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The Internet Is No Substitute for the Dying Newspaper Industry
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by fgtaylor | July 23, 2008 at 04:55 am
513 views | 56 Recommendations | 14 comments
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Chris Hedges, a former war corespondent, says the internet and the trend toward of citizen journalism does not have the resources that newspapers had to do primary source reporting, which is a process that is ongoing, expensive and time-consuming. Anything less is no match against financial and political interests that do not wish to recive the public scrutiny of their actions.
The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.
All these forces have combined to strangle newspapers. And the blood on the floor, this year alone, is disheartening. Some 6,000 journalists nationwide have lost their jobs, news pages are being radically cut back and newspaper stocks have tumbled. Advertising revenues are dramatically falling off with many papers seeing double-digit drops
When the traditional news organizations go belly up we will lose a vast well of expertise and information. Our democracy will suffer a body blow. Not that many will notice. The average time a reader of The New York Times spends with the printed paper is about 45 minutes. The average time a viewer spends on The New York Times Web site is about seven minutes. There is a difference between browsing and reading. And the Web is built for browsing rather than for reading. When there is a long piece on the Internet, most of us have to print it out to get through it.
The rise of our corporate state has done the most, however, to decimate traditional news-gathering. Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., General Electric and Viacom control nearly everything we read, watch, hear and ultimately think. And news that does not make a profit, as well as divert viewers from civic participation and challenging the status quo, is not worth pursuing. This is why the networks have shut down their foreign bureaus. This is why cable newscasts, with their chatty anchors
This is why newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are being ruthlessly cannibalized by corporate trolls like Sam Zell, turned into empty husks that focus increasingly on boutique journalism. Corporations are not in the business of news. They hate news, real news. Real news is not convenient to their rape of the nation. Real news makes people ask questions. They prefer to close the prying eyes of reporters. They prefer to transform news into another form of mindless amusement and entertainment.
A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (14)
at 06:24 on July 23rd, 2008
fgtaylor, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 06:31 on July 23rd, 2008
fgtaylor, I like this story. I've always thought that the future of print journalism lies with legal and political reporting, which usually requires specialized education and experience, as well as investigative reporting.
While the internet will dominate with the 'man on the scene' type of reporting, and journalists will still be needed to help gather and sort all the information that comes from this, I think there will be a place for educated, experienced journalists.
at 06:40 on July 23rd, 2008
Good work on this.
I see the news world as a jar filled with rocks. Big rocks = MSM, and there's lots of room for pebbles (us as contributors). However, I don't think we could fill the jar all by ourselves, for the reasons discussed above, both in the comments and the story.
at 06:50 on July 23rd, 2008
fgtaylor, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 07:08 on July 23rd, 2008
fgtaylor, I like this story. It's good stuff.
The thing I don't understand is why these guys don't try different delivery models. For example, you mention that NY Times readers spend an average of 45 minutes versus 7 minutes for the online. Why don't they experiment more with podcasts or short video pieces to accompany the text? I listen to CBC podcasts almost every day -- it's convenient I can do it while I'm working for example, and the quality is pretty good. If there's something I'm really interested in I will then go back and read more. Maybe if they were a bit more innovative they would attract more readers/viewers/listeners.
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Bob Macdonald (not verified)at 07:22 on July 23rd, 2008
Their biggest mistake has been wallowing in self-pity. The public just don't have patience for it. People want the information they need, and they want it in a convenient and accessable way. The smart newspapers, like the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk), have moved with the times. Nowpublic is part of the future. There is no going back.
at 07:30 on July 23rd, 2008
One of the essential features of a democratic state is the functioning of a free press.
I don't think that because the medium for the free press is currently changing necessarily means that there is a diversion towards that of civic and public responsibility. Rather, more people can access the information they need at faster rates, and does push for more obligations from the media.
But this is an interesting article nevertheless. Good stuff.
at 07:50 on July 23rd, 2008
fgtaylor, I like this story. It's good stuff.
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J P Morgan (not verified)at 08:17 on July 23rd, 2008
For what it's worth, I'd like to offer my views on the 'imminent death' of the newspaper industry. And please note I would like to make a clear distinction between the 'free press' and the 'newspaper industry.'
