What’s good for each of us isn’t necessarily good for all of us.
This column is prediction, not advice, so please allow a bit of self-indulgence: History will, I think, mark 2009 as the year the newspaper industry ended in the United States.
It won’t be the year the last newspaper is printed. Like Mike the Headless Chicken, who ran around for a year and a half after his decapitation, print news will linger for awhile. Its demise, however, is assured, the victim of:
- Narrowcasting: The marketplace has now fully satisfied our shared desire to receive only information that validates our opinions, while avoiding everything else. Liberals watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Conservatives watch The O’Reilly Factor. While many of us can stomach neither, very few can stomach both.
Newspapers are for those who want both perspectives (or, rather, who want well-informed, well-reasoned perspectives presented by thoughtful analysts, if any still exist).
I began reading newspapers in the Chicago suburbs back in the 1960s. They covered the news broadly, creating a shared understanding of what was happening. And while conservatives tended to read the editorially compatible Tribune, liberals the Sun Times, and moderates the Daily News or American, I remember few discrepancies in how they reported the facts. Their editorial pages were a different matter, which was where the discrepancies belonged, and even there, all four provided a wide mix of columnists.
- Craig’s List: I’ve been told that when industries fail, it’s often due to mistakes made a decade or more before the symptoms first appear. In the case of daily newspapers, the failure to create an on-line version of their highly profitable classified advertising wasn’t an oversight. It was a conscious decision, made in the mid-1990s.
By then, newspaper executives were already conditioned to making decisions appropriate for a “mature” industry (mature being a euphemism for slowly shrinking). The aggressive, competitive instincts of Hearst and Pulitzer were matters of history, not role-modeling, and so, presented with an opportunity to invade and win a new marketplace, the industry responded with timidity rather than entrepreneurship.
Which is why Craig, TMP Worldwide, Autotrader.com and their brethren … not newspaper companies … dominate on-line classifieds.
- Good manners: In Abraham Lincoln’s day (if Doris Kearns Goodwin is to be believed), adults considered politics to be among the most interesting topics of discussion. As a result they read the news avidly.We’ve now decided discussing politics is bad manners, and avoid any exchange of views.
We already prefer narrowcasting. Our good manners eliminate any residual interest in the information we would otherwise need to hold our own in political discussions with our friends and neighbors.
- Loss of competition: When each major metro area had a dozen newspapers to choose from, a scoop was worth real money. It caused people to buy your paper, thereby increasing readership, thereby increasing ad revenue. And so, newspaper owners spent money to get good reporters.
By the time the Watergate scandal rolled around, already there was little financial benefit to be gained from investigative reporting — it was a matter of nostalgia, not competitive advantage. For the professional business managers who now run most newspapers, nostalgia doesn’t pay the bills.
Which, in turn, means there’s less reason than ever to subscribe to a newspaper.
- Increased competition: Long before the Internet, broadcast news carried stories at 6pm, making the morning newspaper literally yesterday’s news. Newspapers never truly adapted to a world in which most of their competitors were in a different business than they were.
- The Internet: Of course. The Internet makes news publishing a real-time activity. And, it puts newspapers head-to-head with CNN and Fox. But where CNN and Fox have stable revenue sources from their broadcast operations, newspapers have bupkis, and on-line’s banner advertising just isn’t going to pick up the slack.
- The Kindle: Electronic books aren’t yet a factor. They still have too many formatting limitations, and too few consumers own them. They are the final nail in the coffin nonetheless, because they’re the difference between reading at a desk and reading wherever you’re in the mood to read.
The newspaper industry is dead, and none of its replacements will provide the in-depth, objective, investigative reporting we need as informed citizens.
The factors that led to its demise were, for the most part, good for each of us.
The result, however, isn’t good for any of us.
Watergate was also the beginning of the end of journalism.
Before, young people became involved or went to college for to study journalism in order to learn the craft of obtaining, reporting and conveying the news to the widest possible audience.
Afterwards, they just wanted to be a journalist in order to be “like Woodward & Bernstein” … that is to bring down a sitting president or other political official, but only if he or she was a Republican (or Conservative in other countries).
I remember when the Green Bay Press-Gazette was an “evening newspaper”, and showed up late afternoon with the News of the Day, which we discussed after dinner.
Quaint, I know …
L
I think all the non-governmental news will be sent down the “Memory Hole” by Winston Smith and Big Brother will attempt to control what everyone thinks and does.
