The Wire creator David Simon in this interview states:
The newsroom where I used to work (the Baltimore Sun) had 460 people. Now it has 300. And there are people out there who just don’t care. They’ll make more money putting out a mediocre paper than they would putting out a better paper. They know this. It’s their equation. They’re quite content with mediocrity.
And within that culture we have people that are saying, ‘oh no, we’re going to do more with less,’ which is one of the great lies of the 21st century. What it means is we’re going to less with less. And that’s the nature of what journalism is becoming.
I don’t disagree. How can a newspaper keep up while news is readily available from a virtually unlimited number of sources that are faster, free and more convenient. They are competing against the web and text alerts at the same time as Craigslist is cutting into classified revenue? Newspapers are going to have to reinvent themselves. In the short term cutting the quality of their product keeps them afloat but it’s only a stopgap measure.
Newspapers are going to be forced to change their modus operandi and embrace the web as a means not only to deliver the news but also harvest the news from non-traditional sources. That’s a fine line to walk. In journalism circles I am sure Citzen Journalists are the subject of many a raw conversation. They aren’t typically held to the same standards as regular journalists. Whilst a reporter is oblgated to deliver well-written prose on deadline, bloggers are often forgiven for sins of punctaution, grammar, and even their adherence to the facts in exchange for up-to-the second reporting and free access. It’s even an accepted custom to cross-out and correct comments, a benefit of hosting content electronically. I suspect the future of newspapers could be in a filtering and editorial role rather than as a actual producer of 100% original content.
The traditional newspaper needs to look to their new poster child, Rob Curley. Rob is currently the Vice President of Product Development for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. Before that I came to know of him for his work at the Lawrence Journal World , one of the most progressive newspapers and technology innovators in the country. Their paper spawned Django the open source Python Web framework.
So if I am right and the newspaper goes digital, "How are we going to housetrain our dogs."
(via Doc )
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With internet users have a chance to try to post news, reviews competing with professional journalists. But rather often the quality is low.
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