A huge chunk of blame is placed on the internetI'm sorry ... "blame"?
Because I am a bastard, I say let 'em die. When I was a kid, being an environmentalist meant putting your newspaper in the recycling bin instead of the trash. We're way beyond that now. Getting your news from dead trees is downright carbon-hostile. A huge amount of energy is used to make the pulp and ink, run the printer, and drive the papers to your door. Even after you consider that the process starts with KILLING TREES which SEQUESTER CARBON. There should be a clause in the Kyoto treaty placing a "bullheadedness tax" on every newspaper, by weight.
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When we moved to Cleveland we had a hard time finding things to do, so I subscribed to the weekend Plain Dealer, basically to get the Friday entertainment insert. (Somehow, in newspaper math, the weekend is not two days but four - Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday. Go figure.) That was useful for a while, but eventually I found the right sites on the Internet. When I called to cancel my subscription, I anticipated being asked why. I wasn't really looking forward to telling the nice lady her product was irrelevant, so on the spot I lied and said I was moving out of town.
"Oh? Where to?"And once again, Cleveland's inferiority complex rears its ugly head. Every time somebody trash-talks this town, however obliquely, it makes me angry, because I chose to live here. I don't want my decision ridiculed by the people that should be congratulating and thanking me.
"Chicago. We have friends there."
"Oh, good for yooouuuuuu!"
Cleveland's not the only town that's down in the dumps. Berlin has an inferiority complex too. Berlin Bites is written (in English) by rock historian Ed Ward, who has just moved out of Berlin after living there for 15 years. I've been sharing an online community with Ed for a few years and he's a terrific writer.
The idea that newspapers should die because they are environmentally harmful is misguided. There are costs and benefits to everything in life; killing newspapers means we might cut down fewer trees, but the opportunity cost is news coverage that we no longer get. The idea that "bad" newspapers should also be left for dead is also troubling because at least they're giving us something. Once they go, there aren't guarantees that anyone will pick up that slack.
ReplyDeleteProducing the news isn't free. If the internet can provide news organizations with enough revenue to hire journalists and newsroom staffs to break news and do investigative reporting, then the news business will simply shift from the print model to the virtual model. Unfortunately, news organizations just haven't been able to raise the necessary revenue through online operations.
Citizen journalists and bloggers contribute greatly to society, but most bloggers behave as editorialists, commenting on stories from someplace else. At this point, bloggers aren't "trusted" to break news stories. Bloggers from organizations like Politico are probably just as reliable as their print counterparts, but were commonly viewed as "just bloggers" during the election season. Politico is one of the organizations blurring the line between bloggers and print journalists, but it isn't close to being there.
Talking Points Memo is another example of good original reporting that's totally online originated with no print component. I don't expect them, or Slate or Salon to take the place of the Post. I'd love to see the NYT thrive without the 2 kilogram heap of pulp they spit out for every subscriber every Sunday.
ReplyDeleteOh, and inferiority complexes? One word: Detroit. Mayor in prison, major industry on its knees with every armchair economist yelling for its blood. Shitty weather. Sigh...
Sorry I took some time to respond. My post was a kneejerk reaction to one aspect of the situation, and Rob's analysis is a lot broader. You're right, of course, Rob, that it wouldn't be an unalloyed good to eliminate the dailies.
ReplyDeleteLet's posit that the value newspapers bring is in collecting facts about events in the timeframe from 12 hours ago to 1 week ago. Analysis (editorializing) is not really their forte. What they do have is a network of local correspondents in a lot of places that know their locales very well.
If the print dailies went away, you might see that slack picked up by broadcast journalism, or by for-profit organizations on the Internet.
At this point I'm going to invoke my supply-and-demand theory. If an industry is on its deathbed (automakers, newspapers) something will take its place. The supply (manufacturing capacity, local correspondents) doesn't go away. The demand (need for new cars, habitual consumption of facts) doesn't go away either. It's highly likely that some entrepreneur (Toyota, NBC) will find a way to connect the means of production with the existing market.
Beyond the kneejerk carbon-hostility angle, I do think we can let the newspapers die.
Cleveland must be cool if that's where Joanie Caucus wanted to go to start a new life...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.doonesbury.com/strip/finding-joanie.html