BuzzMachine

You have it pegged, Jeff. Newspapers (or as I prefer now to call them – paper information distribution systems – PIDS) should have seen this coming many years ago but chose to do nothing about it.

I’m reminded of the losing football coach who complained of a snowy field causing his team’s loss. The problem with that excuse is that it snowed on both ends of the field…

I do not believe it is black-n-white as suggested.

Journalists are guilty only partially.

That journalism did not immediately jump on the wagon of emerging glimmering and stylish web2.0 blogging and aggregating websites, which presented alternative points of view, opinions and news is not sufficient to hold journalists guilty or backwards. Journalists could not have abruptly abandoned their own established ways and follow suit new trends on Internet because of their recently rising popularity. On the other hand, journalists must be accountable for the fact that after having glimpsed the new developments in the domain of information procurement and sharing and realizing how much potential those held, many of them were slow to adapt or kept clinging to their old ways.

But they (editors, writers, publishers) thought the Internet was “like CB radio – a passing trend.” (Editor who actually said that little number is now presiding over a paper chain in bankruptcy proceedings.) They had absolutely NO idea what they were talking about as they had about as much a clue to “the Internets” as did W.

They (editors, writers, publishers) simply never used it. Guess they were too busy to do so. But really… they were never the least bit CURIOUS about it all; merely dismissive in the worst possible way, yet felt compelled to pontificate about it all from on high. Constantly. Forever spinning, in this case, real gold into utter bullshit.

The demise IS their fault, and it is also a crisis of very snotty, ridiculous leadership. I have not the least bit of pity for any of ’em.

> Well, the three legged stool of print journalism — reader, publisher and advertiser — is not available online.

Yes it is (available that is). However, the readers don’t seem to value publishers all that much. Or rather, they don’t value publishers of walled gardens. And the advertisers go where the readers are, regardless of publisher.

BTW – It is interesting that the “stool” doesn’t have editors or authors.

The issue with newspapers is trust in my opinion. Back in the day they reported the news, now it is always being interpreted. Sure advertising volume is down, but if they offered an exceptional product it would still be bought, albeit in a different format.

But when I read the New York Times and have to slog through interpretive journalism being portrayed as objective journalism, it is hard to trust it when it comes to the business or sports section.

Jeff, you have nailed the head that journalism should be going local. But the small outlier papers have fired so much of their staff that all they can do is regurgitate wire copy. They are killing themselves.

I am positive that their are niches in small cities right now for a hyper local daily paper that would be profitable, even if it did not charge a subscription fee.

Jeff, you provocative SOB. As usual, I agree with about 95 percent of your assessment. The other 5 percent isn’t worth quibbling over.
You have, however, provoked me into working on my own analysis, which is too long for a blog comment and is still mostly rattling around in my brain. I’ll send it your way when (if) it spills out onto the floor.

I agree with you that journalists share part of the blame for the failings of journalism, but I also think business staffers share in that blame too. This point is missing from your post.

You can’t blame journalists for broken business models, and you can’t blame business staffers for an out-of-touch editorial product. As out of touch as I think many journalists are with the realities on the ground, I think the same can be said of business staffers. In what ways have they innovated?

How come advertising staffs don’t have a clue on how to sell ads on the Web? How come advertising staffs are still bundling print and Web ads together?

Ultimately, it is publishers and owners who are most to blame for this mess. They are the ones who are supposed to provide both leadership and budgets. If they said 10 years ago, “look we’re transferring 50% of our resources over to the Web,” it would have gotten done.

I would also say that editorial leadership is another failing area. Many top editors understand the Web and the future of journalism less than the lowest editorial staffers. That’s a serious problem.

You don’t get into a mess this big with only part of the puzzle not fitting together. No, it’s all messed up.

The premise that “journalism” is one thing and that “journalism” failed “journalism” might be the source of some of this confusion. The reality is that the establishment — mostly the newspaper crowd — just isn’t good at online.
It’s a different discipline, requires different training and business acumen. And sometimes newspapers get it right, but mostly online companies get it right — the Googles, Yahoos, CNets, etc.
If A-rod went and played free safety for the NY Giants, perhaps we would see a performance not unlike when the print paradigm tries to compete online… with some exceptions, it just doesn’t work.

Overall – I agree with this post Jeff.

One thing that I often come back to, however, is that newspapers aren’t a conscious being. They didn’t “make a decision” to ignore the internet.

But – as institutions they were organized or structured in such a way so that they couldn’t do anything to pivot and transition in response to the internet.

I don’t blame individual reporters or editors. I blame the structure of the institutions in which they worked. It was akin to a military organization: Top-down where people couldn’t make unique decisions and the hierarchy was always followed.

As a result – you are right, it is “our” own fault. But I don’t think the “our” in this case are individual people making bad decisions. It’s a result of an institutional structure, based on 20th century models that simply couldn’t adapt.

Many journalists *did* adopt the web early (I was online in 1990, before there was a web). We wrote for pioneering web publications (anyone remember Feed?). We blog. We get lots of attention sometimes. And WE DON’T GET PAID.

Or if we do, not very much. Which is fine if you are dashing off an opinion piece that doesn’t require any time or reporting. Big blogs make money by NOT PAYING for the content which surrounds their ads. True, some are hiring reporters– but mostly they rely on free labor of opinion journalists, which feeds off of newspaper, magazine and book content (AKA stuff that writers actually get paid to do) for things to discuss.

That’s not sustainable in terms of producing the reported news and complex analysis that is needed– and vanishingly few can do in-depth reporting that way. I am one of the few people who manages to do so– with help from a fellowship and book writing. But if newspapers, magazines and books died, there’d be precious little to blog about.

Blaming journalists for this is like blaming laid off computer programmers for outsourcing.

You can blame editors and managers for not seeing the web coming– but you can’t blame the writers who did so but were blasted by a business model which massively increased work while decreasing pay.

Today’s world is highly specialized– it’s ridiculous to blame people for having on specialty, not another.

So, let me get this straight: You earn your living preparing students for paying jobs (with benefits) that aren’t going to be there when they graduate? That is a great racket.
And it’s journalists’ fault that managers missed the boat on Craigslist and eBay, giving away Classifieds franchise? Or that no one of the great minds that once led us could figure out a way to cull some trickle of revenue for newspaper content on the web from cash-flush, new-media aggregators and providers?
That kind of brilliant, incisive thinking reminds me of the Chandler trust fund morons who were convinced that the LA Times circulation drop was the result of liberal journalism. They never worked for a living, much less in journalism, but they were experts.
Mark Pinsky

How utterly frustrating and predictable it is to see the same old boilerplate dropped into the latest “we suck” drivel about the newspaper industry.

Here’s some cold-hard reality: Newspapers jumped online at the earliest opportunity with varying degrees of ferocity. They were swept along in the Shit River that is the culture of free and are now drowning in that refuse.

We devalued our product and allowed it to become the fodder that drives the Internet, with minimal payback.

Imagine for a moment if we had treated our “content” as though it had equal value to what we put into its gathering. We do not throw it out to the world for free, or for the small percentage of our revenue generated mostly by value added sales. What kind of a business model is that?

Imagine if all newspapers saw the folly of a free online news model and worked on an all-advertising online model. Sorta like Craigslist, I guess.

