Which one writes for The Chicago Tribune?
In early December the Federal Trade Commission is going to hold a series of hearings on the collapse of the journalism business.
It is good that the federal government is paying attention to this crisis in journalism.
The FTC’s conference is titled “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” FCC chair Julius Genachowski explains the crisis as the result of “game-changing new technologies as well as the economic downturn.”
From the point of view of the FTC, it is the internet and its attendant technologies that have killed journalism.
In an article in this week’s The Nation, John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney respond by writing
Today, as in the early Republic, our system of government cannot succeed and our individual freedoms cannot survive without an informed, participating citizenry, and that requires competitive, independent news media. For that to happen, however, the FTC, the FCC and Congress must stop blaming the Internet and start thinking about how enlightened subsidies could revitalize the very necessary public good that is journalism.
What they are talking about is GM-like government bail outs for dying newspapers and soon to be dying TV news operations.
Write McChesnet et al:
The market has voted journalism off the island. This necessary nutrient of democracy will be washed away unless we recognize that commercial values are no longer going to provide us with sufficient quality journalism. It’s a waste of valuable time attempting to cook up new schemes to make the process of news gathering and distribution as profitable as it once was.
Bullshit.
What is dying here is (are) newspapers and local TV stations.
They are dying because they are archaic, fat, bloated bodies that can no longer compete in a world of the web.
They should die.
They should be voted off the Island.
What has not been voted off the Island is journalism.
That has never been more alive, more dynamic or more vibrant.
It is journalism, in fact, that has just been released, unfettered from it’s feudal owners and its feudal structure. Â Go look at the web and the quite literally millions and millions of blogs and new sites filled with information and opinion every day. This is journalism. This is real journalism – not the employee of TV4 go down to the corner and film the family whose child has been squashed by a run away car. Â “How did you feel when you heard your son was dead?”
This is not journalism. This is garbage.
The new journalism does not require massive buildings, printing presses, trucks or studios to work.
It requires a far smaller income to keep the journalist fed. But it also requires a far smaller infrastructure.
What is needed here is a new generation of entrepreneurial journalists.
Kudos to Jeff Jarvis who is running exactly this kind of course at CUNY.
This morning’s Guardian noted that Goldsmith University Journalism Students are being taught the same kind of skills.
The public has voted newspapers off the Island. Â And for a reason. No one reads them any more. They have outlived their purpose. Â So let’s all wave goodbye. And next year, when local TV news gets voted off the Island, we’ll do the same.
But it is not Journalism that is dead.
It is journalism that is just being born.
For the first time we have a really free press – and to those who have spent their journalistic lives as vassals and serfs to the Press Lords, it is all a bit unsettling.
Get used to it.
Freedom is not easy.
But it’s a lot better.
3 Comments
Jeff December 09, 2009
Local businesses don’t need expensive t.v. stations to advertise on or expensive newspapers to take ads out in.
I just ordered pizza tonight.
I googled it and placed my order online.
If people want info about their community they have direct access to it via, facebook, twitter and YouTube.
Twitter especially is great for local personalized news feeds.
This pining for community building newspapers and t.v. stations is simply nostalgia.
Asking parents of dead kids how they feel or reading articles ripped off the wires is a waste of time.
Nino December 01, 2009
When something goes out it usually leave an empty hole for smart people to jump in and fill it (you can insert your own joke here).
Families who made a community a home needs and want information. For them, and I’m one of them, what’s happening around the corner is by far more important of what’s happening around the world. Those who have no families and community ties have no clue of what I’m talking about it; fortunately the majority of the population is composed by families with children and with a strong sense of community.
Local newspapers and television are the center columns of these communities, these is where all these activities comes together.
As newspapers earnings decline and there are cuts being made across the board, local communities began suffering too. There was nobody there to cover the soccer tournaments, HS activities, fundraising, Boy Scouts outings, etc. Or a cell phone tower being erected near an elementary school that almost went unnoticed until some citizens started raising hell.
Without community news there’s no community.
In the last few years I noticed and increasing number of weekly newspaper at my front door or in my mailbox. This morning from my sidewalk I picked the local paper and a community weekly titled “The Osprey Observerâ€. The observer was at least five times bigger than the daily Tampa Tribune. I remember when I first saw it about four years ago, it had four pages. This week edition has 72 pages in 3 sections. It has a total of 248 local ads including 16 full page ads. The area covered by this paper is a radius of about ten mile and it includes 3 connected communities. Their staff tripled since the day it started.
Their reporting is local only. They have a section totally dedicated to school activities including political decisions that might affect local the educations. A section on local youth sports, business, art, churches activities, etc. If it’s happening in the community the Osprey Observer is there. They also have a web site that is not doing much in term of revenue but it compliments the newspaper. The only reason that they have a web site is that they must have a web site to be considered in tune. Again, like most web sites is not generating any revenue.
In this mad race of global internet coverage we forgot the local communities, particularly the local merchants. If I own a cleaner I could care less if my message reaches China, they will not bring their laundry to me; but the local soccer mom will; so are hundreds of local small businesses that are the hearth of the communities. These are the businesses that sponsor the local little league teams and bring boxes of pizza at the end of the game.
By killing local news reporting we are also killing local businesses, the souls of the communities.
You will see “Smith Plumbing†printed on the shirt of a local youth soccer team, but you will never see “IBM†or APPLE†on their shirts.
Kevin November 30, 2009
Well said!