Bob, I don’t often say this, but you’re wrong. Yes, print media is dying–because it has been supplanted by electronic media. Internet access has attained near ubiquity, and thus access to news and information via electronic media is easily available to all. Electronic media is one of those disruptive technologies that changes how we view information–and because we have changed that view, our use for print media has declined to the point of disappearing.
However, one only need recall the epochal headline “Dewey defeats Truman” to realize that the newspaper as an objective source of impartial reporting exists only as myth. It is a past that never was. The bloggers of today are the yellow journalists of yesterday, as are the cable issues-oriented “journalists” who get orgasmic over political candidates. They may not call themselves journalists, or aspire to Pulitzer Prizes, but neither did Ben Franklin (who made his fortune with newspapers in Colonial America).
The point of all this rambling is that what we are seeing is not ending but evolution. Dinosaurs became birds, and newspapers became blogs and Craig’s List. Evolution–it is the order of all things.
In my limited experience, I’d guess that narrowcasting has contributed to the phenomenon you identify as “good manners.” When faced with a particularly rabid Rush (or Rachel) fan, it’s difficult to have a discussion, as many of the “facts” cited in support of their opinions aren’t, but lacking the broader reading and common background of the daily newspaper, we can’t even find a common understanding of the facts, let enough common ground in our interpretations. It’s frustrating, and brings the conversation to a quick halt as each leaves in disgust with the other.
I mostly agree with your thoughtful column, except that what we need is good journalism, not healthy newspapers. That journalism can be independent of newspapers is convincingly argued by the blogger Clay Shirky (google Clay Shirky newspapers), so the death of newspapers may not be the end of journalism. In revolutions, old systems break before the new systems that replace them are available. Disruptive innovation eventually fills in the gaps …
I’m old enough to be able to remember when I first realized that newspapers could take very narrow – and one-sided views, and pass it off as ‘news’. I was about 12, and the year was ’55.
I stopped buying newspapers over 20 years ago because of what I considered to be extremely biased, and often ignorant, coverage. I could go on, but those who agree already know the rest – – – and those who don’t, don’t want to hear the other side.
I agree with R. Rew — the death of newspapers need not be the end of journalism. Maybe it will be; but I think the jury is still out, and not all the signs are bad.
Certainly the newspapers’ current business model is unsustainable, and as you point out has clearly been so for some time. What do you think of the support-your-local-reporter subscription model suggested by Mitch Ratcliffe earlier this year? http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ratcliffe/?p=381 Those of us not indoctrinated to think that everything on-line must be free would seem likely to pay independent reporters to tell us what’s going on. And maybe we should mount a campaign to persuade the others.
Bob, some smart fellow once said (at least 20 years ago) that one media seldom replaced another. So I don’t think we will see the demise of newspapers. Maybe they won’t be primarily carried on process wood pulp. But there will be some in the traditional format for at least another generation. I read parts of three or more newspapers each day, only one is on paper.
But, I watch our local paper (Arizona Republic) become smaller (page size) and thinner (page count). The same thing is happening to their staff (smaller . . . maybe thinner too). Computerworld . . . one day it will just wink out. But the online version will likely survive, probably as part of a roll-up.
Creative destruction? Probably.
John Blair
Yes, the newspapers died because of bad business decisions made a decade ago. They also died because of biased reporting and biased presentation of the news. If I have to read a biased newspaper, I might as well only read the one that caters to my bias since I won’t get the truth anywhere else either.
Sorry Bob, but one of the big problems is that the newspapers have gone to the world of narrow casting themselves.
As I have covered here before I do a lot of volunteer work with regards to disaster response and preparedness. None of the groups I work with have been able to get any news paper people to show and and report on what we do and how the community can work with us. We have noticed a definite bias in the local newspapers. As a joke and without permissions one of the guys in one of the groups I work with sent out a joke press release for our next press conference. Normally these are not attended by anybody from the media. He mentioned that the entire group was made up of gay guys, and literally the auditorium could not hold the reporters sent to cover the press conference.
Of course the reporters were only interested in how the gay life style caused one to be a better person than nongays. They were also wanting to be told that only gay people were willing to risk their lives to save others. They spent a great deal of time trying to spoon feed us the quotes they wanted for the “news”. It was very confusing until the guy fessed up and the reporters stomped out.
Frankly I think a news paper which actually reported the news with in depth coverage could indeed survive. The current bad imitations of a tabloid will not.
