Newspapers are in a free fall, and here's another forum on whether blogging can save journalism, passed on by a newspaper editor (Peter Voskamp). I hate these conversations. Journalism is going to the internet, like it or not. There's only one real issue: Are people getting their information?
Do you read a newspaper? Me, less and less/I confess. I have so many hours in the day for information-reception. Now it's the computer. Just the way of the world. Don't attach moral value to pulped trees and foreign bureaus, that was old world. (And yes, elitist.)
Do we lose something? You bet your ass. It's always a tradeoff. I had a friend who used to write articles about how he wanted 60 minutes of nightly news, not 30. He's a journalism Critic. Then the cable explosion happened, and he didn't like what he got. Not sober and pious enough. But he'd gotten his wish, many times over. Not 60 minutes, but 600 minutes of television news. Just not the New York Times-y journalism he wanted.
The blogosphere poses the same issue. This is the way a lot of people are going to get their information, in little jolts. Not sitting down and drinking their coffee and having a semi-leisurely conversation with a newsprint authority. They're going to get a lot more information, but of a different character. Less filtered, more sources. They're going to learn to trust those sources or not, in the same way folks used to say, Do you believe what you read in the newspaper? Is it good for the Congolese people? Is it good for the Palestinians? I say, yes.
I read only online. But I read the New York Times, Washington Post, Haaretz, American Prospect, Washington Monthly, Christian Science Monitor, The Nation.
I don't have a TV, and haven't for 23 years.
The only television I watch is the Sunday morning newshoes and via the web, I choose what I watch.
I read books.
I do read two local newspapers in paper form.
I want to stay informed, not brainwashed.
The blogosphere is the rumorsphere. The important journalist standards of fact checking, repugnance at excessive bias, are lost on much of the blogosphere. If anything, stations like fox, resemble the rumorsphere (homo habilis to the blogosphere homo neandertholis), more than they resemble journalism.
Phil has to DECIDE, where he wants to go, pandering partison propagandist, or thoughtful gatherer of multiple and conflicting insights.
Problem is that even the NYT is far from the objective source of facts and figures it claims to be. Listen to this journalist describe how Western journalists ("stringers"?) were instructed to find evidence of Russian atrocities during the So. Ossetian war: Ames.
What news and how the news is presented are highly political decisions. So, it seems to me.
Very well said.
Tia smith
"Problem is that even the NYT is far from the objective source of facts and figures it claims to be."
Thats why a single source, or perspective, is inadequate to get to knowledge.
Agreed, but there is essentially no variation between the Wash. Post, NYT, LaTimes, or Pittsburgh Press.
Note carefully where Witty gets his "objective" news.
Trend of friction of the newspaper blog, this blog is more than communication with the newspaper. difficulties in the newspaper readers to comment, while the blog readers and writers can communication with each other to provide responses to any posts. blog so that more dynamic compared to the newspaper
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paramesvara
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