We gave away the store and we’re paying the price yet the conventional wisdom seems to be that we did not give it away quickly enough.

Remember the late ’90s when we were all swept up in this Internet thing? Fools rushed in with piles of cash, throwing it at the holy grail called content. They mostly withered and went away but we stood fast, giving away our content for a slow death.

Yes, we didn’t move fast enough online. Stick with that 1990s thinking, it’s working great.

I find it remarkable that you have found so many witty ways to criticize the people who actually produce journalism, and so few ways to contribute to solving the basic problem of how they can continue to produce journalism in the absence of a working business model online.

Riddle me this: If the answers to this conundrum as so obvious that those missing the boat are deserving of your withering criticism, why is it that there are so few individuals or organizations successfully producing news, online, for a profit? You, sir, are a media consultant — are the companies for which you consult producing original content and making a profit online?

For that matter, you are an expert in entrepreneurial journalism. You claim to be passionate about this subject. Have you considered launching a new community news site that can investigate corruption, cover politics, watchdog police, monitor the war, and perform the other roles of the journalists you deride as “hacks” — and make money doing it?

Or perhaps the old saying is true: those who can’t do, teach.

Let’s make this abstract discussion about something more tangible. Jeff, you’re largely responsible for the internet strategy being pursued by the Newhouse newspapers. Their flagship paper, the Star-Ledger, is apparently losing $30 million to $40 million a year, according to Editor & Publisher. The rest aren’t in much better shape. Don’t you think it’s about time you gave your readers an honest assessment of why your vision for Advance Internet failed? Or do you think it’s a success, despite the newspapers’ struggles, and why?

I fully expect you to ignore this question because it’s being asked anonymously. Nonetheless…

Beyond a punchline, what does your invoking Pathfinder do, other than validate my point? Print didn’t miss the digital boat. They’re on the boat, and still bailing.

Jeff, honest question: Why are you so unpleasant? Does it serve some purpose I’m not getting?

I don’t use my name because I’m a working journalist and I want to be able to speak my mind without my employer getting involved in the conversation. Excuse the hell out of me. You’re perfectly capable of banning anonymous comments if you don’t like them.

Thanks for the link.

Jeff Jarvis Says:
October 8th, 2008 at 4:52 pm

Forget about newspapers as a product. Think of it in terms o f journalism as a service.

Jeff,

Very well put. As we see by the comments, most haven’t figured it out.

Newspapers – and electronic broadcast news – are not and never were “products.” They are distribution systems that merely deliver words to listeners or readers. The value was the expensive monopoly systems – printing presses, delivery trucks, broadcast transmitters, microwave networks, etc. Few could assemble the necessary capital to compete.

Citizen journalists have now taken over as deliverer of words to readers and listeners. They will now tell, who, what, when, where and why. Whether or not it becomes a paying proposition remains to be seen.

Jeff wrote:

“The fall of journalism is, indeed, journalists’ fault.”

And I agree — if journalism has failed, then all members of the profession must share in the blame — individual accomplishments fade when the entire profession fails.

This, of course, is also true about the technology sector and its contribution to the development of the personal computer and the Internet — while some geeks have made fantastic contributions, the technology sector has failed, miserably, in serving the needs of the broader society.

And journalism’s first and most important failure was its inability to understand this new technology and its effect on society in general and journalism in particular. They bought the big lie, lock, stock and barrel, and cooperated with its dissemination to the general public.

As a programmer, I would suggest that you learn about the personal computer and the Internet BEFORE you start developing new business models for the news.

I followed as many of Jeff’s links as I could stomach and actually found them rather instructive.

Mostly, they are a white flag for the newspaper industry disguised as innovative thinking, something valued so highly these days newspaper companies are willing to take their eyes off the bottom line. No small accomplishment.

For a reality check, however, Jeff and his ilk should do an honest study of profit margins at these dinosaurs, using real dollars.

The print model, as weak as we’ve allowed it to become, still drives the bus. Abandoning that for pie-in-the-sky visions that have proven time and again to be failures makes no sense on any level.

If you look to the future and see your own demise you have no business advising or leading anyone. Yes, most of our failures have been self-inflicted but it’s not because we didn’t listen to people like Jeff. It’s because we did.

We devalued our product with predictable results. We’ve changed the landscape of journalism, endangering our profession and wonder what happened.

On the topic of culpability, Stan Hogan wrote the only thing that really matters here:

Here’s some cold-hard reality: Newspapers jumped online at the earliest opportunity with varying degrees of ferocity. They were swept along in the Shit River that is the culture of free and are now drowning in that refuse.

We devalued our product and allowed it to become the fodder that drives the Internet, with minimal payback.

None of this is any more complicated than that. Any other analysis is just overthinking.

“We were no longer a monopoly and could no longer control news as our product”

To whatever extent newspapers “controlled news” in the first place, what was stopping them from continuing to do so? Imagine every media outlet having resisted the web — especially resisted dumping their content there at a price of $0. It’s not a given that things would have still wound up where they are today.

Tech evangelists and Internet gurus love the frame of “control.” It’s the lens through which so much of their analysis takes shape. But it’s overrated. Not everything is about vague macro concepts such as “control.” But insofar as control is relevant here, newspapers could EASILY have maintained it. They still retain control of news production, by and large; there’s no reason they couldn’t have retained control of distribution. They threw that away by letting their stuff loose on the web, where their prime calling cards — scarcity and authority — could only be eroded.

The fall of journalism comes from the simple fact that you have nothing to offer any more. Journalists are people who can write, but don’t actually do anything. Nowadays, I can read blogs from scientists, hedge fund managers, zookeepers, Navy captains and so forth. They don’t just write, they’re actually experts at what they write about and they do it every day.

You are not experts and you don’t do it every day. Your advantage in prose is outweighted by their advantage in knowledge. That’s pretty brutal and blunt, but there you have it.

Journalists pretty much missed the boat internet-wise, but it’s not just that they discounted, arrogantly dismissed and fundamentally misunderstood the transformative power of the new medium. And while I’m on that, how come so many of us non-journalists and “non-elites” immediately sensed the information revolution happening while these supposedly brilliant people all missed it? No one can answer that one. (My personal opinion is the least talented folks go into journalism and politics.)

But it also goes to the fact that it is impossible to get just the facts from journalists now. They come out of j-school wanting to “change the world” and “make a difference.” Make me gag. They are all opinion-deliverers, all one-sided, and we can get all the opinion we want free online and from people who do it much better, smarter, faster. Journalists have just plain passed their sell-by date by about a decade. They no longer deliver news; they are in the way of it. I, for one, won’t pay for it and am not sorry to see their demise. They squandered something that used to be critical and universal. Now they are just a sad joke, and partisan hacks at best. Die, gatekeepers, die.

With the advent of the web and bloggers, readers found out how they’d been misled all those years.
Many of them ceased paying for untrustworthy product.
Seems reasonable.

I was a Mass Communications student at a state university in Minnesota in the late 80s. The seeds for the current journalism mess were in place then, but hadn’t yet sprouted fully.

Back then, most media claimed political neutrality…but look at some of the news reporting on Reagan. They HATED him, and they let it show. Not as bad as today with W, but it was fairly apparent.

