Some observers have reacted with dismay to parts of yesterday's subcommittee meeting of the Senate Commerce Committee, in which Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) expressed concern that online media may not maintain the same high standards of journalism that he believes print media has.
Players in the online media world have hammered newspapers and magazines for years, saying that they are too large and dinosaur-like. Yesterday's meeting brought out a new wave of criticism.
Gabe Rivera, the founder of Techmeme and several other niche news aggregators, hinted that the current rounds of layoffs that many newspapers are going through are necessary.
"Kerry's premise is false. They weren't competitive. There was redundancy. Trimming the fat yields a competitive organization," he wrote on Twitter.
In his testimony, Sen. Kerry also said steps need to be taken to make sure news media stays diverse and independent.
Implying that the Internet already lets consumers access diverse sources of news, Mike Steib, director of TV Ads at Google tweeted, "There are 90 feeds in my Google Reader."
The hearing was prompted by the crisis facing traditional media outlets, especially newspapers and magazines, as advertisers and readers have migrated to the Web. Close to 9,000 layoffs and buyouts have occurred in 2009 alone at U.S. newspapers, according to Paper Cuts, a blog about the news industry.
But some see opportunities in the disruption of the news industry.
Journalist David Cohn, founder of community journalism website Spot.Us, believes that this is an exciting time for news media.
"I think what journalism needs is 10,000 different start-ups," he told CNN.
Image: John Kerry speaking at an event in 2008 (cliff1066/Flickr)
Comments
I tend to agree with Senator Kerry over the quality of news in newspapers as opposed to that online. I may receive online news quicker, but many times this news is not accurate. I also find that online news tends to be slanted etremely one way or the other and is peppered with unnecessary language and can also poorly written more times than not.
Margaret, I submit you're reading the wrong online news sources. And please don't get people started about (lack of) accuracy in newspaper reporting. Just because something appears in a newspaper does not give it any special accuracy over an online source, and certainly does not make it unbiased. Seems Kerry is simply trying to offer up here a last-gasp defense for his dying hometown paper.
Actually, what Kerry is referring to is "journalism". Look I love reading blogs, commenting on them, etc. But blogs largely are about punditry, commentary, and linking to content created by reporters. There are a few exceptions like TPM that did get involve with reporting and investigative journalism, but for the most part, only the "dinosaurs" are doing that. And by the way, this is not about paper. It is rather journalism, which is shrinking, while opinions are growing. I would love to be utopian and think that it will all turn out well in the end, but I don't think that will be the case. We will go through a period where there will be less professional journalists on the prowl. Citizen journalists can fill in SOME gaps, but not even close to the amount of work and resources only newspapers have.
Kerry is partly right. Print needs to go away - you can't kill a mountainside's worth of trees and burn diesel just to get words and layout from point A to point B, B', B'', etc.
He's also right about comparing real journalism, which observes events and reports them in objective context, and most news blogging, which is merely commentary on other people's writing -- in most cases, isolated at least two removes from actual reportage. The thing is, almost nobody practices _real_ journalism anymore, because today's media economy and business models, and publisher decisions about where to put investment, won't support it. It's cheaper to hire hacks to rewrite wire-service reports and press releases. And the need to deliver online and feed the daily/hourly pageview beast exacerbates the problem. Ultimately, the world and the web wake up to the fact that ... who knew? ... any jerk with a Blogger account can read press releases and wire-service reports and babble about them, and that being competitive in a world of pageviews means turning this crank -- yes, perhaps more charmingly than the next jerk -- but mostly just faster and harder and with more-technically-competent SEO. Was it Truman Capote who said, at one point, re. Jack Kerouac's On the Road, "that's not writing, that's typing?"
In discussing stuff like this, you need to focus on the real distinctions. Print needs to go away. All online content management systems are equivalent, so in terms of 'access to tools,' everybody's a blogger. What's great and new about blogging is that it lets passionate, expert, involved voices publish to audiences of arbitrary size and global scope, and offers benefits to syndicators and aggregators as well. Publishers, substantially as the result of greed promoting excessive aggregation and resulting pare-down of ostensibly redundant services to maximize profit, have made themselves non-competitive in their present forms. What's left over is the real question, which is: "Are there business models capable of sustaining institutions to support real, sustained, in-residence investigative reportage around the world, and its aggregation and summation by professional editors with a mission of reader service, and if not, are we losing something of huge importance?"
My tendency is to think that - despite all the other blogging wonderfulness - yes, we are.
While I am certain that this post will unleash a great deal of anger, I must confess that I agree with Senator Kerry and admire his courage for speaking out.
Unfortunately, with all of the power and freedom that the internet has brought us has come some very important caveats or, in this case, down sides. Yes, the internet is free and it is universally accessible. But that also means that virtually anyone can have his or her say without anyone on the other side of the “transaction” knowing anything about the author. In many cases, this means that you are responding to the opinions or defending against the accusations of people who, in the bright light of day, you would dismiss out of hand as crackpots or people so far out of line with your views that you would not waste a moment justifying or criticizing their views. You would just move on.
Newspapers and formal journalism not only ensure some measure of intellectual honesty but also provide some sense of validation of writing skills, intellectual gravitas and known point of view. When anyone can pick up the pen and demand equality, the value of all written words begins to decline. When time is spent on the drivel put forth by self-proclaimed pundits with access to an email account, time is taken from things of real value. Alas, I am not suggesting that people be denied access but I am suggesting that a discriminating consumer not get distracted by the millions and millions of uni-dimensional and self-aggrandizing personally appointed pundits. The mainstream media – even with all its faults to which I am not blind – has built its reputation and trust on years of experience and editorial expertise.
While you may not agree with mainstream columnists and reporters, Pulitzer Prize winning reporters and news media provide balance, accuracy and perspective. I have the opportunity to read conflicting views of recognized “talent” and much prefer that to the rants of those in the blogging world today. Perhaps, after much winnowing, individual bloggers and internet pundits will earn trust similar to that of the mainstream media but, until then, do not confuse notoriety or bombast with reasoned logic underpinned by research. We need to do everything in our power to ensure the longevity – even after what may be necessary transformation – of today’s mainstream media and its contributors. They stimulate our thought, they provide perspective that too many of us cannot mentally “catalogue” for ourselves since we have day jobs. Finding that logical thread and concisely presenting it and urging us to action IS their day job. Let’s find a way to ensure that they keep it.
As for the tree argument, it is specious as none of this discussion is about paper. It is about journalistic integrity, valued content and the differences between those and unfettered, unverifiable opinion and screed.
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