newspapers closing....

[cma...@hotmail.com]

And some big time papers... I'm talking some cornerstones of print
journalism in this country. Miami Herald, Boston Globe, San Francisco
Chronicle, Cleveland Plain Dealer... even the New York Times. And, the
Rocky Mountain News, considered the West's first news paper, shut down
last week. After having been around the newspaper business my whole
life and working part time for them and now full time with them, this
upsets me. I looked at newspapers and, especially newspaper reporters,
as the last bastion of genuine news reporting. Especially writers who
were good enough to work at the papers listed above... and I'm not
talking about the editorial writers... I'm talking about the
reporters. The ones who asked the right questions and worked both
sides of the story and got the right quotes. Not even Time Magazine or
U.S. News comes close, their articles often slanted one way or another
based on a writer's political bent or ax to grind. I am saddened by
this. it makes me uneasy when I think about internet reporting and CNN/
Fox news becoming our sources for real news, the information delivered
so quickly there is little time for fact check and way to much time
for reporters to fill in with innuendo and a surface blushing of the
truth. Just wondered what you guys thought... here's the story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090309/us_time/08599188378500;_ylt=Am5RSZ7cXz1e2ZgHVr12V1ms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJiMzg2NWVpBGFzc2V0A3RpbWUvMjAwOTAzMDkvMDg1OTkxODgzNzg1MDAEcG9zAzE2BHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcnkEc2xrA3RoZTEwbWFqb3JuZQ--


May god help us when Geraldo Rivera is held in the same regard as Carl
Bernstein...

Love,

Mac

[rtcr...@gmail.com]

Chris, I agree with you 100 per cent. On the net speed is valued more than accuracy or insight, and you can already see the result. You could also say that choice has also diminished the integrity of news, since it is now easier for people to hear exactly what they want to hear.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

-----Original Message-----
From: cma...@hotmail.com

Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 14:42:03
To: Holiday's Cafe<hol...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [Holiday's] newspapers closing....

[Louis Jeansonne]

I don't agree with the part about fact checking -- I think accuracy has improved immensely with the instantaneous availability of information and the increased scrutiny that comes with this.  If a news website makes a mistake they can correct it instantly; with a printed paper, they've got to wait 24 hours.   I agree that the quality of reporting in the average newspaper is greater than that of the average website, but there's no inherent reason it has to be that way.  That's an issue of content and talent, not medium.  There's nothing special about shredded trees.

--
Louis Jeansonne
L...@Jeansonne.com
225-572-9791

[Erik Miller]

As someone not terribly familiar with the news industry, I wonder how much of the content comes from the staff of the local newspapers and how much of it comes from agencies like the Associated Press and Reuters.  Will the loss of this number of newspapers make it harder for them to operate as well?  Can they make enough money selling their content to aggregator sites like Google and Yahoo to support in-depth coverage?  Are the stories they provide less in-depth than the reports that city papers put together?

 

I think the ability to find a "news" source that conforms to just about anything you want to believe will have a bigger impact on our society than the conversion from print to web.  People who take the Huffington Post or Rush Limbaugh at face value don't even share the same reality, much less the ability to negotiate a rational compromise when it comes to policy.  When we had the city paper and the network news as the data sources, we could at least argue about things starting from the same premises.  I wonder if the spread of web-based niche sites will drive a further political polarization in our society.

 

Erik

 

 

[Scott Alister McKinley]

Right on cue, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is stopping publication
next week and it appears that the Seattle Times will go under within a
month leaving a major metropolitan area without a legitimate daily
newspaper.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12papers.html?_r=1

I think the problem with most city dailies is that they've become way
too bloated and they try to do everything at once, without realizing
that the whole enterprise was only viable because of the classified
section. News organizations in the future will be lean, mean, and
completely niche oriented. But they will be much more organized than
just being a bunch of unaffiliated blogs being organized in to some
kind of web portal.