I worked for ten years at a major metropolitan daily paper. This was mostly in the 1980's. My job was not that of a writer, photogropher, editorialist, nor indeed that of any other 'creative type' whatsoever. During those days we had a daily circulation that averaged around a million. One of the 'top markets' in the country. I was just a support guy, who, along with the rest of my work group kept the 'publishing systems' computers alive and well, handled all the users 'trouble calls', such as when groggy reporters on the city desk, for instance, might miss their mouths and slosh their first sip of morning coffee into their computer keyboards ... not a good thing when this happens, by the way - makes everybody upset, the writer, the computer guy whom the writer calls for help, and most of all the keyboard doesn't like it one bit ...
When I landed that job, way back then, I was pretty sure my 'ship had come in' ... people would always read the paper, wouldn't they ? No question! Of course they would ...
Maybe I had been working there three or four years before I started getting the hang of how things really worked there - at the 'editorial' and 'news reporting' level, that is ...
At the newspaper, advertising is king, as it must be, for it is the income from advertising which 'pays the bills.' I was suprised to learn this at first, that the price a customer payed for a copy of the edition, or 'product' as we called it, didn't even cover the cost of production ( and the cost of distrubution as well - a major component of getting the product to the customer ) , but I heard it often enough, and from enough people that eventually I came to believe it. Sometimes we blue collar guys, for they made us join the union - it was a 'union shop', would grumble amongst ourselves, 'did you hear they killed the story about comapny so-and-so's product that malfunctioned and horribly injured that poor woman/man in the suburbs?' 'No', sez I, 'why would they do that?' 'Well, because, rookie, company so-and-so spends over three-million dollars a year on advertising in this newspaper, and you know darn well what they'll do if we run a negative story like that, don't you?' 'You mean they'll pull their advertising ?' 'You got it, Einstein' ... We weren't the 'only game in town' ...
I found this somewhat troubling, if for no other reason than the words 'Free Press', along with the name of our city, appeared prominently on the masthead of our paper ...
So, for this reason, as I pointed out above, I draw a definate distinction between the 'Free Press', something we naive Americans will pontificate on about at disturbingly great length, and merely the 'newspaper industry.' In my opinion the 'Free Press' here in America has been dead and gone a long, long time ...
And to think a 'Free Press' is something our great nation was founded on ... I think it approaches sacrilege. Certainly it is travesty ...
Most citizens have never had a chance to see the 'Free Press' in action, from the inside, like I and others like me have, so they aren't aware of it. They just believe what they're told - that our country is a great country, and that we have all these great freedoms, like other people, such as the Russians, or the Iraquis don't have, chief among them, for example, being 'freedom of the press' ...
Oh, and while I'm at it, let's not forget 'freedom of dissent,' right ?
Like, will people call me a traitor behind my back if I don't wear one of those nifty little American Flags in the button-hole of my sport coat, or maybe if I say things like this about the so called American 'free press?' ...
Welcome to the 'Brave new World' people ... we've been waiting for you ...
ps - I really didn't start this out to be a rant - it just turned into one sort of on it's own. In writing this it was not my intention to offend anybody, and my sincere apologies if I have. But I intend to post this as it stands, because it's all true, and maybe somebody out there might be ready to read this ... it even made me a little angry now to write this, but mostly all I really feel now is sadness ...
at 08:42 on July 23rd, 2008
fgtaylor, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 11:44 on July 23rd, 2008
fgtaylor, newspapers are on the declining way; less PR, less reporters, old fashioned readers. The new "Reader" takes an infomation mixture of different online newspapers, builts up his opinion. From time to time he may buy a printed newspaper, but is it a valid information source, or uniliteral ? To deepen information you look to cros references or videoclips. Don't forget the new readers are the game boy generation and not the old boys network.
at 11:55 on July 23rd, 2008
fgtaylor, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 13:03 on July 23rd, 2008
fgtaylor, I like this story. It's good stuff. Great post, I really like everybodys comments and opinions.
I think the two goes hand in hand. The professionally trained journalists needs to put out their work while people on the internet can either argue for their point of view or contribute to the story. Having the two can only bring us a more democratic news resource.
5 corporations control most of the the stuff we see and read, so the idea of "free press" can only be taken at face value. We definitely need citizen journalism sites and blogs to critique the mainstream. If anyone has yet to see Wall-E, they should do so. It gives us a view into the future where people are being treated as robots without emotions and thoughts. Everything is spoon fed to them. That is the world we will be living in if people aren't allowed to think or critique the mainstream of thought.
at 17:00 on July 24th, 2008
fgtaylor, I like this story. It's good stuff.