I still remember the day one of my professors (I believe it was even in an ethics course) took up the subject of neutrality. He had this whole wink-and-nudge attitude toward the thing. It was like “remember that you’re neutral, but by the way if you cover politics then you should cut a break on people like Dukakis”. Being of the same political persuasion at that time, I felt like I was in on a delicious secret. Now it turns my stomach.

Journalism today is in the state it is, at least in part, because of that professor and others like him. Their students learned that same lesson pretty well, by the look of things.

The problem isn’t that newspapers and others have become less neutral. It’s that they continue to hang on to their facade of neutrality. I respect an outlet that doesn’t make any bones about it. Mother Jones or The Nation are fine for what they are because they don’t pretend to be giving the right wing a fair shake. You can go there and know the editorial slant up front, so you can apply your own personal BS filter. Newsmax or Front Page ditto the other way.

Me? I ditched journalism as a profession in favor of software development before I finished college. I never regretted it once…especially since I can now blog when the mood strikes and be read by people the world over.

I wrote the above after reading the latest dump load from Dana Milbank — an outstanding representative of the tribe.

…wow, so many comments and no one (except one) can actually see the forest. I’m over 50 and here’s why I no longer buy a newspaper, watch TV news or subscribe to news magazines.

Bias.

And while yes, it’s ENTIRELY the fault of journalists, it’s not because they failed to see the new business model or they abdicated responsibility, etc., etc., etc. It’s because the internet has, for the first time, pulled back the veil of authority you all have been peddling, and we can see that what you’ve been peddling isn’t news, but a very skewed view of the world as you think it should be.

I don’t need to pay for the priviledge of being lectured to. Never have, never will. For example, I’ve known since 60 Minutes first came out decades ago that that it was ambush journalism at its finest. Whether they were morally right or wrong in what they were digging after, they used dishonest means to uncover and lay out a story. And as a consequence, I rarely ever watched that program. But I did persist in reading/ watching/ subscribing to other outlets. Not any more. The internet has changed all that. J-school grads can no longer can pass off opinion as fact or disguise personal belief as an annoymous source. Those days are over and gone.

Hoever, good news! The day you go back to reporting the news is the day I’ll start donating my hard earned dollars to you again. I doubt it’ll come in my lifetime. But at least don’t expect me to pay a dime for your opinions. I can get my fill of opinions on the internet.

Mr. Jarvis,

Along the same lines as noted by “K T Cat” and “dan”; how many journalists with a degree in “Journalism” have any understanding of statistics, accounting, science, engineering, law or medicine? How can they possibly have any credibility to the rest of us?

I do think you are on the right track by developing an entrepreneurial approach.

Good Luck

I find myself wondering; how much of the problem with journalism, and journalists, stems from the same source of the problems with the public education system?

That source being: the proselytizing and grooming for orthodoxy of thought that now passes for a ‘liberal’ education?

Seems to me that the fall of the calling of journalist seems to track, with similar phase delay, the rise of the “professional, degreed journalist” over the mor prozaic and diversely-based “reporter,” just as the failing of the public schools tracks, with a half-career or so’s phase delay, the rise of the “professional, degreed educator” over the more prozaic and diversely-based “teachers.”

“It’s not just bias. Newspapers became less interesting to read–so many papers don’t have very good writers, much less real reporting. There’s just no skill.”

Yes in part, a big part now that’s true but this has still been a remarkable discussion. Why do you think talk radio took off in the early 90s? And of course what is that bias… that manipulative prejudice to be more precise? PC liberal/leftism. Activist journalism with agenda. Largely void of old-fashioned values, like honesty and humility. Under scant guise of objectivity, any means possible to distort facts, evidence and down right reality. Jeff Jarvis’s big acknowledgment misses one of the biggest factors, although, he may find Keith Olbermann in agreement.

jblog, Peg C. and Bruce nail it! I would love to get up in the morning and read a good newspaper with my first cup of coffee, but the rag here in Tulsa is dreck – I haven’t subscribed in years. It’s dreck because it’s hopelessly biased – leftward. Just the other day I read on the ‘net an AP story on the Obama – Ayers connection that basically just regurgitated Obama campaign talking points.

I read someone the other day comment that Watergate was the worst thing that could have happened to the news business – now every “journalist” wants to be the next Bob Woodward. You guys would be doing a lot better if they wanted to be the next Michael Yon or Michael Totten.

It’s a myth that we’re all partisans who only want to read stuff we agree with. I’ll bet jblog, Peg C. and Bruce, along with tens of millions of others, would welcome, and pay for, accurate and objective reporting. This financial crisis is a direct result of the failure of the press / media to do their job. But as said above, there are now other sources for news. You hacks won’t be missed.

Here’s a small example of how journalism is failing its community of readers. In my Southwestern city my wife and I live near to what once was one of the consistently busy full-service corp. chain restaurants in the city. It had been in place for 10 years, and the parking lot overflowed every night onto the neighboring streets and lots.

It suddenly closed down with no notice or a press release. People who knew I lived nearby were asking me about it. I e-mailed the food editor at one of the dailies and asked if they knew anything and got no response. I e-mailed the food editor at a weekly a couple weeks later and got the brushoff – she wouldn’t even make a phone call to corporate – told me to forward an e-mail to the business reporter!

I then had a unprofitable e-mail dialogue with the reporter and finally blind-copied the editor out of frustration with her rudeness, thinking that he’d be interested, and the reporter was just being lazy. The editor chewed me out, telling me that he could care less about chain eateries. I replied that it’s not profitable for a paper to consider someone who tries to inform and suggest stories to be a nuisance.

I forwarded e-mails to my friends, and they couldn’t believe journalists and editors could be so rude and uncaring.

I see so much of this echoed in the film industry. It used to be that movie scripts were written by ‘real’ published writers. Script-writers existed mainly to massage the story into a camera and microphone friendly format.

Now ‘blockbuster’ movies are written by kids who went to college to write movies.

News used to ‘happen’ and it was just the reporter’s job to check the facts and collate that ‘happening’ into a coherent text, information-rich at the top with the fluff on the bottom, ready to be trimmed to fit the page in the paste-up room

Now all the fluff and self-aggrandizing opinion is at the top, and the content is nowhere to be found.

I was center-left until 9-11, now I’m center-right. I stopped reading the L.A. Times because of their simplistic biases but by then I was also getting all the news I could read from the internet for free, be it from blogs or directly. Would I subscribe to a great paper that reports news without editorializing? Maybe, but I’m also addicted to free internet news. I can even read the Sunday ads for Best Buy and such online. A paper would have to have a hell of a lot to offer me.

Newspapers are losing subscribers and thus, advertisers because they can’t be trusted to report the truth. They have become newsmakers and footsoldiers for the DNC. I go to the blogs and FoxNews for my news. Simple as that.

No offense to journalists, but the reason that newspapers are tanking is because of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. I see this all the time in medical “news” reporting.
The reporters generally get things dead-ass wrong; even when they can manage to get some things right, they still can’t understand or communicate the details. I don’t believe anything written on topics I know.
So why should I believe anything written about topics I don’t know? Frankly, if I want economics, I can read 20 blogs written by economists, not some piece of crap written by an innumerate “journalist.” Ditto for legal issues, demographics, and so on.