For better or for worse, I believe that news organizations like The
Politico (www.politico.com) are the future of in-depth news reporting.
Founded by two former Washington Post White House reporters, it is a
small highly targeted paper that is distributed for free three times a
week in the DC area and has free access to its web page. It's a mix
of serious reporting, real-time blogging and gossip. But there's no
sports. No fashion. No distractions. (And it's a bit conservative for
my taste, but I forgive them because they do provide a valuable
service.)

...

Erik, fyi, I found the above NY Times link via Huffington Post. To be
honest, I'm sick of people equating Huffington Post with Rush
Limbaugh. HuffPo represents the sincere effort to advocate a
"progressive" policy agenda. No question the site is not unbiased, but
the links they present are legit, and vast majority of the political
material is legitimate fact-based commentary. Rush is an
unaccountable ideologue who left reality at least a decade ago.

-Scott

[Erik Miller]

My apologies for slandering the Huffington Post, it's just hard to think of a good counter-example.  Would Michael Moore be more appropriate?  There aren't many people or organizations with Rush's name recognition and following that are so out of touch with reality.  I'm open to suggestions for a better left-wing analog to Rush if such a thing exists.

Erik

[Brandon Downey]

Take something like Raw Story -- imho, lots of bad sourcing. Still not
a good comparison to Limbaugh though, who manages to take
self-contradictory stances over time as talking points change.

- Brandon

[Chris Macaluso]

Sorry I haven't had a chance to respond yet to Lou'sm or anyone else's comments made earlier.

The point is not the "shredded trees." Obviously, it matters not to me whether the information is on paper or on a computer screen, as long as it's accurate. Though, the idea of being able to pick up a paper at a news stand and sit down and read it counts for something for me. And, it seems in a place like South Louisiana or anywhere else that is prone to long power outages, the idea of printing news on something that doesn't require an electrical outlet to read is one that still has some merit.

What bothers me most is the culture of what internet reporting has become, whether it be from sites run by newspapers or sites with political leanings. Rather than being "more accurate" because of their ability to rewrite the story and change it if necessary, it seems the news is less accurate, with some sort of blog-born bastardization of the English language and a sincere lack of editing for both content and accuracy. Reporters tell me there are both positives and negatives to writing this way. It allows a more freedom and there is no concern over space limitations. But, rather than encouraging accuracy, it has encouraged speed. Stories are written on the fly and they are often one-sided because reporters don't have the time to get both sides of the story. Instead of being elaborate and descriptive, the stories are broken into short, bite sized chunks that are often just written sound bites. The redeeming quality of written news used to be that it was able to delve deeper. The story didn't have to be on the satellite in an hour and cut into 15 second sound bites like TV. And the reporters who wrote for those papers and were able to dig deeper took a lot of pride in that. I'm not saying newspapers are perfect. I'm not saying the stories were always 100 percent accurate. I am saying that newspaper writers were allowed to be more accurate and were held to a higher standard. And, to get to the level of writing for the San Francisco Chronicle or the Washington Post or the New York Times, you had to be a damned good reporter and an even better writer. There was an art and a particular skill to the trade. I see it every day. Newspaper reporters have long conversations with subjects. They gather information for days, weeks, sometimes months or years. TV reporters call the day before or the day of. They want little details and pretty pictures. There are exceptions, like 60 Minutes, but they are few. Blogs are there for the taking for anyone with a pulse. The distinction between who has the skills to really report and write the news and a schmuck with an IP address and an opinion has been blurred. It's sort or like the difference between a doctor and a student in pre-med. I'm sure the pre-med student can figure out to take cough medicine when he has a cough but would you let him operate on your colon?

As long as the integrity of the news is intact when what held them intact is no longer considered necessary, my fears will be calmed..

cmac... 

> Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:09:17 -0400
> Subject: [Holiday's] Re: newspapers closing....
> From: scoot...@gmail.com
> To: hol...@googlegroups.com

[Brandon Downey]

Of note to this thread, run don't walk to read:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/

- Brandon

[Louis Jeansonne]

Wow, that was really good.

[Brandon Downey]

From the Big Picture:

http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/recess_03_18/r30_18321551.jpg