I think community and conversation is the future of journalism. I am platform agnostic.
What journalism did wrong is this: journalists, reporters, and papers have started to let their contempt for their readers show.
They — print media and serious news papers — fancy us a bunch of dumbasses who don’t care, any more, about civics and duty and politics and so they have therefore holed themselves up, right next to the Academy, and have tried to write for and teach the readers they wished they had — or used to have — rather than the readers they are losing every day.
Here’s an analogy. After inviting your parish priest and your childrens’ Sunday school teacher over to your backyard BBQ a couple-few times, you may get tired of them judging you — telling you how you shouldn’t be drinking beer or eating pork — so you stop inviting them to the party after a spell.
Journalism and print media don’t give people the gifts they want, they try to force-feed us the gift they think we should have — and with social media the company store is no longer the monopoly that it once was and we don’t need to spend every morning poring over the paper — unless we’re boning up for the Foreign Service exam or are on assignment from our school marm for a civics class.
That’s the very basic tenet of market capitalism: give them what they want, not what you think they need. Right? (Actually, that’s generally good advice: give people the gift they want and not the gift you want, yourself.)
Well, the “stewards” of “our culture” are realizing that they cannot “maintain the culture” for us and also make a profit from advertising and subscriptions.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
What I don’t enjoy are analysis and opinion masquerading as news, which I see increasing as more sources copy Fox to drum up readers. I already have more analysis and opinion than I can handle. I want to know what’s going on in the world.
This is nonsense. What I read on the front page of the NY Times are reasonably unbiased accounts of contemporary events. Same thing on the front page of any daily paper. That’s sometimes known as “news,” to any who have forgotten. You won’t get that from cable news and not from any blogs I know of. It is absolutely possible to train journalists to be responsible reporters of events and to keep most of the taint of their own opinions out of the picture. That’s not a civics lesson, that’s a chance at knowing some actual facts. Would you turn to FOX or MSNBC if you wanted to know what happened today? How about this page, or any other of zillions of blogs? I wouldn’t. If newspapers all disappeared tomorrow, in one week no one would know anything for sure and we’d all be drowning in a sea of lies and rumors. Now THAT’S what we don’t need.
Tony, that’s the same kind of crazy talk that these newspaper magnates are spewing — the condescending dreck that purports the “news” as gospel. If people don’t want it, they don’t want it — even if you think — believe — it is important. Most people have figured out by now that world and national news really isn’t their problem, until it is. They come from the place of, “if it is important, I’ll hear about it.”
You are delusional, sir.
@Tony Zito: I feel exactly the same about you but I will add “in denial” as well.
@Tony Zito: Oh, and no matter how true this sentence is:
It doesn’t matter if nobody’s buying.
Right?
That’s my point. And, if you’ll read more closely, you’ll realize that I am not writing about the beauty or majesty of the writing and vision, it is how little newspapers care that there are fewer and fewer people in the theater for this movie — which is fine, as long as newspapers aren’t relying on advertising to make their monthly nut.
The current business model cannot support the current revenue-generation strategy.
What I am saying is that people don’t have much discernment with regards to news, on the whole, and people are way more interested in talk radio, cable news, and blogs than anything else for getting their news:
Well, I do turn to Twitter to learn what is going on in my world at any given moment, yes, but only because I have Very Smart Friends who are constantly digging through everything to help me keep up-to-date with the world. I personally subscribe/have subscribed to the FT, NYT, WSJ (miss them and will re-up soon), The Economist, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, WIRED, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and just started reading The Week Magazine religiously, which I love.
While my reading and news-consumption is typical amongst my friends, it is not typical nationwide. And it will become less typical over time, that’s for sure. What do I believe can be done? I will go into that later — in another post.
Chris, what the HECK are you droning on about? This is the first time, truly, that I’ve seen you drive into a train wreck.
@Linda: Well, Linda, you’re an aspiring newspaper magnate. Besides, you already realized that you need to tap community and that the future of news is in your hands rather than in the hands of old institutions and old money and old methods of monetization.
When did we buy into the idea that newspapers gave unbiased opinions? And what about the word opinion in and of itself? News isn’t news. It hasn’t been for a long time. We all thought it was once upon a time, but news is just opinion and somebody wrote it to fit with the policy of their corporate entity.
Delusional? I’m sure I am. In denial? Absolutely not.
Hey Chris – I just love your willingness to provide people with more credit than they deserve. First, I’m not in newspapers. I’m into local aggregation with news written by others and a few original articles thrown in for good measure in an online venue. If I were a magnate, I would have a headache on my hands in teaching hired journalists about how to stay as impartial as possible.
That said, impartiality, I’ve learned, is impossible. It defies logic. Not one word comes out of a person’s mouth without an agenda and to think so otherwise is foolish. Everyone tries to convince someone else that their perspectives are correct in one way or another. My father used to say, “Birds of a feather flock together,” and “You’re known by the company you keep.” If you believe that a media outlet is providing you with your “truth,” then you will be loyal to that medium.
If, however, a media outlet brings opposing views to your perspective to the table, that news outlet is your enemy. One way to garner traffic at a news site is to print outrageous perspectives and put them out there so others can flock to your site to agree or disagree. When I read about journalists bemoaning the death of newspapers, they never mention this little online marketing fact – and it is one fact that can help the general impression that all news is distorted.
