Devil's Advocate here... Well, more than that, I've got a substantial wager on the Devil. I like the internet. I like what it's done to the music business, I like what's doing to the TV business (at the cost of my own job!) and I like the comeuppance it's bringing to the monopolistic newspapers.

And let's remember that Romenesko is like the lobby of the union office for these newspaper guys.

> but I really do believe that
> as go newspapers so goes
> democracy.

Isn't that conveeeeeeenient... He's identified his own livelihood as the beating heart of human freedom. That's a nice trick, isn't it?

Op-ed guys have been doing that for centuries. There's never been a more witless or self-aggrandizing class of incompetent know-it-alls than newspaper types... I really, really believe this.

> It does mean that it will
> be easier than ever for
> our votes to be manipulated.

"Than ever"? There's never been a condition of greater corruption in the world than on the day that you lost your your seat in a point-to-multipoint, gatekeeping communications enterprise?

Seriously, fuck that. And fuck him. If he's so proud of his goddamn opinion and so certain that it should mean a lot to us, he can sell it personally like anyone else in the world can. Without the monopolistic leverage of a single print venue to sustain him, he'll be in the same position as every regular Joe throughout history. (At least in this new world, he can start a blog if he wants to.)

All of us will miss what newspapers have done for our communities in terms of beat reporting... School boards, police blotters, court notices.

But we should never forget that those services were never, ever worth paying for until the publisher threw in some comics and astrology charts and gardening... And advice columnists!

There will be some bad things happening when newspapers go away. But when a bad condition can't go on forever, it doesn't go on forever. We will adapt. The internet that stole the audience from newspapers is all about flexibility!

When I think of transitions toward evil in the public mind in these years, I'm much more concerned about lefties and public finances than about the collapse of the newspaper industry.

Almost all of us have had the experience of seeing a newspaper come sniffing around into some event or some enterprise with which we were familiar, and then being appalled the next day at the distortions a laziness that cloud the product.

Newspapers were never really on the team, they were just a typical private enterprise. They will not be missed.

Newspapers are causing their own demise by no longer reporting the news but filtering it through their own ideological prism. The same thing is happening to broadcast journalism where on air reporters pepper their presentations with their own or the stations interpretation of the events being reported.

Agreed. Washington and Sacramento are as corrupt as ever. There's been no ideological victory

100 years ago, Freedom of the Press belonged to the fat guy with a big cigar who owned the press. Today it belongs to anyone with an internet connection who can write something worth reading. I'd call that a net positive.

As for investigative reporting, if you want it done right, you'll just have to do it yourself. Check out "Bank of America Bombshell: Is Your Money Safe?"

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2008/07/28/investigating_b.html

You didn't get the desired result of forcing Bank of America to it's knees, but even the best investigative reporters usually only get that result in Hollywood movies. Meanwhile, you informed thousands of readers about B of A's gross negligence in a delightfully entertaining way, and you look much better in an Elvira wig than Ornstein or Weber.

This sort of citizen journalism is the only way anyone will get a clear picture of what's going on in the White House over the next 4 (or 8) years, since pretty well the entire American press corps have their heads stuck so far up Obama's ass that they'll never see daylight again.

>Newspapers are causing their own demise by no >longer reporting the news but filtering it >through their own ideological prism. The same >thing is happening to broadcast journalism >where on air reporters pepper their >presentations with their own or the stations >interpretation of the events being reported.

Jay, this may be worse than in the past, but it has always gone on. In a way it's better if it's more blatant, because then it's easier to adjust the skew factor.

As Amy said, you often need lots of resources to uncover stories, and citizen bloggers holding down day jobs are not going to cut it.

The guy dropped the story because no teller would talk to him?

So basically what they're saying is:

This was hard...we don't like or do hard...we give up.

So the relevance of the story...irrelevant
The importance of the story...irrelevant
The ease with which the story can be done...very relevant

Its not newspapers that are dying...its investigative will & skill, as go those, so go the newspapers.