Take a look at Bob Garfield’s comments on newspapers http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/03/13/02
If newspapers focused on two things: Accurate factual reporting of interesting (to the readers) stories, written in good prose, they would do fine. They need to turn the fact that it takes them time to produce their product into an advantage, instead of filling their papers with amateurish mistakes, and taking a full day to do it.
Instead they focus on opinion and outsource and commoditize the fact gathering to the likes of the AP, and write none of it in any language worth reading. This is for elitist reasons (hence their resentment of blogs more than Craig’s list). Opinion is cheap, facts are expensive. The newspaper that provides hard news (as opposed to the facts that fit a narrative the way they do now) that is well respected will have no problem selling its product, regardless of medium.
Eventually a business will come along that gets this, but the current top dogs probably have to die first. Their brands are sucking up too much oxygen.
Another problem is that we have lost the old idea of “agree to disagree”. There are many things each of us may support or refuse to support, but discussions on these items are rare and usually hostile. Some of the news talk shows work hard to have each point screamed at the other with little real discourse, but just repeating of “talking points”. I have the personality where I like to take the opposite view. If that is a defect or an asset, I am old enough that I will not change.
Even in my home town there used to be two newspapers that were in competition, but after I left to join the military one bought the other. Maybe we need more competition.
I’m a KO watcher & a HuffPost reader. We subscribe to the paper for local news yet watch TV for the national. My son has a site that he keeps many of the comics on, so I can see the newspaper demise being a discomfort, but not critical.
For IT news, you, ZD, TN & others are my suppliers.
We may have to look to get everything that we want, or, since we are SS recipients, just not worry about it.
Interesting column,
Rand
I’ll wager this column will get more feedback than any you have written in quite a while.
Young people as a group tend toward liberalism and as they age most lean more and more toward conservatism.
Young people also embrace new technology while the older generation find more comfort in the less technological way of doing things.
With these two things in mind newspapers missed the boat. The vast majority of newspapers have a left of center mind set and therefore completely missed their target audience. The liberal thinking younger generation get their news in quick bits and bites from the multitude of electronic sources while the older generation look to the print media for more in depth reporting and analysis.
When the older generation now reads a newspaper they find little depth and a left of center slant that does not mirror their point of view so they quit reading them.
AM radio got it right. They recognized their audience and went to conservative talk with quite a bit of success. Newspapers on the other hand went more toward “People” magazine and as a consequence are dying.
As a newspaper freak from a young age, I find it really sad that newspapers are dying. One other factor in the demise is that too many newspapers are being bought up by just a few individuals or organizations. I realize that this is, in part, a result of the factors you site, but it is also a cause. I find my Lafayette newspaper looking very much like the Indianapolis newspaper because the very same LOCAL reporters (not, for example, AP articles) are providing articles for both papers. Fortunately, this is still a slight exaggeration, but not by much.
In my 20+ years as an adult, I have never subscribed to the newspapers – even though I carried a morning paper route as a kid.
Today’s newspapers are full of sloppy reporting and numerous erros. Ever given a quote to reporter and seen how mangled it turned out in print? A recent edition of a large local paper ran a story of a prominent business who “assed away on Friday night in his home”.
A hundred years ago, papers were not necessarily printed every day – the large local papers in our area are going to several weekdays and a weekend edition.
CareerBuilder.Com is owned by Gannett – so some newspaper companies got it – at least partially.
I do scan the local headlines on the web versions of the large local papers daily. I am not sure how that can create revenue as I will NOT download the cute screensaves that are advertised on their pop-ups.
Wow – look at the typos in my post. I should go to work for a dying newspaper!
Reading this on the day that the Ann Arbor News announced that it, too, would cease publication of a daily print version [the Detroit Free Press will cease home delivery of its Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday editions starting next week], Bob’s prophecy looks like a better bet than the NYSE. As a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, I understand the reason why media outlets practice narrowcasting (though I’m not sure why we liberals seem to have allowed conservative dominance, aside from the “they have more money to throw away” excuse). I see his prophecy’s inevitability in our struggling economy, and I mourn the likelihood that his conclusion will also prove true. No good will come from the death of daily newspapers.
Even on-line versions of print newspapers may go away: no content search. Several I’ve tried allow you to search ads just dandy, but locating content? As if.
Why some papers will be around: community news. My “local” daily, which covers a great deal of suburban Boston, including the far suburbs out to about 35 miles, prints local news that is difficult to find on line, if it’s there at all, and if you know there’s even anything to look for. Local weeklies print some of the same, but not usually timely.0
Narrowcasting: the signature of small minds. I read print papers for the variety of columns, from a number of viewpoints. (Yes, even the “liberal” Boston Globe carries opposing views.) They may help me clarify my own opinions, and in the infinitesimal chance I’m wrong, help me change my mind.
