Comments on: Newspaper column predicts near-end to journalism

By: Lex

Lex — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 19:15:58 +0000

[[I also do not think newspapers have the monopoly on examining accountability. ]]

They do in my market.

By: thewashingtonchannel

thewashingtonchannel — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:31:23 +0000

a good part of those “bloated budgets” consist of paper, printing and postage (distribution costs), not so with the you-know-whatnet

papers made a huge miscalcuation when they all gave their content away for free. i am still of the thinking that some of this was an effort to thwart the net threat by keeping it unprofitable for as long as possible. the challenge now is how do you charge for something you’ve conditioned your readers to think is worthless?

btw- i love waterskiing squirrels. i’d pay to watch them!

By: Chris Krewson

Chris Krewson — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:21:01 +0000

OK. But what you term “bloated budgets,” we call “reporters who develop stories out of beats,” not camera crews that chase ambulances and lawyers or spotlight “Skippy the waterskiing squirrel.” Newspapers — good ones, not yet gutted by bean counters — develop just as many stories through enterprise and investigation as we reflect what happens during a day.

We still set the news agenda in many of our markets. Television stations — the great majority of local ones — take the stories we write and “re-do” them on the air, sometimes that same day. If the newspapers and those stories disappear, we in newspapers wonder, what happens to TV news? And how much good journalism can stand on its own and not be sued out of existence by deep-pocketed corporations or government?

By: Steve Safran

Steve Safran — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 16:54:27 +0000

I do not think blogging will replace journalism as we know it. I also do not think newspapers have the monopoly on examining accountability. I am not about to talk myself out of a job in journalism. But newspapers are kidding themselves if they believe that it’s our civic responsibility to underwrite their bloated budgets, wasteful contracts, and decisions based upon ego instead of news. There is demand for good journalism and there will be a supply from good journalists.

By: Lex

Lex — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 15:05:18 +0000

Having been in newspapers for 22 years and on the Web for 12, I think you’re kidding yourself if you think the Blogiverse, no matter how admirably intentioned, will replace in-depth accountability journalism in newspapers. I’m not downplaying the accomplishments of Porkbusters and TPMMuckrakers in outing Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd as the roadblocks to the online federal-spending database, but that kind of story lends itself to distributed journalism in a way that very few investigative projects do.

It’s true that the accountability mindset is not unique to full-time journalism pros. But some of the resources — primarily time, money and a high-dollar law firm on call to deal with the inevitable threats — pretty much ARE unique to them. I’m growing more convinced that if this kind of journalism survives, it will be only within the sphere of tax-exempt nonprofits. Business wants too much profit these days to make this kind of journalism possible.

By: Chris Krewson

Chris Krewson — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:57:31 +0000

So wait, the argument from TV people is “Newspapers don’t matter; when they go away we can steal from the Web?”

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 02:46:38 +0000

Thank you, thank you for bringing this to people’s attention!

I read it yesterday when I picked up the print edition here in Australia and immediately had to vent my blogging frustration. I didn’t mention what he said about blogging, but…ah, I may never work in the News empire.

But seriously, you know about it because it’s ‘online/internet news’ as well as print news. Anyway.