Several years ago, I read an article stating the importance of really knowing what business you’re in. The author described the “Railroad Men” and how they missed the changes that impacted their industry. The fact was that they were in the transportation businesses and railroads are only a part of that. I hear the same thing from “newspaper men.” You’re not really in the newspaper business, you’re in the information business. Until you realize that, you’re only going to see your profession continue to decline.

The issue of trust can’t be brushed aside. Reporters have squandered the public’s trust with their bias and naked favoritism. “Fake but Accurate” is hardly a way to win and maintain the public’s trust. Upwards of 50% of Americans are Republicans but you’d never know that to read most newspapers, magazines, or watch news programs. You’ve proven unworthy of our trust so we turn away from you. Your circulation and viewership continues to decline but you go ever deeper in the tank for Democrats. Millions of people like me can honestly say that we don’t need you any more.

As a job aid for those journalists who’ll soon be losing their jobs, I recommend “Would you like a muffin with your latte?” You won’t be working at my company.

Egads, the journalists responding to this just can’t see it. News is a service and when we “the paying subscriber” can;t stomach the service we are getting we go else where.

When I wanted to find out what was going on in the middle east — I turned to Totten & Yon. There was no bias, just raw perspective. When opinion was injected it was noted with “I think…” or “It is my opinion…”

When I want hurricane information… I go to the Hurricane blogs that report data to let me make the proper decisisons. I could give a flip about some reporter standing in the surf saying “Gee the wind is picking up now.”

When I want sports news, I go to the blogs to discuss the good the bad and the ugly with people who have an actual interest in the teams I follow.

When I want science news, I hit up the science blogs to give me the news and views… not skewed hopes and dreams of an uneducated twit that doesn’t know the difference between bench science and application.

When I want politic news, I wants facts not opinion (nor opinion disguised as facts.) So you won’t be seeing my dollar. I won’t support your habit. I am not an enabler.

Until journalists start acting as reporters (note the noun here… one who reports [the news]) the consumer will seek elsewhere to get the news. News is hard to come by… it’s the commodity you can peddle…. but for some odd reason you refuse to sell it. Opinions are cheap and everywhere…. so why try to compete in that market. As long as you continue to peddle opinion, don’t be surprised to find the competition incredibly stiff. Or maybe after all that schooling in journalism, you guys really never learned the difference between the two.

The major problem for all of journalism is that they went from local monopolies to minnows in the Pacific. The most successful (relatively) of the newspapers have been those that were always in a competitive environment. The UK has as more successful online papers than the US. They are doing better because they were always in a national market and had to fight harder than imaginable for their share. When competing against every publication in the english world, the UK papers are piranhas let into an aquarium. US papers were goldfish.

The best comparison is local independent TV vs the networks. No one would have dreamed that a local station could beat a national net, but they keep trying when it’s papers. You are not a special snowflake, you are not unique.

The monopolies would have held if every newspaper published in english had refused to go online for free. If you believe coordinating a cartel of thousands is possible, your model will get a nobel in economics and a fields medalfor the math (game theory is an orphan in terms of prizes).

With the tubes everywhere is london/NYC/… There is no local advantage and you can’t live off your bureau or the AP feed. This hits the NYT just as much as anyone (they just do really well written AP feeds). Papers need a hook – unique information that is time dependent or else a stylistic approach that the demo loves. You have to be Bloomberg or Vogue.

WSJ and FT have unique and make $$$, NYT has style, WaPo combines. LAT gets its ass kicked on both.

This all devolves to power laws. Papers are starting to grasp (my locals don’t print stock tables any more), but are inherently resistant. The english media will resemble the UK media in 5 to 10 years. Look at the sites most linked on FARK – a few papers from all over the world, with a focus on the biggest ones in their country.

The final problem is the pretense of ojectivity. Insulting your customers is not a long term success story. Yet so many go for it.

My health prescription – hyper local, state your preferences, find a unique selling proposition, know your subject.

People are succeeding online by a hyper focus on their subject matter. CNBC has much respect because their anchors generally have experience in the industry or have been focused on finance for decades. CNBC has its problems, but they have much more respect than anyone besides WSJ, FT and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Similarly Dealbreaker and Clusterstock are working thanks to focus, knowledge, and an awareness that the world is their competitor. Linking to and breaking against FT WSJ NYT DT TOL NP G&M… also helps.

Dealbreaker (I love them, sorry) ran their asses off iin the past month, updating late on Sunday nights, working through the high holidays, all to break news. They did this with 3 editorial staff, one of whom solely did AM headlines, 2 of which left for a conmpetitor during the crisis.

The new model is lean, eats nails for breakfast and bends crowbars for a light workout, and sees everyone publishing in the same language as a mortal enemy. When the local monopoly accepts this, they’ll be fine. Unfortunately it goes against everything that a local monopoly expects and is why even the premier pubs are at risk.

So end war & peace!

“We devalued our product” is a myth.

“We were no longer a monopoly and could no longer control news as our product” would be more accurate.”

A very lively discussion. Being functionally illiterate I will just make a few points.

Bias in and of itself may not be the issue: historically newspapers were more than just biased, they were creatures of political factions. In the 19th century they depended on advertising from local governments and would pay a real price if they angered the powers that be. While this changed with the penny papers, even through the 1950’s it was expected that there would be bias – indeed people bought their papers in multi-paper markets with this in mind. The one thing that no one would tolerate was boring, and let’s face it, a lot of what is put out is badly written tripe and about as entertaining as reading some of the drearier parts of a deconstructivist’s Phd.

To an outsider such as myself, there seems to be a presumption on the part of the media that they know best and that only news professionals are fit to determine what is news and what it means. The press thinks that only it is pure enough to know what is IMPORTANT & that their biases are not a bias towards a side or sides, but the TRUTH. It is hard to do this when any reasonable person with access to Google can go and evaluate what editorial choices were made, and see other points of view.

What makes this so galling is that many of us now suspect that Journalists are a pretty ignorant bunch. I remember once listening to a report with my then boss/mentor, and remembering how shocked we were when the reporter almost got it right; we assumed the story would be FUBAR. This is a common experience.

And as regards as to who or what level in media organization is to blame, well that is beyond my pay grade but we should all admit that something is wrong and that the problem may not lie with the reading public.

The article and most of the responses omit a large part of Journalism’s problem: Loss of readership, due, not to the Internet, but to the inexorable shift of most reporters to the left of the political spectrum. Note that by doing so they have abandoned approximately 50% of their potential audiences. And all because of their ignorant and slavish adherence to authoritarian principles contrary to those of many Americans. They appear to want to be Europeans, those wonderful people who give us $8.50 a gallon gas,
12% unemployment and numerous other goodies. Well, those of us who once proudly subscribed to Time, The NY Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Long Island Newsday,
\The Bergen Record, Newsweek et al, have fallen off their radar screens as they slipped inexorably to the left. As many have said “They left me. I didn’t leave them.” Now no new chickens are coming home to roost, as readership has fallen (and is still falling) as low as the stock market. So place the blame where ye may but think on this (and sometimes the Bible- you know that book written by those dirty, raggedy jews in a far-off land- is right:)
“AS YE SOW, SO SHALL YE REAP” (fyi: I’m an atheist)

Geez… Journalism would be as valuable as ever if they just published the truth – ie. FACTS. It’s simple folks, when they engage in false or incomplete journalism they will always fail in the long run. Simple yes, but true…

Journalism as we use to know it is dead!

