How important is the advertised, ballyhooed, imminent death of newspapers?Think "very."Think in 36 pt. type.Think in red.The economic viability of delivering news content via the print media has become one of the high agenda topics in media circles, at this juncture in our nation's political, economic and technological history. Rapid change is underway but the changes in evidence are mostly for the worse: We are losing our newspapers at an alarming rate, hundreds in the last few years, a trend which bodes nothing but ill for our democracy. Too many people don't seem to know, notice, or care. "After all," they say, if they do notice, "we'll always have the Internet."
Not so fast!
We are quickly becoming a nation that is opinion-rich, yet factually and informationally impoverished. The Internet, in tandem with wireless/mobile delivery technology, is a major force in this regrettable transformation of news accessability. There are entrenched institutional political mind sets in government regarding secrecy vs. transparency. Obama's election and election promises notwithstanding, the ship of state turns very slowly. And less news probing means more mischief unrecognized and unattended.
Recent studies reveal that there is an increasing tendency for people to get their news from the Internet rather than from newspapers or from broadcast or cable TV. But the growth of news source options, which were thought to be expanding precisely because of the Internet, are, in fact, closing. Because of, among other things, the Internet.
One reason for diminishing news options is that, while people may get more news from the Internet, it usually is more of the same news since relatively few news sites generate original news or news from diverse perspectives. People, rarely recognize that they are in an informational rut.
It isn't the Internet's fault; it is the Internet's effect; it is its cornucopian capacity to deliver so much to so many so quickly; much, like the shmoos,
Al Capp's lovable over-providers to L'il Abner and the citizens of Dogpatch, USA, As with the Shmoos, sometimes unanticipated, unfortunate trends emerge when good intentions and capabilities go awry.
One such trend, one unanticipated consequence of the Internet becoming the 21st century's 800 pound gorilla, is the accelerated decimation of newspapers and news magazines They are having great difficulty competing with the 24/7 updating of news available via the Internet and its sundry, world-wide news sites and sources .
Print news is also finding advertisers migrating to the Internet and away from their bottom lines. TV is experiencing this too. Given the dismal state of most local and network TV news, such an event might not be so unwelcome were it not for the fact that most Internet news sources, like, say, Google or Yahoo, are not news generators, they are news aggregators. That is, they gather news from online wire services and online and offline newspapers and magazines.
The dirty little problem is that many of these online sources are financially drowning in red ink and uncertain or outmoded business models. Their products are convenient for us and economically murderous for them. Consequently, print news sources are downsizing in all aspects of their enterprises or replacing higher paid journalists with inexperienced lower-paid or free-lance journalists. Other newspapers and news syndicates are closing foreign news bureaus, merging, or filing for bankruptcy. Chicago, for example, may be newspaper-less in the not too distant future. CHICAGO FOR GOD'S SAKE!
Even the "newspaper of record," that "Gray Lady," the New York Times, is rumored to be looking for a buyer. And Rupert Murdoch, the news media's Sultan of Swill, is whispered to be oiling his way across the dance floor to snuggle with "the gray lady. After bedding and wedding the Wall Street Journa and the New York Postl, Murdoch wants to add the New York Times to his harem of desperate tabloids and broadsheets who have fallen on hard times.
On top of that, American wire services are down to one (AP). While nature may abhor a vacuum, ideologues adore it. For the Murdochs of the world, vacuum is opportunity. The question becomes, then: Who will gather the news to feed these online sites of newspapers and news aggregators like The Huffington Post, AltNews, or Newsmax?
That bears repetition: Who will gather the news to feed these online sites of newspapers and news aggregators like The Huffington Post, AltNews, or Newsmax?
Worse yet, news gatherers (journalists, reporters, investigative teams), employed by struggling newspapers like the L.A. Times, and news syndicates like the Tribune Media Services, are often replaced with cheaper alternatives, such as inexperienced part-timers who cost less and don't require costly medical benefits or other perks of full-time employment.
Then there's always the cost-saving, quality news-diluting technique of picking up the low hanging "news sources" "like "entertainment news," or by blatantly pandering to extremist readers via subscribing to red meat-throwing, ideological opinioin sites with ranters and screamers, like Ann Coulter. Meanwhile, more reasoned conservative columnists like Kathleen Parker go unnoticed, much as we see on cable news stations.
These panderers filter, twist and curl the news to corroborate or validate scientific, social or political biases. They arouse, inform, anger, or adrenalize the core constituencies and keep them from straying off the reservation into more rational, informed, thought plains. In effect, quick, easy and emotionally sexy but often factually limp opinions, cross-dressing as "news," are replacing serious, objective-or objective-aspiring reportage in all news media, on- and off-line. News media moguls and syndicates, with eyes on revenue vs. cost streams, are readily defaulting to easily and cheaply acquired, intellectually empty news as they bring up the increasingly flabby rear of the fading Fourth Estate we call journalism.
But wait. There's more... next time.