When the populace reads (those who can still read, that is) only opinions they agree with it’s one more step on the road to doom.
You might want to take a look at http://www.techdirt.com .
They’re making the point that investigative journalism doesn’t need newspapers, just AN outlet, and there are journalists that still make money publishing online. They have a rather aggressive view of economics involving giving away the stuff you can’t prevent people from getting free anyway, and using that as a teaser to turn’em into customers for SCARCE goods (more access, deeper analysis, etc.)
For the ‘free’ model, check out http://www.groklaw.net , which follows the SCO v IBM/Novell/rest of creation litigation. It banded together a mob of outraged, partisan people and turned them into a highly tuned research service to defeat SCO….and it’s pretty well *worked*.
Hey Bob – good effort at trying to be even-handed, but the issue is clearly Liberal bias in the Media, including print. The Papers have caused their own demise by driving away their clients with the “Narrowcasting” of their extreme Liberal views. (i.e. nobody is buying that ‘product’!)
Check the ratings: Nobody watches MSNBC, and more people watch FOX than anything else. It is likely that the NYT will fail, but the WSJ can survive by continuing quality reporting.
Great Article. This is happening faster in every area of business. One idea pops up and is replaced by another idea a couple years later. Fashion industry seems to move slower – I’m still waiting for saggy pants to come back up!!). I read another article this week how companies need to respond quicker to technology advances. Even in my company, they are trying to create new while maintaining the old. There are definite advantages to jumping ship and starting totally new. The only issue has to be the workforce learning to keep current with changes. Corporation mentality (and the public school system) isn’t helping the people see their role in constant changing professions and skills.
Bob,
I think that the decay of our country, our economy and our democracy parallels the slow demise of journalism. Investigative journalism and an informed citizenry are a crucial component of a healthy democracy. It’s no coincidence that the free press is honored in the First Amendment.
Professor Robert McChesney has proposed various tax incentives and subsidies to help newspapers stay alive, along as they actually report news. There needs to be some kind of effort to stimulate relevant news reporting and reading/viewing/listening if we want to stop our slide towards third world nation-hood.
Regarding the Kindle, I don’t have one but I am interested at least for now. I do have an iPhone and read pretty anywhere and anytime. I don’t get ink all over my hands. When I read I am reading generally up to date info. If I don’t know a word I can look it up, which happens frequently when reading your rubish…I mean well written, insightful KJR newsletters. I would add a generation not raised on the paper, but raised on the internet. I would also add the financial challeges of this past year driven by the loss of advertising such as from the automotive industry and real estate. Certainly all of the reasons you listed have contributed, but I think the one providing the biggest push is the internet and especially the wireless connectivity.
There is talk about allowing news papers to become non-profit organizations with the accompanying tax benefits, and so on. The criteria is that they not be permitted to make political endorsements. Now I may disagree one hundred percent with our local newspaper’s endorsements, but I spent six years in the military in service to my country in part to defend the freedom of the press. And believe me at that time the freedom of the press was critical.
You don’t have to read the whole paper, just those parts you like. So narrow focus is not a factor, in my opinion.
What is a factor is the cost of newsprint. No matter how you slice it, paper takes energy to process. The Chicago Tribune kept at least one paper mill in operation, and a large percent of the paper for that mill was recycled newspapers.
Paper mills in this country have been going out of business wholesale. It was big news when a mill in Otsego Michigan was brought back into service, to provide the paper used for sheet rock. Out of the dozens of mills, in the area shut down only the one has been restored to operation. The rest, they are trying to restore the land so the site can be converted to another use.
As much energy as a server farm uses, it pales in comparison to the amount of energy needed to run a mill.
I’ve noticed a definite cut in the number of pages in our local paper. In spite of that it still does a yoemen’s job turning out a reasonable product. So I will continue to subscribe as long as it is available.
But I am very disappointed with the on-line version, MLive. Archive articles are $2.95 a pop, and that is before you really know if it is the article you want. Compare that to the price of going to the local library and printing a page from a micro-fiche, or paying $.75 for a back issue.
So no, the on line version, in its current version, will not replace the printed paper.
Another problem with on line reporting is the temporary nature of the articles. I tried linking to finish reading an article I received in an email a couple of years ago, and got a database error for my trouble. Not even a decent 404 page not found.
