Don't Bailout Newspapers (Even Though They're Invaluable)
Clay Shirky on the future of journalism is worth reading — one of the smartest takes I’ve seen on the subject, and not just because we both worry that many American cities are about to experience an uptick in endemic corruption.
“On the other hand, people who look at the media environment and say the current shock in the media environment is so inimical to the 20th-century model of news production that time spent trying to replace newspapers is misspent effort because we should really be transferring our concern to the production of lots and lots of smaller, overlapping models of accountability journalism, knowing that we won’t get it right in the beginning and not knowing which experiments are going to pan out.”
No no no! This is wrong. We should prop up failing newspapers and give endowments to Important Artist, because We The People have perfect predictive powers about the direction that culture and innovation will take! And beside I’m not will to risk losing Jazz and the the Sports Section!
— Tony Comstock · Sep 28, 11:21 AM · #
I agree that a command journalism economy is a bad idea, and unlikely to produce a suitable alternative to newspapers that provide the same services they do. But I find the opposite opinion to often be very Pollyanna-ish, that we’ll just replace newspapers with blogs, and technology will provide, somehow, and we’ll be just the same informed culture. Techno-utopianism is such a powerful cultural force these days that I think we run the real risk of losing perspective on how big the problems that technological change brings about really are.
— Freddie · Sep 28, 01:26 PM · #
Thanks for the link – it’s very provacative.
I’m interested in Shirky’s prediction that local accountability journalism — coverage of local government and corruption in mid-small markets — is going to decline. He may be right, but on the other hand, when I want to know what the city council is doing in most cities, I pick up the free weekly, which often has equal or better coverage to the majors, presumably because of a looser editorial filter.
The question comes down, as it so often does these days, to network effects. If you have a bunch of local politics bloggers and a few actual investigators/activists, how does someone get a reputation as a credible and important newsbreaker.
Maybe one possible partial solution is a serious group of Pulitizer/Nobel style prizes, to confer credibility on people who break big stories in credible ways.
— J Mann · Sep 28, 01:45 PM · #