I quit my local paper because I cannot stand the self-righteous phony cynical “ink-stained wretch” persona of the one “star” writer the paper has.

Whoo-hoo! A hack wins an award from a self-aggrandizing award awarder (you know, like Oscars for acting being given out by other actors) and he can tell me what’s right and wrong.

Well, forget him. The guy offends me and then complains I won’t pay the paper to pay his salary.

I’m one of those 52% that don’t trust the media. That would be the media that claims to be objective–an outright lie.

I don’t have to support known liars–or those that cover for them.

I see several problems beyond trust, though that is a big showstopper itself.

The culture has changed dramatically in the last century from when newspapers were in their heyday. People believed everything in the newspapers back then. Nowadays, there is considerable skepticism about the media. My elderly aunts and uncles were often astonished if I disagreed with something in print. My aunt said, “Why would they print it if it wasn’t true?” You’re dealing with a more skeptical audience now.

If you go to an undeveloped country, you’ll see the old credulity about the media that we used to have. That’s why such wild conspiracy stories flourish in that media while they are confined to the tabloids here.

Part of this is a change in values by the journalists. They’re not interested in reporting the facts, but selling their ideas. The empty morality of journalism is illustrated by the Pulitzer Prize that the New York Times displays and refuses to remove that Walter Duranty won by writing propaganda for the Soviet Union on the pages of the Times, including covering up the mass starvation of millions in the Ukraine, the gulag, the executions, et al. The display of that Pulitzer demonstrates that journalists have no honor.

Another problem is that as journalism became a credentialed profession requiring a college degree, its audience became educated, too. All too often as we professionals read the paper and wanders into our domain of knowledge, we realize that the reporter has no idea what he’s talking about. Reporters very often don’t know their beat. It didn’t occur to them that they need to know something besides journalism if they want to write something of value. Reporters are particularly wildly uninformed when it comes to economics, the military, and foreign affairs. Most times they are simply reporting their unexamined and ignorant prejudices.

Most of all, the problem journalists have is they stopped reporting the news and started making the news. It’s particularly true of folks like Geraldo Rivera and Anderson Cooper, who see the news as a backdrop for themselves. I laugh Coopers forays into Hurricane Katrina and abroad because he is always in the foreground of every shot with the news event in the background. It’s the Anderson Cooper show where the news events help display his fine character and superior moral weave.

I was at President Bush’s last inauguration parade in 2005. After he passed, a bunch of thug protestors started throwing snowballs at the cops, chanting against Israel. The cops didn’t even flinch when the snowballs hit them. So the thugs started pulling up the plants from the pots and the hotel and throwing them. No reaction from the cops. Then the protestors started throwing full pop cans. The cops cleared the innocent bystanders back and pepper-sprayed the protestors.

The next day, half the newspapers I read on the net reported the story as if the cops just randomly decided to hose down an innocent crowd. The other half portrayed it as an unprovoked attack on the protestors. It was a vivid demonstration of media bia. I don’t believe anything I read in the paper. You can actually become less informed or disinformed by reading the paper.

Quality is the ultimate problem. The newspapers are delivering stories that are incompetently understood by the writers and tainted with their political bias.

I suspect the decline of newspapers had more to do with content than economics.

In the past newspapers were heavily subsidized by advertising. The Internet has taken away much of that revenue. That revenue source could be replaced by charging more for smaller, relatively ad-free newspapers.

The public won’t pay more, you say? Probably not, but they have begun to pay to watch TV shows that are broadcast for free. They do it for the luxury of watching any time undistracted by irritating ads. That’s one way people are choosing to spend their increased affluence. The same could be true of newspapers.

Why won’t they do the same for newspapers? Perhaps because many of them are disgusted with the content. Look at our Presidential race. The polls are close enough that it makes sense to say that roughly half the country’s adults favor McCain/Palin. What has the press of this country offered them? A media that made more effort to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin in the first two weeks after McCain made her his VP, than they’ve devoted to Obama in the entire 18 months of his campaign.

Was there any legitimate news sense involved in that? Hardly, Palin’s a quite successful, corruption-attacking governor, with an approval rating of 75% among the state’s Democrats. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the press would draw a blank, as indeed they have.

Meanwhile, in the other corner, you’ve got a candidate that almost no one in the country outside Illinois had heard of 18 months ago. You’ve got someone who can’t name any significant things he has done as Chicago alderman, Illinois state legislator, or US Senator. He demonstrable talents are virtually zip. One Obama fan I talked with on the bus could name only one reason in his past to vote for him–he’d gone to Harvard.

If you’ve followed this campaign on the Internet rather than in the traditional media, you’d have to conclude that Obama’s only talent is picking the wrong sort of people for his associates. In lightly populated Alaska, Palin managed to find corrupt officials to root out. In Chicago, where you can almost toss a stick and hit a crooked politician, Obama hasn’t been even upset the lunch of one crook, much less got a crook tossed out of office. Change we can depend on? Hardly.

Face facts. When half the country thinks the Old Media is simply the propaganda arm of the Democratic party, and the other half can get the same tilted news from websites like MoveOn, it’s a wonder anyone subscribes to newspapers. The press simply isn’t doing what the press is supposed to do.

For confirmation, look at the old ‘big three’ TV networks. They display a similar bias and they are seeing similar declines in the numbers watching their newscasts. The problem lies in what the two forms of news media share in common–news content that tilts so heavily in favor of Democrats that tens of millions of Americans have concluded that they’re lying down in bed with the party.

And they’re right.

” The true hard core believers that think journalists are not at fault for anything have circled the wagons as they are being picked apart by an army of better educated news consumers. Jeff has consistently tried to warn these dolts that the game is up and they must adapt or perish.”

Actually, Jarvis is as thin-skinned, bullying and petty as any other journalist or institution when you call him on his own BS in this regard. Jersey’s media – some of whom are Jarvis’ clients – are enablers of some of the most outrageous corruption in the country. Jarvis loves promoting himself as a ‘new media consultant’, but where the rubber actually meets the road, he’s nowhere to be found.

Why is the news media failing? And here you can include newspapers, electronic, etc, two reasons:
The first is an old economics concept, alluded to in many of the comments, added value. News reporters want me to invest a fair amount of my time to read or heard the report, but in the end I receive no value for for my invested time. I learn nothing from the reporting, the stories are so predictable.

The second reason? An incredibly poor education, a journalism degree equips one to flip burger at the local DQ.

I’m not a journalist, only someone who has contributed over the years to many a journalist’s salary by reading papers and news magazines.

I rarely buy a paper now.

First, all the papers have the same stories. Some lazy person pulled something off the wires and reworked the wording. Why is everything doing the same? Is it the same lazy person? I suppose it worked when the papers controlled the news. No longer.

Second, the writing is awful. I picked up a NY Times, the Paper of Record, found a story I was interested in, and put the paper down. There was something interesting there, but the writing hid it. Just awful. My time is worth more than that.

Third, I read to learn things. For me to learn something means the presenter must know something of what they present. It ain’t there. What’s wrong with lengthy interviews with genuine experts? I get them today, but not from the old media.

Fourth, when someone says something, I want to hear it all. If the journalist is doing some parsing or editing, if they have nothing new to add, then it’s wasted space. Partial he said/she said quotes are not getting my money.