We’ve been trying to switch to a paperless society for years now, and are finally seeing that come to pass. Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
By the way, at three hundred bucks a pop for a Kindle before any books, the price is too high when a paperback is only eight bucks, or a hardback book twenty dollars. They are talking about digital paper that is cheap enough to use for advertising. If that is possible, then perhaps there will eventually be an reader device that is no more than the price of a book.
When you consider how fast storage media changes, and how quickly something you could read on a five and a quarter floppy disk five years ago is no longer accessable, unless you keep a bunch of obsolete equipment around, the Kindle is in the nature of a fad. I’ve got books magazines and newspapers from the fiftys. I don’t need any special equipemnt to read them. Just sit down and open them up.
I know this seems a mixed posting. Oh well.
My reading of the column may be illustrative of the differences in the user experience between reading paper and reading online. As soon as I saw the reference to Mike the Headless Chicken, I had to check that out. Wow! Fascinating story! (And very apt analogy) So I had to share with some friends. THEN back to the rest of the column, (which made a lot of valid points). Try doing that with paper. PS My husband and I are among very few that can ‘stomach’ both Olbermann and O’Reilly, in that we watch both, so we know something about the extremes and get a sense of the truth in the middle.
I think you touched on something that has concerned me for some time, the inability of leaders (be it business or government) to understand the consequences of change. I foresaw years ago that the phone company, the entertainment industry, the post office and retail in general were going to have to rethink their business models in light of what the internet does.
More importantly though is to rethink the other end of the equation. It’s nice that we can read the paper online, watch TV online and listen to music online but where will that content come from when the industries that produce it disappear? It costs a lot of money to produce TV shows, for example, so who will go to that expense when the distribution system breaks down? When the newspapers let all of their reporters go who will write the articles for the websites to amalgamate?
I have always felt that the value of a newspaper was that someone did the work of organizing the content so I could find out the ‘important’ stuff quickly and easily (whether the important stuff was world news, sports or the comics). The editor looked at all of the available content and ranked that content with the most important on the front page and the less important toward the back. That seems to be disappearing as we go to ‘news sites’ that amalgamate stories from other sources based on no criteria at all or on some list of things I have indicated I care about. This means that I don’t see the stories that may be important to me but which I didn’t indicate I wanted. Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know so it is hard to ask the correct questions.
Public TV comes pretty close with “Nightly Business” and “The Leher Report” but that does help with local and state news that fill in a bit on the radio, or sports.
So to get everything on a daily basis, including crosswords, home, etc. nothing has come along that replaces the daily paper. Even the daily NY Times can be reviewed in less than 1/2 hour which beats 2 hours a day of TV.
Two points…
Add being green as a factor contributing to the death of newspapers, and
I remain optimistic that a new, open, balanced, comprehensive, reliable, and responsible media will arise from the ashes of newspapers.
Regrettably, I agree with your argument that this year will be remembered as the beginning of the end. Too bad. I continue to get the Sunday Washington Post each week, and will continue to do so for as long as it’s printed. Or I’m dead…
Or the whole thing is on Kindle (or its future replacement). Not really…
TURN IT OFF!!
The loss of investigative journalism is frightening — with government agencies as non-responsive, incompetent, and, in some cases, corrupt, as ours currently are, we need journalistic oversight that no longer exists.
News has gone “corporate”, and corporations cannot afford to alienate those people in government who determine taxes and regulation.
So instead of real news, we get talking heads and opinions instead of facts.
We’re in real trouble if we continue to believe opinions are news.
I think the traditional printed newspaper will go away and be supplanted with online service. With all the electronic gadgetry now out and newer stuff to come. You can have your news sent to your device to peruse at your own leisure.
A lot of the youth of today are used to small bits of info. Look how they have adapted to texting there attention span is shorter and they want it now as opposed to later.
Paper is dead, technology is the new order.
Bob – for most part I think you have it right. The problem I see is that journalism took a major change in philosophy in the 70’s.
Journalists before the 70s went into journalism not to “make a difference”, but to report the facts. The primary goal of journalism was to get the facts right and tell the story fairly, completely and without an agenda. Since the 70’s journalists have been flocking to the “profession” to “make a difference” which more or less means an agenda.
Granted there were exceptions to this before the 70’s, but they were exceptions. Now that “make a difference” philosophy is ubiquitous and objective, knowledgable, just the facts reporting is pretty much dead and gone.
Net – you can’t count on accuracy in the newspaper. It’s become too much work to read a newspaper and filter out the non-objective crap that passes for factual reporting.
