Not to get too meta, but it's been a really interesting week in the death of newspapers. First, one of the more "venerable" newspaper companies, which seems caught in an internal tug of war between those who "get" what's happening to the news reporting "industry" and those who don't, go on a rather odd offensive against one of the more popular "new media" companies among "early adopters."
And then this happened...
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| End Times | ||||
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...what did the NYT think was going to happen there?
And today, while walking through my neighborhood to get my coffee and bagel, I see that, the day after the WHO finally labels Bird Flu a pandemic, the CIA discusses the whereabouts of Bin Laden on The Hill, and Iran is going through a new presidential election, the Chicago Tribune throws a story about a blogger being a scam artist across their front page as the feature.
Thank God for newspapers and their ability to do really "deep" journalistic work. Whatever will we do without them?
The Roundup:
- Everyone felt like SoCal had to say something about the NCAA investigation, so they said something, at least.
- Perhaps SoCal is getting nervous now that the NCAA has wrapped up their scathing punishment of Alabama: an asterisk and a footnote!
- Some ESPN-heads talk "fantasy matchups." Neither Angelina Jolie nor Kate Beckinsale ever come up, but Notre Dame does. (HT: Double-T Nation)
- Linked just because it reminded me of one of my favorite jokes by a college football coach.
- Jake Locker was drafted by the MLB this week. And some wonder if maybe he'd like to give up on
getting his butt kickedfootball. - Why aren't Florida and Urban Meyer getting more heat over the legal transgressions of the football team? Because people down there think that sort of thing is normal.
- Maybe if we asked Bob Stoops, he'd agree that thuggery in college football is necessary.
By san diego irish June 12, 2009 - 12:03 pm
the black and white and read(red) all over joke at the end of that NY Times interview was priceless.
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By trey June 12, 2009 - 12:38 pm
“Journalism” as we know it today is totally dead. The dirty little secret is that when apologists from the dying papers like the New York Crimes and the Washington Compost talk about losing readership because of it’s format compared to internet news and blogging, that’s just a cover for the deeper underlying issue. The fact is that people don’t want to read the drivel they put out in their rags. All the major syndicates have online versions, and even those aren’t getting readership.
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By The Biscuit June 12, 2009 - 2:29 pm
the problem as i see it, in the long run, is this: who the F is going to go out and get all the news? i know a lot of things are generated by word of mouth today, but blogs/etc dont/cant/wont fund the actual on-the-ground reporters. today, online news sites/blogs can feed off the AP, NYT, other sources no problem. what happens when those entities go away? who actually reports the news? we know we can trust ‘man on the street’. blogs and such are great at repurposing information, and i’m not arguing for the existence of papers, etc, it’s just a gap i’ve wondered about in the digital future of news reporting…anyone have thoughts on that? (man, how non-nd-football can we get?)
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By domer.mq June 12, 2009 - 2:37 pm
The answer, Biscuit, is pretty obvious. The papers, many, not all, are confusing the internet with “competition” rather than “new delivery source.” What the papers don’t seem to want to accept is they can serve the same purpose, gain greater reach, and do a better job of reporting the news thanks to the internet, but also thanks to the internet, they must do so as leaner, meaner organizations.
People want first sources, but they want them via the internet, TV, and whatever comes after that. The paper is dead. The need for 300 person news rooms and 30 man teams chasing a single story is dead. The need for the tribune company to hold multiple national sports coverage desks is dead. Why in God’s name does the NYT and the Boston Globa have so much redundancy?
The market will get what the market wants.
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By The Biscuit June 12, 2009 - 4:10 pm
Yes, I agree, but you missed my question. Clearly all that fat must be trimmed. The market will take care of that. But who will actually go out and report the news to the new distribution centers? TV news has to get leaner and leaner as well – they cant make up for it. Online sources dont monetize yet, so they cant fund it. Who will? and How?
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By domer.mq June 12, 2009 - 4:59 pm
I guess I failed to articulate. Maybe I need to self-ban. The NYT will do it. CNN will do it. The Tribune company will do it. They just can’t see it yet because too many of them are full of romantic notions of how it used to be. Online sources monetize. They’re just trying to monetize at the same quadrillion dollar rate, and that’s not going to happen. They oversold ads in papers. Those ads weren’t worth nearly what they thought they were worth. They’ll sell advertising, it’ll help fund things. Some special, niche, investigative journalism groups will work like Mike Frank’s site works, with people buying subscriptions to get the scoop on the niches they care about. It’ll also be extremely collaborative, with the membership making suggestions to their niche news providers about stories they’d like to see get followed and tracked.
It’s all going to look a lot smaller and a lot more fragmented, and the consumer will just be much more sophisticated at gathering it all up. Everyone keeps saying, “it’s too expensive to do journalism in the new market.” Well, then, they’re doing journalism wrong today. There’ll be far fewer “celebrity” journalists and columnists. Far lower wages. Lots of one-journalist towns like the one I grew up in where the guy lived a nice life but was by no means going to make his fortune reporting on news in his community.
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By DeepTeaKup June 12, 2009 - 6:47 pm
This is actually, IMO, one of the more interesting conversations on this site in some time (other than yesterday’s revivial of CW fat jokes of course).
I tend to agree with domer, but to extend it further (maybe) I think that the economic model for newspapers just does not work anymore. It is so cost inefficient to mass propuce a physical newspaper that is stale the moment it is printed. What has also killed newspapers is that we have seen the editorial board influence the news reporting. It is very easy to label papers as left (NYT, WaPo) or right (NY Post) and I think this has lead to a loss of the public trust.
Biscuit, I understand your concern about “who” will do the “real” journalism, I would submit to you that the blogs (well, all new media really, easier to type blogs for short) have been doing more real journalism than the traditional media have been for some time. Blogs can break stories, do investigative reporting (and have done so for some time).
I tend to disagree with domer’s assertion that the market will be more fragmented, I think we are already seeing the big blogs consolidate like Atlantic (do they even offer a print version anymore) or Politico. These will become the new “big players” along with the more partisan sites like HuffPo, FireDogLake or PajamasMedia for those who like “news” tailored to their own political/ideological slant.
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By trey June 15, 2009 - 11:15 pm
My point is that there is so much more to a newspaper than just “THE NEWS” as it were. There are game recaps, op eds, food reviews, etc. The actual “this is what happened” section is a minor component of the rag as a whole. People are getting fed up with the garbage that makes up the majority of the paper, not just the fact that it isn’t instantaneous information.
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By tricerapops June 16, 2009 - 11:18 am
we interrupt this debate about modern media for the following – “an ND v OU matchup would be friggin sweet.” now back to the debate.
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