Interesting article on the status of newspapers today. Not a local story, but then again I don’t work for the Californian…
Denis Hancock – The death of the newspaper: murder or suicide? -For many people, it’s a cut and dry issue – newspapers are dead or slowly dying, because the Internet has destroyed their underlying business models. But a few days ago, David Simon (who some may know as the executive producer of “The Wire”, an incredible show that everyone should see) published a fascinating perspective on what’s actually happened to them entitled Does the news matter to anyone anymore? …..While it is easy to place the blame on greedy monopolist newspaper owners for increasingly replacing real investigative journalism with fluff, and it’s possible to then connect this failure with their slow demise (with the Internet acting as an accelerant), one still must consider the very real possibility that they were accurately reading the market demand……. In other words, the problem is not that you’re more likely to get an update on Paris Hilton’s escapades than (say) the Hurricane Katrina relief “effort” when you look to the news, but rather that this is exactly what people want to see. Link to complete story here…
Also see link to companion story from the Washington Post - Does The News Matter Anymore
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