But I thought this article was fascinating:
This is a topic that I almost never see discussed--the social good of investigative journalism. Will the demise of local newspapers/media lead to a rise in unpunished crimes? Although the national papers will likely still cover the large-scale frauds or illegal activity, who is going to go after the local crooks? Generally the intellectual elite frown upon local news--too much riff-raff, not enough intellectual heavyweights writing, subpar reporting etc etc. The blogosphere was almost pleased to announce the demise of the Seattle Post Intelligencer but who is going to fill that void of investigative journalism? Sitting at your desk writing sub-par op-eds is easy (I do it!), but who is going to do the leg work to dig up the real findings?
Local newspaper's value-proposition is that they can cover the local community better than anyone else. The Oakland Tribune (or whatever local paper) should drop all discussion of national events or commentary on larger social issues and focus exclusively on the local events (didn't Malcolm Gladwell write about some newspaper in the South that has managed to weather this storm--and even increase readership--by simply mentioning as many local people's names as possible?). Is this a new business model?
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2 comments:
Hey Will,
I definitely agree. The value of I-Journalism is huge to public knowledge, and another benefit seems to be that investigative journalism can point out significant or prevailing trends. Headline news, like Drudge, cnn, etc. only reports on the latest news flashes, press releases, or announcements. This often fails to take into account the place in history or historical context of such instances.
For example, suppose there were a headline that said "the era of big government is back" on Drudge (now there). My question is when was the era over? The article behind this headline is just all an analysis of the speech from last night, but what about the place in history of his speech-did past presidents announce significant plans for government programs in their first address to the nation as well?
As always, I love you.
A newspaper defines and brings together a community, and though we don't much admire the SF Chron, we'd hate to see it go. A newspaper is a community service as well as a business but how to figure out a way to make it succeed financially? I hope the Chron manages to turn itself around before it's too late.
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