Comments on: Death of News Reporting?

By: graywolf

graywolf — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 03:26:43 +0000

I've wondered how long the finance guys would take to seriously question the expenses of news-gathering when it has been increasing obvious that more and more of the "news" is fiction.

Why pay for a foreign bureau (in Iraq, for example) when you can pay a college kid Bush-hater to make up the same BS right here?

I see the WaPO advertising for "reporters" to go to Iraq. What a joke.

By: Tlaloc

Tlaloc — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:15:46 +0000

I think a certain amount of decentralization to the media is sensible both practically and economically speaking. Instead of having the US based NYT have a foreign press office in Japan, for instance, why not have them pick up stories by solid local reporters of Japan?

By: LaurenceB

LaurenceB — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:58:38 +0000

It seems to me that about 80% of the time, what I read on the internet and what I see on cable news is nothing more than a re-hash of original reporting done by one of only a handful of newspapers that still do original reporting (NYT, WSJ, LAT, WaPost).

Heaven help us if those newspapers were to fail.

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:42:00 +0000

There is a great doctoral thesis out there looking at how many stories are re-writes of press releases (the drone scribe), how many were analysis pieces not covered in the blogosphere (note this is not new information, but analysis of already reported information) and how many are the result of really good journalism (the intelligent question).

KC Johnson and Durham in Wonderland has done a much better job of reporting than the MSM on the non-rape scandal.

The economics of all this is real interesting. What is the value to me of someone sitting in a Hagel news conference? The network news and lots of reporters spent good money to cover it. But could a press release from Hagel have achieved the same utility to me and most everyone not named Hagel? Especially when "free" blog commentary can put the press release in perspective. I understand the idea of the value in the abstract, but lets look at the particulars. What business model would allow me to get access to the content I want, compensate the content gatherer and standup to the incredible ease that content can be duplicated. The current model is I pay for a news subscription (heavily subsidized by advertisers who hope I will follow the breadcrumbs of their advertisements) or watch TV/listen to the radio with likewise motivated advertisers footing the bill. In turn, these news gatekeepers hire reporters to gather content. But how long is that model going to hold up?

By: Nick Kasoff - The Thug Report

Nick Kasoff - The Thug Report — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:38:31 +0000

The writer makes a legitimate point ... sort of. Her problem is one of myopia: She seems to sincerely believe that if salaried employees of established media operations don't cover the news, then it won't get covered. In reality, far too often, the salaried employees of established media operations fail to cover important stories, or do so with such bias, that it falls to the New Media to provide coverage. I must disagree with OTB one one thing, though:

Do we really need dozens of reporters sitting around transcribing Tony Snow’s press conferences?

Reporters do far more than transcribe. They ask questions, and they interpret the answers. Would you want the only reporters at Tony Snow's next conference to be from Air America and NPR? Or, would the left want the only reporters there to be from Fox News and the Washington Times? I think a crowded press conference is more likely to keep the questions, and the reporting, comprehensive enough that the "real story" is likely to be told.

By: Bithead

Bithead — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:00:50 +0000

The usually liberal press being resistant to change.... I'm sure there's a moral in there, somewhere.