Appalling...would it have been so hard to spend a little time running through their employee training guide regarding handing out customer's money? See what they put in writing regarding security...hell for that matter...here's a real tough idea, have a few employees of the paper open up small accounts, then "impersonate" each other, catch it on video with a hidden camera....oooh, oh so hard!

The Rocky Mountain News is also in danger of folding if it doesn't find a buyer. This must be a nationwide phenonmenon.

Besides, he could have spoken to BOA employees right here on the East Coast. No doubt their policies are the same all over.

"I've said it over and over, that you can't maintain a democracy (or keep a check on corruption) without strong newspapers"

Amazingly, democracy arose and grew without such nutrients present. I do not see why democracy cannot sustain itself should newspapers go away. More vital is the first amendment protection of free thought.

This guy takes the prize, though:

"I tried to explain to her that the stuff that ends up in the newspaper is stuff that directly affects her life -- that, for example, the war debates that went on in Washington, which she didn't follow in the paper because she didn't read the paper, resulted eventually in her husband being sent into a war zone. The conversation was frustrating to me because she didn't get it, and wasn't going to get it. She, an educated person, had decided that newspapers were irrelevant to her life, and that was that."

Maybe, just maybe, she is being a rational person, here? Hmm? Maybe the information newspapers peddle is not worth the cost, both cash and time, that newspapers demand? I don't subscribe to newspapers like the NYT. Although I find the information therein useful and interesting, the cost in terms of cash and, more importantly, time wasted going through slanted stuff is simply too high.

In a world with fewer options, maybe I would still suffer those costs. But YAHTZEE!, we live in this world, not that one. Every industry that ever went under probably cursed the fickle, deluded consumers before finally gasping its last.

"an objective reporter" Um find me one just one and I'll buy the argument. There is no such thing as an objective reporter. You might be able to find a neutral reporter but that's it.

Reporters will likely suffer during the transition from print to net but I see it fixing itself quite nicely. You'll reach a more logical mercenary approach to journalism. Having permanent on staff reporters lets them get cosy and lazy. The only place I see a bit of a problem is war reporting. You go from the press pass only going to the Lara Logans of the world to anyone with the balls to try and the skills to survive.

Otherwise I agree with Crid Op-ed is bullshit I prefer to get clean facts and draw my own conclusions. You have some super liberal wanting to take away my money and my guns or some shit head conservative wanting to take away my money and porn. (Taken partly from a TV special) Who then goes on to explain why it's un-American to actually hold poor people accountable for their actions or to be an immigrant (legal or otherwise).

BTW there are subscription based News Papers online. Same thing minus the risk of breaking your neck to go get the paper in winter.

Op-ed is bullshit

When I used to get the WSJ, op-ed was my favorite part of the paper. It can be quite informative and thought-provoking.

"It can be quite informative and thought-provoking." Oh I'll agree that it's though provoking but not that it's informative.

It may depend on the paper though. WSJ is better op ed wise then many of the others but having developed a jaded view of the media I prefer my information un-colored. I'll grant that in can be entertaining so long as you view it in the right light.

> Spartee, we live in a far
> more complex world now.

No. There's nothing new under the sun. And even if there is, newspapers did nothing to admirably simplify a troublingly complex world.

Another problem with the newspaper is that it is kind of obvious you are slacking off at work when you kick back, feet up on the desk, and unfold the times.

No mouse button to minimize that when the boss walks by.

Newspapers are a *medium*.

One of several communications *media*.

Meaning: it's just the pipeline.

Nothing sacred about tree-based newspapers or one-way mass-market television.

Sure, some things won't get investigated unless someone can draw a salary for full-time investigative reporting.

But any number of Internet presences have shown that this can be done for profit in the new media. From the Wall Street Journal's subscription model to advertising supported portals pushing real news to people's cellphones.

