On the Death of Newspapers and Democracy
Over at Jay Rosen's blog Press Think today, there is a continuation of the debate about the death of the daily newspaper, under the headline:
Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die
My question is, if the newspaper dies, will democracy die with it? Or will we in the blogosphere be able to create a new platform to save it?
I don't know the answer, but I'm willing to consider the alternatives and work to solve the problem. To save anything resembling democracy, we must have people willing to stand on the wall and ask questions, to do the tough reporting and write stories people will read, including TV reporters. Most of the masses get their news from TV, not newspapers or blogs.
Reporting takes the kind of resources only big news companies had in the past (read lots of money).
I'm no rich guy, so I need work from the mainstream press to survive to blog another day. That is our current dilemma.
Any thoughts?
GW
Comments
To save anything resembling democracy, we must have people willing to stand on the wall and ask tough questions, willing to do the hard reporting and write stories people will read, including TV reporters. Most of the masses get their news from TV, not newspapers or blogs, a point I've made in this forum ad nauseum.
[although i saw this originally on pressthink, i'm only posting it here because we are going way off the topic that jay wanted to discuss....]
I'm afraid I'm very pessimistic, because to me the question isn't whether there will be people willing to do the work, its whether there will be an large enough audience for that work to ensure that we have the critical mass of citizens who can comprise the "informed electorate" necessary for the sucess of democracy.
We clearly don't have that critical mass today (not when 72% of Bush voters still thought in late October 2004 that Iraq had WMDs or major programs) and given the nature of the "news" industry, the problem is likely to get worse.
The only hope I see is that the changes that have occurred in the last 20 years in the "news" environment will result in "positive" changes in the way that the post baby-boomers view the news landscape. My generation---the baby boomers---grew up in an news environment where the primary source of news (broadcast television) was required by law to act as a public service, and to be "fair". As a result, we grew up with the assumption that we could be completely passive consumers of "the news" and still be sufficiently informed.
Deregulation and the end of the Fairness Doctrine has resulted in a completely different news environment --- "news" isn't a public service anymore, its simply content designed to create audiences for advertisers. The post baby-boom generations may, as a result, be much less passive as "news consumers", and actively seek out the truth.
Of course, this rosy scenario requires an educational system that emphasizes critical thinking skills, and the current assault by the right-wing on the educational establishment (which sees such skills as essential) makes it far less likely to occur.
Posted by: p.lukasiak | March 30, 2005 09:52 AM
You are perhaps justified in being pessimistic, but it seems to me if we are alive we have no choice but to stand up and fight for these things, or die trying.
Posted by: GW | April 2, 2005 06:38 PM