Will Bunch, columnist, visionary, and rabblerouser in Philadelphia, has written a book, The News Fix, with his vision for the future of newspapers — or rather, to assure that there is a future.
The book is my heartfelt, yet occasionally snarky, plea for a new way to cover the news in the 21st Century, for saving news organizations — “norgs,” I suggest calling them — like the Daily News by reinventing them, with newfangled digital tools and an old-fashioned bond with readers, especially citizen journalists. There’s a lot in there about what’s wrong with today’s media — the cult of objectivty that makes newspapers both boring AND easy to manipulate, and reporters bonding with the powerful folks we cover instead of the communities where we live.
But the main message is hope for the future, in the new kind of investigative reporting that’s now being pioneered on blogs like Talking Points Memo, in harnessing the power of the Web, and in the possibility for new alliances between digital rabble rousers and ink-stained wretches (like me).