All of this is separate from the credibility issues that are burying traditional, one-way-mass-market media.

Reliable investigative reporting will be delivered to consumers over the Internet and mobile media.

- it will be better vetted, and perhaps enriched, due to the interactive nature of the new media.

- it will be more relevant and personalized as people create their own information streams.

But people will still pay for the value added by real journalists - reliability, relevance, and context.

... and many things that went unreported in the old media will get covered in the new media

- because access is so cheap
- because small focused audiences can self-organize.

Newspapers have shot themselves in the foot:

Janet Cooke
Rick Bragg
Jayson Blair
Stephen Glass
Jack Kelley

I remember Robin Williams once told a story about the time he lined a cat box with a National Enquirer newspaper and the cat said "You want me to shit in there? That would be redundant!"

Not that I feel that way about newspapers per se; I do have a subscription to our local paper. I like sitting down to breakfast with it, to read the articles and letters to the editor, do the crossword and check my horriblescope (thank the gods Mercury is finally out of retrograde! /sarcasm) just for the hellofit. And even though the want ads have been pretty sparse, I check them every day, because, hey! I need a job! Besides, if papers stop being printed, whatever will we use for paper training when we get a puppy? Those glossy magazines aren't worth shit when it comes to absorbing puppy pee! o.O

Agreed. I'm not sure the newspaper business was ever more honest than it is today... The names on Conan's list may simply have typified the industry... They didn'y sully it all on their own.

And who knows if the internet/blogs/whatever will perform with some greater aggregate of integrity. I'd doubt it. But at least we'll hope that corrections to misinformation can be delivered more quickly... We've seen that happen a couple times in this decade.

"And that's not true about investigative reporters only getting results in movies"

I did say "usually". Big stories that lead to a clear resolution of the problem are, I dare say, the exception and not the rule, even for the best reporters.

Yes, big newspapers had tremendous resources at their disposal, but these resources were often shamelessly squandered. For instance, the front page of the New York Times on June 28, 2008 was taken up almost entirely by the shocking revelation that the Phoenix Country Club had a men-only grill. No, I'm not kidding. And the Paper of Record ran with this story for several days, as if it was the biggest news in the entire country. Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

"Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter"

Senator Tom Daschle, Congressional Record, May 7, 1998, p. S4507

You'll recall that Joe the Plumber's tax problems were broadcast to the world within 24 hours after his face first popped up on narional television. Daschle was being yakked about as Obama's most likely pick for Health & Human Services even before Obama accepted the nomination. And the news of his $ 140,000 worth of tax evasion only came out last week? Was there not a big story here begging to be told, with no one to tell it?

I wish I had some bright ideas about how to make citizen journalism pay.

Gee, where is the critical thinking when addressing media?

Newspapers, generally speaking, don't investigate or contribute all that much individually. Note the tendency to run the AP or Reuters service verbatim. Note the tendency to merely report on whatever other news outlets are printing, and, just like TV, the lack of analysis. You get maybe three pages of unique content in bunch of papers. Yes, they can do local news well - who was in the parade, etc.

The assertion that Internet sources are somehow golden is clearly nonsense. CNN and Fox still spin things. The ease with which the Internet word is spread doesn't lend it any credibility, and may people can't tell if the on-line article they're looking at is correct.

Newspapers don't give you viruses. They also let you sit and contemplate what you're reading. Internet articles can be researched. So there's a split.

"Spartee, we live in a far more complex world now. "

But we are the same people. I maintain my view.

Let's examine all of the pretenses in the Dreher quote:

1. "how then do you account for the fact that liberal newspapers serving liberal cities are in as much trouble as anybody else"... It's not that newspaper people are liberal. It's that newspaper people are out-and-out socialists just this side of Marx. They are further to the left than 99.9% of the American public. And yet in their smug self-importance, they assume that all of the public essentially shares their views, except for a tiny minority of retarded, inbred rednecks who can't read anyway. Thus, they feel justified in dismissing out of hand any viewpoint that disagrees with theirs. I imagine that a lot of mainstream liberals get pretty sick of being kissed up to and never seeing any other viewpoints.

