Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
You're right that the old model was bound for extinction. But let's not kid ourselves that what replaces it will be better. Cheaper? Certainly. Can't get much cheaper than free. But I'm enough of a dinosaur to believe that you get what you pay for.
So how will we get information about how our governments and businesses are behaving? Opinion columns spit out by independent bloggers while they sit at home in their bathrobe are no substitute for hard news. You need to know actual stuff. Talk to actual people. Do research that is not fun. And be held accountable professionally and legally for what you write. These 'people in positions of knowledge and access' will be insiders motivated by vendettas and private agendas. Of course, those sorts of people often acted as sources under the traditional news model. But professional journalists exercised scepticism and care dealing with them, and had enough expertise on their beat to know when they were being played.
Essentially, I think hard news will die along with the newspaper industry. What we'll be left with is partisan opinion-pieces spackled with a veneer of cherry-picked data. Our public policy and civic engagement will be based on sources of information with as much legitimacy and credibility as internet forum flame-wars.
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We as human beings take on the role of editor. You take the information you get from all these sources, filter, and construct the right narrative out of it with your own brain.
I'm not saying hard news is dying. There are hundreds of websites with lengthy write-ups and investigative articles. They all function like independent newspapers, free of the shackles of print empires, media conglomerates, and the corrupted Conrad Blacks of the world.
Tying great talent down to a dinosaur model will only crush the drive and ambitions of that talent.