Comments on: Good riddance to bad newspapers http://www.tallyroom.com.au/1154 Elections and politics in Australia and around the world. Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:46:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Robert McKinlay http://www.tallyroom.com.au/1154/comment-page-1#comment-1977 Robert McKinlay Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:13:17 +0000 http://www.tallyroom.com.au/?p=1154#comment-1977 This is an issue close to my heart. I agree that printed newspapers are dying, but I don't think quality journalism as we have known it can continue to exist. The transition to the net has already happened for IT magazines, A Because computer users are more likely to use the net, B Because computer software can now be more easily distributed by the net rather than CD/DVD/Floppy Disk. I have the March 1995 issue of MacFormat magazine. The headline article is a dozen A4 pages of insightful and heavily researched journalism which looks at the place of artificial life in science, art and popular culture and includes high res images from film, games and cutting edge research. Included on this disk is a range of related software demos SimCity, and freeware Alife software. Articles like this are absent from most of the IT websites you can find these days. Most of the IT journalism on the web today is in the form of rewritten press releases. New Product! New Technology! Stories like these have always been the bread and butter of IT journalism, but in the age of the net reflective and researched writing is mostly dead. I would hate to see the same happen to mainstream news. People used to read newspapers to get other people's views and opinions. Now you can go online and seek opinions that match your own. The Telegraph may be full of redneck pandering hate speech, but it is moderate compared to some of the stuff out on the web. How are people's prejudices going to be challenged if all they read is stuff written by people like themselves? How are insular people going to discover the rest of the world if all they read about is on special interest sites. If there is no benchmark mainstream media in a traditional format, how do we distinguish cranks, conspiracy theorists and ignorant opinion from informed journalism. How does an investigative journalist who blogs, defend themselves from litigation without the support of a major media masthead? Must they publish anonymously and therefore have no identity or reputation or credibility? This is an issue close to my heart. I agree that printed newspapers are dying, but I don’t think quality journalism as we have known it can continue to exist. The transition to the net has already happened for IT magazines, A Because computer users are more likely to use the net, B Because computer software can now be more easily distributed by the net rather than CD/DVD/Floppy Disk. I have the March 1995 issue of MacFormat magazine. The headline article is a dozen A4 pages of insightful and heavily researched journalism which looks at the place of artificial life in science, art and popular culture and includes high res images from film, games and cutting edge research. Included on this disk is a range of related software demos SimCity, and freeware Alife software.
Articles like this are absent from most of the IT websites you can find these days. Most of the IT journalism on the web today is in the form of rewritten press releases. New Product! New Technology! Stories like these have always been the bread and butter of IT journalism, but in the age of the net reflective and researched writing is mostly dead. I would hate to see the same happen to mainstream news.
People used to read newspapers to get other people’s views and opinions. Now you can go online and seek opinions that match your own. The Telegraph may be full of redneck pandering hate speech, but it is moderate compared to some of the stuff out on the web. How are people’s prejudices going to be challenged if all they read is stuff written by people like themselves? How are insular people going to discover the rest of the world if all they read about is on special interest sites. If there is no benchmark mainstream media in a traditional format, how do we distinguish cranks, conspiracy theorists and ignorant opinion from informed journalism. How does an investigative journalist who blogs, defend themselves from litigation without the support of a major media masthead? Must they publish anonymously and therefore have no identity or reputation or credibility?

]]> By: Ben Raue http://www.tallyroom.com.au/1154/comment-page-1#comment-1968 Ben Raue Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:27:33 +0000 http://www.tallyroom.com.au/?p=1154#comment-1968 I don't deny that blogging has yet to fill the void. But I think that eventually an advertising model will allow a wide variety of blogs to function semi-professionally. I know that in 2008 Daily Kos commissioned a lot of its own polls, including a daily presidential tracking poll. I don’t deny that blogging has yet to fill the void. But I think that eventually an advertising model will allow a wide variety of blogs to function semi-professionally.

I know that in 2008 Daily Kos commissioned a lot of its own polls, including a daily presidential tracking poll.

]]> By: Adrian http://www.tallyroom.com.au/1154/comment-page-1#comment-1967 Adrian Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:25:19 +0000 http://www.tallyroom.com.au/?p=1154#comment-1967 Newspapers have only themselves to blame - by moving from investigative journalism to opinion pieces they turned news into a format that bloggers can produce better. However, blogging simply has not filled the void of investigative journalism. Even in politics, which I think is the height of news blogging at the moment, bloggers use the raw opinion polls paid for by newspapers. Yes, they analyse them better than newspapers and I read them in preference, but has www.fivethirtyeight.com actually sponsored any of its own polls? Blogging needs professional (ie paid) journalists to produce the raw material. One of the issues of the internet is that the volume of data is enormous, but the quality is highly variable. When war broke out in Georgia, which blogger did you trust to give unbiased analysis? Which blog sent a foreign correspondent? As much as anyone, I am part of the problem. I only consume news on google news, blogs and podcasts. The problem is - if I don't pay a cent for news, I am not paying for the generation of original stories that cost money. Newspapers have only themselves to blame – by moving from investigative journalism to opinion pieces they turned news into a format that bloggers can produce better. However, blogging simply has not filled the void of investigative journalism. Even in politics, which I think is the height of news blogging at the moment, bloggers use the raw opinion polls paid for by newspapers. Yes, they analyse them better than newspapers and I read them in preference, but has http://www.fivethirtyeight.com actually sponsored any of its own polls? Blogging needs professional (ie paid) journalists to produce the raw material. One of the issues of the internet is that the volume of data is enormous, but the quality is highly variable. When war broke out in Georgia, which blogger did you trust to give unbiased analysis? Which blog sent a foreign correspondent?

As much as anyone, I am part of the problem. I only consume news on google news, blogs and podcasts. The problem is – if I don’t pay a cent for news, I am not paying for the generation of original stories that cost money.

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