fantastic analysis across several blogs, including Naked Capitalism, Calculated Risk, Baseline Scenario, the Big Picture, and many more. To be sure, some MSM bloggers like Felix Salmon, yourself, and others were big contributors as well. But the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal? - Not so much.
This doesn't make any sense as a reply to what I wrote, at least that I can see:
If you look here, your contention was that what determined media content was pure market forces, and that if John Doe didn't like it, he'd go elsewhere. The question was then posed several times as to how one would know this was the market at work, as opposed to something else. Insofar as I followed the thread, this question was never answered.
Well, apparently John Doe has gone elsewhere. So why isn't this a problem with the content, per your earlier post? Why isn't this just the free market at work, with readers and viewers making their own choices based upon the content that is available? In short, why isn't this evidence, in line with your earlier assertions, that people aren't happy with the sorts of reportage that is being provided by the traditional media?
What cities in the U.S. don't have a major daily, with the possible exception of Detroit? Denver and Seattle still have print dailies.
The county I live in has a daily paper which covers the county, something that the nearby big city paper can't do. TV covers the big city quite well and the surrounding counties with the help of the newspapers in those counties.