Fifth, I stopped reading and listening to anyone who went anywhere near describing Rather’s escapades as ‘alleged’. All that told me was that I knew more than them, and they didn’t deserve my time.

It isn’t trust, or bias. I use products in my work that are second or third rate, put out by someone only interested in the sale, not my satisfaction. They don’t get a second sale. I’ll read a thoughtful lefty or right winger with something well thought out and well presented. I’m not interested in comparisons of views, I’m interested in what smart people think at length. I’ll pay for that. But I won’t get your rag every day to find quality once every week or two.

And anyone moaning about how hard done by they are can follow me around in my work for a day or two. I have to earn my keep.

Derek

I am a lifelong avid reader of the news (I’m 50). Over the past 5 years, I have stopped reading the NYT (which I used to buy at the newsstand religiously every single day for 20 years), stopped watching any major network newscasts or Sunday morning shows and I now find myself striving mightily to avoid linking to AP and WaPo. Why? Because of your incessant boosterism of the Democrats and the left in general, your obvious contempt for those of us on the conservative end of the political spectrum, your treasonous behavior during the war on terror (exposing our ability to conduct intercepts of OBL’s comms at Tora Bora being the most egregious example), the list just keeps going. So, you all have managed to lose up to 50% of your readership because of your behavior.
At this point (and especially if Obama wins-because of your blatant refusal to do any serious investigation of his past) I hope you all lose your jobs. I’m afraid you all have made “journalistic ethics” synonymous with “legal ethics” (ie., an oxymoron).

I honestly tried to read most of these interesting comments. Yes, a politically polar world requires more than ever a trusted, balanced source of information. Our industry hammers from one side way too much, throwing in the occasional “balancing” piece to show just how objective we are. Poklitical cartoonists are the worst with their heavily left cheap shots.

Anyone who has ever worked in a newsroom knows it’s a big-time liberal atmosphere. Keeping those views out of print can work until you hand the hard-core types control, or an editorial/column writing job.

Had we not gone online with our content people online would have seen just how quickly all objectivity can disappear and the Internet would be more of a flaming cesspool than it is now. Hey that old newspaper wouldn’t look so bad. You go with who you know to be telling the truth and ink stainers are still coming the closest.

And yes, inproving the print product for a new audience hasn’t happened fast enough. For journalists who think they have been edgy and fun I would say this: “Gomer Pyle: USMC” ran its mass appeal into the ground decades ago. Now, if you’re lucky(?) you might find it on some retro niche cable channels. Yet, “Beetle Bailey” is still prime time stuff for most newspapers. Yeah, you’re real hip.

Newspaper journalists shouldn’t feel so bad, they were just first. The same thing is now happening to journalists at magazines, television stations and radio stations. The process is called disintermediation, and it is happening for all the reasons listed by others. Having said that, there will always be a need for informed, intelligent, unbiased people telling the rest of us information. If not unbiased, than at least biased but transparent about it.

Now, if we can just get rid of self-righeous hollywood stars…

Exactly, Bob. Journalists believe that they are a fourth branch of government — heroic, dedicated crusaders striving to make the world a better place — and that the rest of us owe them a living because they are such superior beings.

We, on the other hand, think that they should be willing to EARN a living like the rest of us — by offering something of value that people would actually be willing to pay for.

But they’re too busy trying to Change The World and Make A Difference for anything as dull and everyday as working for their paychecks, so we throw their worthless screeds in the trash and walk away.

I wonder if anyone is still reading comments this far down. Oh well.

If anyone is, take a look at this post on a venture capitalist’s blog about the current market situation and then read through the comments.

Compare that to Paul Krugman’s columns in the NYT.

Journalists are screwed. You’ve got nothing to offer any more.

Great thread and comments.

Journaleasts have become reliable flacks and hacks, mostly far left. There are some reporters I respect. Claudia Rosette springs immediately to mind. I can’t think of any of the hair-dos on TV except maybe Stossel. Don’t want cable, so no comment there.

“Working Reporter” is so concerned. Hey, hack. Want a Pulitzer?

Who ghosted Obama’s books? What were his grades like? Who was Frank Davis? Was his mother a Communist? When did Obama meet Ayers? Who is ACORN? Why are they behind massive voter fraud? Where did Obama’s millions in small contributions come from? Who was his connection in high school, college, now? When was the last time he used illegal drugs, in what quantity? Are we getting ready to buy another Marion Barry? How did he get to Pakistan? What did he do there?

These are just a few questions off the top of my head that have either drawn vague, misleading, or null responses from Obama. Surely a crack “Working Reporter” like yourself can pitch any of these stories to an editor and go find and write the story without parroting a Democratic press release. Surely you can. Just say it. Yes, we can. Go for it.

Some random thoughts:

It wasn’t journalists’ fault that afternoon newspapers died when the demographics, traffic patterns and news cycle changed. This is happening to other news sources, too. Yet there are still hundreds of afternoon newspapers, doing what they do because no one else can do it.

The local newspaper outlasted Netscape.

Even local newspapers’ Web sites, some of them, have lasted longer than Netscape existed.

The cost of newsprint has no party affiliation.

This site is experiencing an Instalanche, which ought to be a lesson to journalists who think the world hasn’t changed or shouldn’t change.

Both liberals and conservatives think the media are biased, and both sides are often right about it, at the same time even.

A biased newspaper is one that doesn’t share your biases.

Many have mentioned media bias as a contributing factor, either directly (driving readers away) or indirectly (sapping quality, thereby driving readers away). I think that the problem is less bias per se, than bias accompanied by propaganda claiming objectivity or neutrality. This has the effect of undermining consumer trust; “falso in uno, falso in omnes” (which is probably screwed-up Latin. But unlike a j-biz inmate, I’ll cop to my screwup).

That’s only one part of the problem, though; as others have noted, disintermediation has obsoleted most of the daily paper.

I suspect that papers can thrive by providing compelling writing and reporting, focused locally. It’s only a suspicion as they’re not trying it. Instead, they all seem to have ambitions to be national opinon publications. People can get more, better, and more timely opinion online. Also, people want to read opinions that they agree with; for one political tendency that amounts to about half of our nation, there’s as little comfort to be found in papers as the other political tendency finds in talk radio. So… in a challenging time when they need every eyeball they can get, the newspaper managers (editors and publishers, who control editorial slant) begin with an a priori determination to halve their potential market.

Regular rocket surgeons, huh?

Is there any evidence for this theory of mine? Perhaps. Look how badly papers that do a poor job of local reporting do. Two of the worst by that measure are the New York Times (tell me again why a paper that big has a sports section that bad? Do they not realize that some people buy their paper for the sports? Exercise for the editor: fire your favorite reporter and your least-liked sportswriter… count the complaint letters) and the LA Times (which as a matter of policy doesn’t even cover murders in LA, unless they’re white people and/or there’s a celebrity angle).

Blame and responsibility are not the same thing. Blame is the lower end of the scale. It’s finger pointing and fault finding. And it fits right in with that “victim of circumstance’ BS – someone else is to blame and I am the victim here.

Responsibility implies the willingness to act and be causative. And more power to Jeff for being causative and looking for solutions.

Jeff, I am very interested in the conference you have planned. Please let me know when you have more data.

