Reporters Love to Be Cassandraesque....

[purejuice]

...but this is ominous. Only people who are fanatical readers of newspapers are aware that TV pretty much rips all its reporting off from newspapers. It doesn't, in short, do any reporting that could pass ethically, enterprise-wise, or editorially for same at the schlockiest newspaper in the world. And when the NYT stops reporting, there will be no news that is not driven by TV's imperative of 40 per cent profit margins. Think of the news as an endless loop of the alarmist shit broadcast from 4 to 6:30 on your local news every day. Car crashes. Pedophiles. Germs on telephones. Back-to-the-bunker stories which have created, in my opinion, the new generation of freaked-out moms. And suburbs without yards because, well, you know, there are pedophiles outside. That's the news.

On the other hand, Twits may just be too dumb to commmunicate their news.


A friend at the Times recently said he doubts that in five years there will be a print edition of the paper, except maybe on Sundays. Once the print New York Times is extinct, it’s not at all clear how the paper will pay for its primary job, which is reporting. Any journalist who cheerleads uncritically for Twitter is essentially asking for his own destruction.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/02/neither-luddite-nor-biltonite.html#ixzz0erajnsHX

Comments

[the-sikh-geek.livejournal.com]

Have you seen/heard/read any of the Free-Range Parenting stuff that's out there?

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i had not, but i'm glad to hear of it.

[the-sikh-geek.livejournal.com]

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

The big irony, of course, is that statistically all the major violent crimes are WAY down, to the lowest points they've been at in decades. That, and the big boogey-man fears that people carry around (child abduction, home invasion, etc.) are so statistically small as to not even really exist, at least as far as scary strangers *out there* are concerned. One certainty though is that raising a child to not take the slightest risks and to grow up normalized to being joined at Mommy's hip will create a dependent, easily cracked pseudo-adult.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

My five-year-old still doesn't have friends in the neighborhood because no one ever lets their kid out of their house. I'm not worried about pedophiles or kidnappers, but I am worried that if I let my kid play outside (aside from our fenced-in backyard) for more than two minutes without me being in sight, I'll be investigated for neglect. I wish she could have the freedom I had as a kid.

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

Beyond sad. And dangerous.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i think there will always be a market for real print on paper. it's just not the gigantic market publishers lust for. i remember the most successful publisher of poetry bemoaning the sales of his most famous and successful poet (gary snyder) at only 12,000 copies for one volume. and i thought that's more people reading poetry at one shot, even gruesome old gary snyder, than have probably read poetry since the beginning of time. i mean, it's not the sales of -- who is that former advertising guy who writes 10 novels a year with ghost writers, james somebody? -- but even there, you have to be aware that people are reading. real books. jillions of them.

i don't think newspapers will go away. i think politico is the new business model (http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/02/politicos_business_model.asp), and i wish i knew more about it. i think it's doing well, and i'd like to know if more of its advertising comes from the website or the paper version. i think the sites can be made to support the paper versions.

[slackmistress.livejournal.com]

The majority of WGAw members write fiction (TV, films, games, etc.) and the post that you link to is about a panel that discussed creating fictional content. Not exactly related WRT news.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

thank you for the clarification.

[the-sikh-geek.livejournal.com]

[dcart.livejournal.com]

Local news is crap everywhere, but when I was traveling heavily for work from 2006-2008, I noticed a distinct trend. You hear a constant drumbeat of pedophile stories in the red states and no so much elsewhere. When we lived in Orlando, I had cut down to catching local news once a week or so because the steady stream of pedophile paranoia was just too much for me. I became a regular local news watcher again when we moved to SF. The occasional pedophile stories on the channel I usually watch are just as breathless and crazy as anywhere, but they occur with about 1/10th the frequency as in Orlando, Atlanta, Houston, Oklahoma City, and other red state cities I frequented in my work travels.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

interesting, innit? of course it's code for racial fears, imho.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

Wow, really? Until you mentioned it just now, it never occurred to me to imagine a pedophile as anything but white (and male.) Interesting.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. The model is changing, no doubt about it.