Second, our society has become more complicated – look at technology and finance as examples. Many, reporters perhaps most lack the expertise and background to be able to research, understand and communicate the facts.
Third, newspapers moved resources to softer things other than hard news. Things like “Life”, “Home” and “Entertainment” sections have not only taken resource from hard news reporting, but they also require less work to produce.
In summary, the newspaper industry has lost their way. They’ve betrayed our trust.
The newspaper industry (and journalism as a whole) needs to drop pushing agendas get back to skillfully and knowledgely gathering and honestly reporting the complete facts. Keep the stuff with agendas off news pages and put it on the editorial pages.
May I also add here that broadcast news on the major networks is also losing viewership – NBC and CBS in particular. It comes back to the trust issue. They are reliably untrustworthy.
Last, I’d like to see a reputable source develop an accurate, trustworthy, condensed, weekday hard news publication (online or hardcopy) with very concise writing. The two goals would be a) being able to trust everything printed in it and b) be able to completely read it in 10 minutes (okay, maybe 15).
Before blaming people’s personal political views or electronic advances of the ’90s and ’00s, ponder the fact that while the overall population of the USA zoomed between 1960 and 1980 , newspaper readership barely moved.
newspapers got out of touch with the populace and stayed out of touch.
the decisions of the 80’s and 90’s by just about every newspaper to “dumb down” and shorten their content was stupid at the time and remains stupid for those still in operation.
NOTHING will pick up the slack.
“narrowcasting” does not lend itself to BALANCED reporting. KJR is spot on with this. AND IT IS A SHAME.
Some prehistoric animals still exist today. How newspapers can survive: 1.) Fully understand their regional markets and gear articles toward their readers’ interests/lifestyles-whether they be online or in print. 2.) Less focus on national and global news that doesn’t have an immediate personal impact on their local reader. This alone drops their expenses tremendously. 3.) Aggregate and broadcast cultural channels (blogs,community forums,etc.) 4.)Relevant, content-driven and most importantly, consumer/demographic/psychographic-centric “adarts” advertising integrated through articles will be the mainstay for decades to come. Example: An article in the Food section contains a recipe that is loaded with product and vendor placement. This increases revenue and is measurable for the vendor. If Fred Meyer sells 100,000 more cans of B & M beans than usual on Thursday because Wednesday’s recipe called for the customer to use B & M beans available at Fred Meyer (on special of course)-THAT is a measurable result. 5.)The traditional version of newspaper augmented by online versions (including reporter blogs) will eventually morph into soft-copy only. It is simply evolution-not death. JimmyD has spoketh-dig it!
Afraid this quote below is not true. That isn’t what most newspapers deliver, and the difference has bled way off of their editorial pages, and people have noticed the difference.
Moving to a more regional focus, et. al. will not help there. And if there’s very little difference between your newspaper and Keith Olbermann – why not just watch Keith?
KJR wote: “Newspapers are for those who want both perspectives (or, rather, who want well-informed, well-reasoned perspectives presented by thoughtful analysts”
To all of this, you need to add: Lack of expertise.
The model for reporters is broken, and too many people have had the experience of catching them out in basic errors or outright misunderstanding/ misrepresentation, re: stories they had first hand experience with. Especially stories that deal with specialized domains, which is a larger and larger segment of total news.
One reason narrowcasting is growing, is that it becomes possible to consistently get coverage from people with better base understandings of a field (Politics is an exception, in that understanding can either increase or decline with exposure).
I love your column.
Just getting back to the 3/23 column about the death of newspapers and the loss of broad-based information they provide. Your question at the end was what will replace that, and I suspect that nothing will do a good job of it. However, the closest thing to it that could survive is NPR/PBS. The Lehrer Newshour is pretty good at balance and in-depth analysis, similarly the NPR news programs.
I agree with your analysis completely, sad though it is.
Best regards,
Henry
I continue to read our local paper (the Raleigh, NC, News & Observer) every day, despite the fact that it’s a liberal rag (because it’s a generally well-written liberal rag, recent proofreading problems due to layoffs notwithstanding). I’m enjoying the recent renaissance of investigative reporting (a spasm before death?) even as I mourn the dwindling away of familiar syndicated features, columnists, and comic strips (a wasting death by cancer?). I was strangely proud this morning when my 23-year-old son (a total techie and free-spirit artist) announced his preference for reading the newspaper over internet blogs and news sites–something I’d tried to pass on to him had stuck! Too bad he may not be able to enjoy the experience of reading from paper as long as I’ve been able to do…