Vietnam and Watergate were the death of journalism as an honorable profession. In the case of Vietnam, the news media were able to turn victory into defeat through the use of propaganda techniques. The U.S. military had not lost a single battle in the field, but the distorted view of the war presented by the media convinced the American people that it was a hopeless quagmire, and their political support for it evaporated.

In the case of Watergate, the news media were able to drive a President from office by revealing his misdeeds and his attempts to hide them. The reporters who did this became celebrities as a result (and deservedly so).

But beginning in the early ’70s, a new generation of journalists took the wrong lesson from these events. They concluded that toppling Presidents and changing the outcome of wars was their job. Journalism was no longer about seeking out the truth and reporting it accurately; it was about Making a Difference and Changing the World. Journalists became activists and advocates. Their mission was now to manipulate the public into doing what they (the journalists) wanted, through the use of propaganda techniques that would make Goebbels and Stalin proud.

Today, we witness the spectacle of journalists openly working to sabotage the U.S. military by obtaining and publishing classified information. We see them overtly campaigning for the Democratic Party. We see them targeting Republicans with vicious, dishonest smear campaigns, while ignoring and even actively covering up the misdeeds of Democrats.

Today, the word “journalism” means propaganda, subversion, sedition, and outright treason.

Are journalists to blame for the downfall of their profession? Of course they are. They abandoned their original mission (to report the truth, accurately and unflinchingly) and betrayed our trust four decades ago. Now they stand revealed as partisan liars and radical wannabe revolutionaries. And they act surprised when they discover that no one trusts or believes them anymore.

What did they expect?

Lots of good comment already but I need to add this:

The fact that the stars grow dimmer at dawn does not cause the sun to rise.

In other words, connection is not causality. Much of what you criticize about newsroom adaptation is correct, Jeff. But you are flat wrong to say that is the cause of today’s troubles.

Keith Richards famously said, “I do not have a drug problem. I have a police problem.”

Well, we do not have an audience problem. We have a revenue problem.

McClatchy continues — yes, even today — to grow total audience (print readership plus unduplicated uniques) and our digital audiences are all growing at double-digit rates.

Could we (should we, must we) do better as journalists? Absolutely

Is all this the journalists’ fault? Bullshit.

A few questions for Peg, drawn from the construct presented by Kovach/Rosenstiel:

Does a free society need information to remain free? If so, what tool besides journalism is to be used to provide that information?

To what degree, if any, must that information be independent of its source in order to be considered reliable?

If not to journalists, to whom should the job of verifying that information fall?

As an aside, I am happy to report that our journalists, today, changed the world of some preschoolers and their parents who had their summerlong gardening project — a crop of pumpkins — stolen by thieves. As a result of our journalism, the community responded. As far as I know, no one gagged.

The media, print or otherwise are nothing more than bulletin boards for the government. The department of this and that sez bla bla blah.

I cancelled Time magazine years ago because it began to run fluff pieces as cover stories that were about ninnies like Madonna. I cancelled my local paper a few years later when I realized that every time I read something about which I was an expert, facts were substantially wrong that affected the tone and truth of the story.

That’s pretty much my story too. I stopped watching network news in the 80’s and let my Time subscription lapse in 1994. No matter what the medium, crap is the message.

Walter Abbot said on october 8th. “Newspapers (or as I prefer now to call them – paper information distribution systems – PIDS)”. Newspapers are not PIDS the correct acronym is – PISS – paper information segregation system. Conservative good news is segregated and flushed down the memory hall along with bad news about Liberals. I stopped taking the local paper when it ran a headline that said “Tax cuts would rob the government….” Whose money is it anyway?

The fault is the proprietors. They allowed editors and reporters to treat assets as if they were a blog site. Fantastically political writing became standard. The Washington Post is a classic example. Radical staff and editors thoroughly alienated the much more conservative, “traditional values” suburbs — where the bulk of the population and economic action is to be found. At present, the Post staff is alienating between 40 and 100 readers A DAY, nonstop — because no one in management has told these people to stop.

It is quite possible to leave one’s audience guessing how one voted in the last election. Look at the Wall Street Journal. But those papers where management refuses to exercise control — the Washington Post, LA Times, and Boston Globe, for instance. Are doomed.

Andy,

re independence: when residents of a town must rely upon the mayor as the source of information about city government, the information he/she provides is not independent. The mayor has an interest in the information. Hence, its reliability (as to whether the mayor’s information is true) can be regarded as suspect. If you’re the CEO of Acme Widgets, do you rely upon the quarterly newsletter published by ABC Widgets to get intelligence about your competitor? Or do you get it from independent sources such as WidgetBlog, the Wall Street Journal, etc.?

Journalists don’t exist to “detect” independence. Journalists are, or should be, independent of the sources they cover.

But if society decides it does not need, in order to function, information independent of self interest, then that is one less reason for society to need journalists. But society then will need to figure out how to get reliably true information about, say, the mayor and city government.

re verification: Indeed journalists do verify information. It is the ingredient that separates journalism from all other forms of communication. Fiction doesn’t verify. Polemic doesn’t care about veracity veracity in the first place, nor does propaganda. Documentarians and bloggers may or may not verify. Only journalists exist to report what can be reported as true. “The essence of journalism,” Kovach/Rosentsiel put it, “is the discipline of verification.” Verification is, or ought to be, more than the mere contraposition of viewpoints by opposing sources. Verification is being an eyewitness when possible; finding eyewitnesses when not. It’s examining original documents, or assembling raw data. Etc.

In one of its most dramatic forms, for example, verification gets wrongly convicted people off death row.

As someone who was a full-time writer and photographer for newspapers for 15 years, I really didn’t have much time to slant news. I was too busy PRODUCING a lot of artcles and photos for not a heck of a lot of money.

Today I plan to open my own photography business and do freelance work for publications. I am glad I did both photos and articles for all those years.

When blogs came out, I was too afraid to put journal-ish type writing on it because 1) I didn’t have much time to do this and 2) it was nobody’s business. Today, I have a Web site, photo blog and http://www.flickr.com pages. I enjoy working on all of them.

There are blogs of all sorts and some of them are wonderful. Unfortunately, some people equate somebody’s sheer opinion with fact. It was never my job to inject my own views in stories. The times I had a conflict, though, was when I wrote columns. Some of my editors won’t write columns to keep their own views to themselves. I think the only column I wrote at my last newspaper job was one about my departure from that position.

The best bloggers are those who truly know how to write and produce amazing (yes, amazing) photos. I have an ex-coworker who has a super blog and continues to write for a newspaper full-time. He has a bachelor’s degree from a, oh heaven forbid, J-school. He knows what he’s doing and I respect that.

I don’t regret all that hard work despite the non-stellar income. I know full well I did my best, as did many of my coworkers.

When I look at some of the articles I wrote and the photos I shot in the past, I can feel all the dedication, passion and truly caring attitude I had in the communities where I was employed. I can’t express the happiness I had working my last job in Hutto, Texas.

I sat through countless county commissioners’ meetings, city council meetings, school board meetings and all other types of events that directly impact citizens. If people stop caring about local news or what’s going on in their communities, that’s sad and scary. I really don’t know that many straight bloggers who come to meetings to write about what actually happened at them, although some do. It was your hometown newspaper writer who was, and still is in most cases, showing up for life.