Television “journalism” is not much better. If you compare it, though, to news offered to the public a century ago, you may see that nothing much has changed. Perhaps the only difference is that many more people can recognize yellow journalism when they see it. Otherwise, it’s all entertainment, and shoddy entertainment at that – purely appealing to the emotions rather than to the head.
I agree with Tony, though – many people I know do want to know what’s going on in the world around them, and they often count on their print sources to provide that news, whether truly biased or only slightly biased. Think about the digital divide – people who cannot or who will not use the Internet or high speed connections. Those communities want newspapers, print versions. I can count on both hands and feet the number of times people have asked me to go into print, as connections in the fifth district are so spotty. Half of the people in the district I cover cannot read my site. But, I can’t afford to go into print. That effort would cost me everything I own, and I’m not that dedicated.
So much for community – unless I’m sitting at the local breakfast nook with the elders every morning, I really have nothing to contribute to that community at the moment. They are the ones who make the news in that area, and none of them are talking to me because they don’t have Internet. The only community I can connect with in that area are with those who comprise a community of high-speed Internet users. Is that not biased?
Even when drawing information from a local community of online users, I – ultimately – make the decision about whether that information is printed or not, which further defines that news. When that press release or story or information seems spotty or pointed against a certain group of people, it doesn’t go in. If I don’t have enough time in the day to post the story, it doesn’t go in. If the writing is sloppy and I don’t have enough time to edit, it doesn’t go in. If the information has nothing to do with what I know is my audience, it doesn’t go in (a Boy Scout story from California, for instance – how is that relevant to a 5th-district Virginia audience?). I know that readers will find what they need even if I don’t present it to them. It’s ALL out there, and it eventually makes it into print, if space is available and if it is relevant to a print news market.
Impartiality is reserved for saints. And, community – especially an online community – is reserved for those who know how to brand themselves to a large enough audience to help lead that limited community into…what? A flock?
@Linda: I am not criticizing the quality of journalism. I am not saying that news reporting is either out-dated or unimportant. I am not even saying that newspapers and news are remotely unimportant — they might even be an essential part of the checks and balance of our free democracy!
And, I never said, in my analogy, that the teachers, priests, school marms, and all of the other people folks don’t want to further invite to their BBQs — they just don’t know how to relate politely — they are correct: beer and pork BBQ and smoking and so forth are not good and one would be better served doing community service and keeping up with news and participating in democracy and so forth — but that’s not the issue! The issue is that one must attract with sugar as opposed to vinegar, right, especially when this is the sort of free market wherein more and more people are choosing TMZ over WSJ — and these hallowed institutions with sometime-pious and sometime noble missions and ministries are not fed with Manna from heaven, they’re fed by advertisements and through revenue from subscriptions, then you really have to stop being too pompous and so unappealing that normal folks stop inviting them to their “BBQs” — so share in their Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and especially Sunday mornings, right?
Hey Chris – “I am not even saying that newspapers and news are remotely unimportant — they might even be an essential part of the checks and balance of our free democracy!” – Absolutely. I agree. And, just to be fair, a devil’s advocate would respond, “And they can become tools of propaganda as well!”
You have made your argument a bit more clear, and I’m getting your gist now (I think). I had to dig it from your second paragraph, where you stated that noble missions are fed by advertising money. Alternately, I might add, those missions are curtailed by the same monies. I am leaning more toward not running any advertising on the news site, but I have to talk with an accountant on how I can manage to run a biased community news site without money (biased in that it is read only by online community members who choose to read the site, biased in that I’m an environmentalist, biased in that I’m party independent, but I lean toward Democrats, biased in that I’m a woman, etc. ad nauseum).
Business, money and bias. Bah! They always color the news!
BTW – I know quite a few people who prefer vinegar over honey because they are, by nature, contentious people. I look forward to what you have to say next, so don’t waste your time responding to me. I want you to further define your argument, as you have my attention and curiosity. I think my answer to your question is this: Why would I want to go after an audience when I can make a stand on issues and have that audience come to me through marketing my brand? What I may see as honey, others may see as vinegar. In all cases, it makes for a great tossed salad.
“News” is relative to any person. Publications decide whatever they choose to report on, and decide how slanted or biased they’d like it to be. We read the headline, and decide if we want to continue reading.
I think the only problem is that people still do not understand to take news with a grain of salt, and if there’s an interest to dig deeper, it’s the reader’s choice to do so.
While new may very well be relative to any person, mainstream news considers news to be immutable, absolute, and objective — the antithesis of what you’re saying. They’re selling what fewer and fewer people are buying — or feel compelled to buy. Before the Internet and Social Media and blogs, it was a company story, meaning there was only one show in town to get your community, regional, national, and international news, right? That is no longer the case.
the question to be asked then is what do the people want? Is it tabloid journalism? That’s not what I want to see in print– really! I want clear concise reporting– I want to get the 6 ws in the lead and I want to know what the story behind the story is. I love investigative journalism. Where most people scan a newspaper, I *read* the stories.. even the ones about going to Barbados, fashion, and the coolest new one-handed new thermos.. as well as the ones where the girl got shot at a football game at the HS near me or the girl who was gang-raped while others watched and did nothing (shades of the 1950′s & 60′s again) .
I think the point is to get people involved. Ask them to step up to the plate.
It’s sort of like The Shriver Report that came out and I am re-reading it because I plan on doing a series of posts on it– as well as about the health care situation.
good post, good points.. just have to realize that not only print but tv journalists have to start being journos and n0t commentators.. but that’s an entirely different oprah..