2. "as go newspapers, so goes democracy..." There'a a grain of truth here, in that an uninformed public is an easily manipulated public. That's why dictators always restrict access to education and information. The conceit here is that newspapers, as they are currently constituted, are the only medium capable of performing this function. And there's a rather puzzling corollary: that newspapers are incapable of surviving competition. If that were true, American democracy would have ended with the advent of radio broadcasting. The worst aspect here is the newspaper business' efforts to demonize the Internet by implying that it is dangerous to not have information gatekeepers. In fact, it's just the opposite, as today's newspapers demonstrate on a daily basis. If we had to rely now on newspapers as our sole sources of information, John Kerry would be beginning his second term as President, assuming that he hadn't gotten around to surrendering the country to Iran during his first term.

3. Newspapers are the sole source of local news for most people. In fact, it's just the opposite: in all but the largest cities, newspapers do very little local reporting. Let's face it, local beat reporting is not considered a glamor job in the business, and most reporters avoid it like the plague. Dreher asks about who will cover the local sewer board meeting... well, newspapers in America's medium-sized cities aren't covering it now, and haven't done so for a long, long time. I know because I've been to planning board meetings in my town, and unless there's a particularly controversial issue on the agenda, there won't be a reporter in sight. On the other hand, there's scads of local bloggers around now. Coverage is admittedly still spotty in a lot of cities, but I think this will improve as the local bloggers figure out how to go about it.

4. The unspoken-but-implied pretense is that newspapers are, uniquely, sources of unbiased information. That's worse than just dishonest; it's gaslighting, telling us that what we plainly observe every day isn't true: "Who are you going to believe, us or your own lying eyes?" Everybody has a viewpoint, and it's inevitable that one's viewpoint will influence what and how one reports, but newspaper people try to pretend that they are, uniquely, exceptions to this basic human trait. At times, the editorial process has acted as a check and balance on this, but it never worked as well as it was hyped to, and now it isn't working at all. Most bloggers, on the other hand, are upfront about their viewpoints, and the reader can then take this into account and apply the appropriate filters. Simple, really.

Two observations/opinions about the decline of newspapers:

1) The fiction of "impartiality". I would prefer, and trust, a newspaper that acknowledged its political POV... I could then fold that info into my personal calculation of its credibility on a given issue/story.

2) The rise of "journalists" instead of "reporters". In the days before journalism degrees, many reporters rose through the ranks to their positions, bringing a wealth of personal experience to their jobs... and a unique outlook shaped by the real world, not a professor and a textbook.

Unfortunately for newspapers, the current "professionalization" of reportage through the (near) universal usage of degreed reporters happened to coincide with the rise of postmodernism on college campii -- especially in the humanities departments which host the journalism programs... and postmodernism is at war with a thing called "truth".

This does not engender trust.

And a newspaper without trust is just smeary, greasy toilet paper...

I get my news from PBS (on the TV) and from the BBC world service (on TV & radio), as well as from the internet. CNN is a joke, as are most of the news sources (newspapers, regular TV stations), who seem only interested in sensationalizing everything ('you could die from a paper cut-tune in for more at 6:00').

I don't believe anything I hear, and if something piques my curiousity, I'll research it myself.

I think that the downfall of the newspaper can be traced through the funny pages.

Hagar the Horrible? Sally Forth? Blondie? Mary Worth? Fucking RERUNS of For Better or Worse? Who reads this shit?
Old people who hate change and progress.

Penny-arcade, Liberty Meadows, PVP, Starslip Crisis, Sheldon: who reads that shit?
Young people who know how to get their news for free on the interwebz

I'm not *entirely* kidding.

Not that I'm into comics, but Beetle Bailey has to be the worst ever.