BuffaloBill Posted September 17, 2009 Posted September 17, 2009 The issue is speed. Not unlike many industries forced into decline. Personally, I hate what is happening but the issue is that newsprint is a dying medium. The problem is that what is really lost is the reporter who is willing to dig to find a story vs. reporters wanting to most quickly get a story to the online medium.
3rd and One Posted September 17, 2009 Posted September 17, 2009 The problem is that what is really lost is the reporter who is willing to dig to find a story vs. reporters wanting to most quickly getting a story to the online medium. That's exactly the problem nowadays. Journalism has gotten lazy and it's clearly affecting the news we see in the media today. How often are we bombarded with sensationalized material. I'm sick of going to Yahoo to check my mail and seeing the top news stories about celebrities or the new viral videos taking over the nation. It all comes down to money in my eyes. No one wants to dig deep and do any investigative reporting anymore. They all look for an easy way to find stories and that is why you get all these "fluffy" news stories. It's sad that newspapers are on their way out and I think your right in that the Internet has changed the way we get our information. Unfortunately we are hardly exposed to anything of real substance anymore.
Lori Posted September 17, 2009 Posted September 17, 2009 That's exactly the problem nowadays. Journalism has gotten lazy and it's clearly affecting the news we see in the media today. How often are we bombarded with sensationalized material. I'm sick of going to Yahoo to check my mail and seeing the top news stories about celebrities or the new viral videos taking over the nation. It all comes down to money in my eyes. No one wants to dig deep and do any investigative reporting anymore. They all look for an easy way to find stories and that is why you get all these "fluffy" news stories. It's sad that newspapers are on their way out and I think your right in that the Internet has changed the way we get our information. Unfortunately we are hardly exposed to anything of real substance anymore. Interestingly, Yahoo! is the outlet which did the digging to break both the Reggie Bush and the UConn recruiting stories. Talked to Adrian Wojnarowski about his UConn piece, and he admitted that no newspaper in the country would have given him the time or the budget to chase the story. (He and Wetzel booked a last-minute flight to IDAHO to get a one-paragraph quote from one of the major sources, who wouldn't confirm anything over the phone.) And ESPN, the place everyone loves to hate, hired one of the guys who wrote "Game of Shadows" as part of their investigative staff. I don't know how much detail he'd be willing to go into on the board, but considering what's happened at his last newspaper since he left, I'd be willing to bet Tim has some interesting thoughts on dead-tree vs. cyberspace operations.
UConn James Posted September 17, 2009 Posted September 17, 2009 3rd, It's an issue of money, also, b/c few people seem to want to pay for deeper stories. I think that most papers will be moving to a mostly online presence w/in the next 5-10 years. Seems better for the environment (less paper consumption, waterway pollution from ink), and it's less costly for the publication (e.g. for the Sunday NYT, the paper alone cost ~$9. Add in ink, the pressworks, renting warehouses, route drivers, etc. That's all on top of paying reporters/editors for content). The future is mostly electronic b/c it cuts down on costs. Will this savings deliver an better commitment to "dig deeper" for stories? Dunno. The way things are going in the dumbing down of America, I don't see much of a market for it. Much of the stuff you're looking for wrt "investigative reporting" (J-school taught that this was a redundant phrase. After seeing a waterskiing squirrel a while back on 5 seperate newscasts, I'm not so sure) now comes in either topical magazines or books for higher-profile stories. Lower-profile in-depth pieces are still out there... you just see them a lot less. You also see some online. Not too much, but examples do exist. (ON EDIT: Lori pointed out a couple... yep, including that one about my alma mater.) All this said, I can still see a place for actual newsprint. One day a week. Sunday papers still don't sell too badly; it's a day when people have time to sit down with the paper. To say nothing of the fact that people will always need paper --- handy for painting/staining, good compost material, birdcage linings, wrapping fish, washing windows (they actually say newsprint is best for this), etc. They're also still a major ad-delivery mechanism. Ad buyers still evidently want total-coverage campaigns. I.e. with the Courant, everyone who is not a subscriber gets a supplemental ad section in their mailbox.
\GoBillsInDallas/ Posted September 17, 2009 Posted September 17, 2009 No one wants to dig deep and do any investigative reporting anymore. Well, yes they do, actually. The problem is, most newspapers only do "investigative reporting" only on the "other" people while giving "their" people a free pass. Look at the liberal and conservative bias for NY Times and NY Post, for example.
billsfan89 Posted September 17, 2009 Posted September 17, 2009 Its nothing new unfortunately. The world especially over the last 10 years is going digital and its going fast. Think about it how many people buy CD's anymore? Ipods and Mp3 players have taken them over as the dominate form of listening to music. Pretty soon (I would say sometime in the latter half of the next decade) DVD's and Blu Ray will be a thing of the past you will download movies to a hard drive and play them on a TV. Same thing with Video Games already you can download old games straight to your system and pretty soon all games will be through digital distribution and soon after all consoles won't be playing games off of discs. Now I like Digital Distribution (Its cheaper not having to print up boxes, discs, and retail mark ups) but I like having a hard copy of my games and movies. I like the idea of lending my X-Box games to friends or even selling them on Ebay but with DD I wouldn't be able to do that. I like the idea of owning a movie and once again lending it to a friend or selling them. Simply put I like having a game or movie as an asset I own. I know the same thing could have (And likely was) said about CD's. But movies and games are totally different from music. If I tell a friend about a band he can look them up on MySpace or Facebook and listen to all or most of their songs. Yet if I want my friend to see a movie I need to lend him the DVD (Lets assume he doesn't know about Torrents and stuff like that) or else there is no real way for him to see that movie same concept goes for games.
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