Newspapers in a time of change

Chicago Tribune ^ | 12/10/2006 | Newton N. Minow

[Cat loving Texan]

Nearly 220 years ago, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "... were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

Jefferson would be dismayed if he learned about what happened in a class taught last year by my daughter, Martha, at Harvard Law School. Martha had invited a former student, Cliff Sloan, to lecture to her class. Sloan, who is publisher of Slate, an online journal, asked the students to raise their hands if they read a print newspaper every day. Not one hand went up. When he asked how they kept informed, they all had the same answer: We get our news online. Are they reading Yahoo News? Google News? Blogs? If you ask online readers what sources they use, they often just say "The Internet." Are they getting only headlines without in-depth reporting?

[Cat loving Texan]

Isn't this guy ovferly self important?

[Still Thinking]

"Are they getting only headlines without in-depth reporting?"

"Are they getting only facts without liberal spin and liberal screening for agenda-appropriateness?"

There, corrected to reflect the true issues concerning the author!

[BipolarBob]

No, Thomas Jefferson was really pretty important or did you mean . . . . I didn't do the log-in on the Trib

[weegee]

Media Schadenfreude and Media Shenanigans PING

Being governed by the media group think is nothing to take pride in.

We are SHUNNING the mass media. We find the establishment sources to be untrustworthy. They lie through omission, they lie through inference, and lately they lie through outright slander, forgery of documented "evidence", and photoshopped images.

We are not "ignorant" for ignoring the media. The mass media outlets lie and coordinate reports with the upper ranks of the DNC.

Our eyes are open to their tricks. The dumb sheep blindly think that journalists are being objective.

[KarlInOhio]

newspapers to offer their unique products through the Internet.

Unique? Every newspaper I see just takes the AP feed, cuts it to fit around advertisements and prints it. The only thing local and unique are the "Cutest Puppy in the Area" and local fire articles.

Bloggers offer to play a role in this arena, but work without the professional standards of a skilled newspaper staff .

I just barfed out of orifices I didn't even know I had. Professional standards?????

"I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." - Thomas Jefferson Letter to Nathaniel Macon January 12 1819.

[Nancee]

BUMP!!!

[kAcknor]

There will always be a need--and a market--for credible, trustworthy information and opinions. Lively writing and fair reporting will always be valued.

I have to agree with him here. There is a need and it's evidenced by the near wholesale move AWAY from untrustworthy, non-credible reporting. Not, however, bias opinions.

The time when there were 7 newspapers in Chicago was a time of differing and opposite opinions, all competing for an audience though mostly logical and reasoned arguments.

What went wrong is the consolidation of Radio, TV & Print news. When all voices became essentially, one, the stage was set for a diaspora of views and sources that is the Internet, and what we see today.

[GSlob]

"Isn't this guy overly self-important?"
He has to be - in the 60s he was serving on some federal commission, and had it put at the bottom of this article. I bet this piece of his bio will be carved into his tombstone.

[Joe Boucher]

Newspapers change? Yeah, downsizing.

[Lancey Howard]

I wish the liberal newspapers would hurry up and die.
They've done enough damage to my formerly proud country.

[DustyMoment]

Bloggers offer to play a role in this arena, but work without the professional standards of a skilled newspaper staff .

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!

Who knew "professional journalists" had a sense of humor about themselves!!??

[bert]

.....Our eyes are open to their tricks....

With open eyes we watch the coup. There is no real downside to capturing America by lying. It's leagal.

[Gondring]

But what many people on the "New Media Bandwagon" forget is that most of the primary information gathering and reporting comes from the MSM networks. Bloggers have nothing to write about without that information, as getting the detailed information requires connections, and connections require a long time to build.

If we saw alternative news-gathering networks developing, then I'd see a more hopeful future.

Also, note that small, conservative papers are being hurt even more than the big liberal ones, and large liberal papers can absorb the losses easier than the small ones that aren't as diversified. The widespread decline in reading indicates it's across the board that people are not looking at in-depth coverage--right or left, they want "news nuggets." :-(

[weegee]

Editors need to be run off with a stick. An ethical editorial board would improve the problems with current establishment media.

It is CLEAR there is coordination going on between the DNC and activist advocacy groups and the media. "The media" puts on a poker face and denies their inherent biases. They need to be upfront about it (and lose audience share) or accept it when people turn them off (and lose audience share) OR change the policy to disclose partisan communication and those who market fraudulent images and documents as "news".

There is a very high signal to noise ratio among bloggers. And there is an attempt by the mass media to co-opt blogging as well.

When liberals dominate what stories bubble up on Yahoo and Google, you have to take it all with a grain of salt.

We can agree that the blogosphere isn't of much good for breaking news. But it is. There have been several threads on FR with breaking observation. And the formulation of the group think (hundreds of readers all doing google searches to coordinate background research) has broken a number of detailed investigations on FR, LGF, and other sites.

Frankly too much trust in the "facts" of the mass media has over inflated their dependability. They know no more than the blogs. And it is becoming apparent that it is common in the industry to borrow other newspaper's stories (including the pro-terrorist arab street's media) as well as fabricate sources and quotes.

Compare any story you have a close relationship to (an event you were at, some subculture you've known about, etc.) with the media's account (local, regional, national).

Blogs aren't good but newspapers haven't been for years, if ever.

[Criminal Number 18F]

This guy's name is "Newt Minow." You could not make that up.

Then there's this gem:

Newspapers mean home to the reader. My wife and I saw this when we visited Rachel, our 20-year-old granddaughter, who is a student at Reed College in Portland, Ore. At Reed, she showed us how she had set her computer home page to her hometown newspaper, The Washington Post, which she reads every day.

Has Rachel ever noticed how little, and how lame, the local coverage in the Post actually is? The only newspapers that do worse on local coverage are the NY and LA Timeses, and the WSJ (which doesn't try to be a hometown paper).

This guy's beloved newspapers are as dead as the President that appointed him to the FCC 45 years ago.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Gondring]

Editors need to be run off with a stick.

I'm a former editor, myself. I'd recommend you don't bring a stick to a gunfight....my CCW trumps your RKBS. ;-)

Compare any story you have a close relationship to (an event you were at, some subculture you've known about, etc.) with the media's account (local, regional, national).

One of my favorite activities in graduate school was to sit down and have C-SPAN going all day for a skeptical friend to watch... we'd then watch the evening news, and it was priceless to hear, "But that's not what happened!!"

So your point is a good one. But you must extend things...

When we get to the point of relying upon "bloggers" or whomever, then what's the check of the accuracy of their information? You don't believe that everyone on the Internet is fair and conservative, I hope!

And how many of your blogging eyewitnesses are placed where sources and leaks are? And do you realize the relationships that have to be built to get good reporting?

We can agree that the blogosphere isn't of much good for breaking news. But it is.

?!?

And the formulation of the group think (hundreds of readers all doing google searches to coordinate background research) has broken a number of detailed investigations on FR, LGF, and other sites.

It's very good that we have lots of people checking the "MSM" reports (now I don't feel so alone in doing it! :-), but too many people make the leap to think that there's no role for the current reporting networks.

It is CLEAR there is coordination going on between the DNC and activist advocacy groups and the media.

At some level, yes. However, there's also an unintended bias that occurs at many of the levels of the MSM. I recommend Bernard Goldberg's book, Bias, to explain how there can be an apparent conspiracy without an actual one.