I go to newspapers for a news overview/summary and a bit of opinion and blogs for detail on niche topics I’m interested in learning more about. You can only read so much each day. For that reason if I can buy my favourite paper in print form I will do so rather than read it for free online. If not, I’ll buy the local paper of wherever I happen to be and read my favourite one online.

I happen to think newspapers have embraced the Internet, but then I’m from the UK and the competitive news market there means it’s home to the best and most advanced online offerings. (The best by far being The Guardian, IMO.) As for journalists, I think journalists are just having a hard time adjusting to the fact that the Internet makes it plainly obvious that, for every professional writer, there are hundreds of amateurs who can write just as well, and who, with a bit of training, could be perfectly good full-time journalists. I think many are insecure. However I don’t begrudge them their living as they still care enough about journalism to do it full-time, unlike all the part-time amateurs and wannabees. So handing over a very small amount of money each day for a newspaper isn’t a big deal.

Evil,

If journalism (and by extension, journalists) in fact behaves the way you describe, then yes, journalism has ceased to be a useful tool for people to obtain the information they need.

Journalists are *supposed* to be independent. It is essential to maintaining trust in the information the public hires journalists to provide.

Journalists are *supposed* to verify information — to sort out the true from the false. If they fail at this, journalism cannot perform its function.

And if the public has decided journalism has stopped functioning (for the reasons you allege or others), the public must decide what other tool it will use to obtain the information it needs, and who they will will trust to provide it. That is the impetus for my original question: if the public has decided journalism as we have known it has failed, what new thing will perform its function?

Andy,

Again, it is not *sources* (such as your cat) that must be independent for journalism to function properly; it is *journalists* who must be independent of their sources for journalism to function properly. I’m pretty sure that’s what I said when I said journalism doesn’t exist to *detect* independence (in your cat or any other creature), but to *be* independent itself.

Example: education spending in California. Which information would the public find most useful when trying to make a decision:
A) A statement from the California superintendent of education
B) Verified facts from an independent actor. In other words, a journalist

And if not B, what?

I’m sure the operators of carriages were delivering excellent service when the invention of the car started to eat away at their business. Change can sneak up on an industry and now newspapers are trying to survive in a society that is hungry and impatient for news.

Here’s a good example of a company that adapted to change: UPS. It started out as a company that made deliveries on bicycles. Less than 100 years later, it’s global.

” it is *journalists* who must be independent of their sources for journalism to function properly.”

Well-said. I know many journalists who have remained true to their craft and who are relatively blameless for journalism’s demise. Others, not so much.

Good…Carry on Jeff. I think a debate on this generally neglected subject is very useful. Media does play a crucial role in helping democracy retain its vibrancy and health.

Media is a powerful tool to educate/prepare the public to wage the real war against terrorism at the grassroots level.

I believe that the demise of real print journalism began in the newsrooms where the authority of the NEWS EDITOR, and sub editors, was taken away. The unsupervised reporters began to call the shots and we can see the results.

The reason for the demise of NEWS EDITOR are many. But it helped the newspaper owners/management to smuggle in what is described as advertorials. The free mixing of opinions/manipulations in hard news led to the fall of credibility of the newspapers.

NEWS EDITOR used to be the “Sergeant Major” directly in touch with the ground realities and leading the charge. He had to manage the juniors under him and resist the machinations of the Editor and the newspaper owners/management.

Neutralizing of the NEWS EDITOR has led to major aberrations in the newspaper industry.

Now readers find it difficult to differentiate between opinions, news or advertisements. Earlier the newspapers ensured that a particular section of the newspaper would carry objective news, the other section would carry opinions and the place for advertisements was fixed too.

However, I do not share the doom and gloom prophecy for newspapers. They have survived for over 200 years…and would do so even now, although in a quite a different incarnation.

My post on the subject appears here… http://themoderatevoice.com/media/newspapers/24557/journalism-a-last-roll-of-the-dice/

Mr. Jarvis:

I’m afraid I don’t accept your central thesis, i.e. that journalists themselves are the (or a) primary cause of the demise of print reportage. Transformations in information delivery have been so swift, so prevalent and so multi-dimensional that the objective, double-sourced, narrowly focused product of the journalist has had to compete with the opinion-laced, secondarily-sourced, provocatively worded opinion pieces that many people confuse with shoeleather journalism. Ironically, the very thing that is capsizing traditional journalism – the rise of blogging – gets the grist for its mill from the very journalists that provide it with source content.
But let’s sift that grist for a bit. I think we need to draw some distinctions. I don’t know anyone who believes that the NYT is going to go away anytime soon. That’s because it’s a “national” paper, that only ancillarily has Gotham as its local beat. It has money and the resources to maintain foreign bureaus, and it can compete toe to toe with the wire services.
No, the real problem is more with local print-based journalism. It’s suffering because people now really can get most of the info they need locally online, for the first time ever. As recently as five years ago, this wasn’t the case. If you wanted to know what nightclub or opera was hot in, say, Syracuse, NY or Altoona, PA, you had to pick up either the local paper or the alternative weekly, if it existed. Now, however, nearly any sort of info about nearly any kind of entertainment can be found online. That’s because the venues now advertise themselves online, without the medium of the newspaper. Or they piggyback on one of those “Altoona at Nite” local happenings websites. Cheaper, and they get to control the content more. You just google the name of the club, opera or gardening event, and you get a website.
So how come online papers haven’t worked? This is a surprisingly complex problem, and has to do with behavior differences in the public and the history of the internet, among other things.
The net began with the idea that things would be freely shared, and that seems to have cultivated in the consumer a reluctance to pay for anything if he doesn’t absolutely have to. Both the NYT and the Wall Street Journal have flirted with subscriptions, with very, very limited success. Right now, all NYT content is free, and much of WSJ content is.
Another issue is that we may believe (at our core, biologically -whatever) that we should always pay for something that physically exists, like a paper. But something that’s just pixels on a screen? Nah. Remember, it took cable a long time to convince people to pay for content that they could get with their rabbit ears for free. And the internet gets better reception than rabbit ears OR cable.
Throw in the incredible ease and anonymity with which people can share the rantings and non sequiturs they call opinions (newspapers almost always require name and address for letters to the editor, so as to avoid such irresponsible opinion-mongering) and you have a recipe for a great, inky black and white newshole, disappearing before our very eyes.
Lurking amid all of the above is that snarky little disciplinarian, objectivity. Journalism is supposed to be about the facts, but the net and its denizens care little for this value, and this disadvantages journalists. Mr. Jarvis, you appear to be saying that journalists failed to “sex up” their coverage, to link to everything, give a bit of opinion in the soupcon, follow a story beyond its newsworthiness, etc. Maybe you’re right. But at some point, the journalism you would be talking about wouldn’t be journalism.
I haven’t even talked about how Hollywood, for some reason, nearly always lampoons journalists in its fictional pieces. They are portrayed as self-absorbed sleazemeisters after the next juicy tidbit. Absent always from such musings is the role of the public in desiring this fare.
Nope, newspapers were doomed no matter what journalists did. The world has begun to demand divertment and leisure with its accounting of facts. Some of us, who teach our students to revere the gathering of facts, are having trouble prostrating before the new gods, Gossip and Rumour.

J. Patrick McGrail
Dept. of Communication
Jacksonville State University
Jacksonville, AL 36265