Well, what is it that Journalism has to offer?

A mindset?

The problem is few people read the newspaper, or sites worthy of its salt. For those who do prize what a newspaper brings, we do so because it raises are our awarness and ability to survive. The bullshit that passes for op eds nowadays was'nt always there.
Op eds used to heighten our language skills and our ability to delineate the finer points. Some newpaper articles read like they were written for the Economist. But even the economist doesnt feel like it's old self. Everything is watered down. Let's pander to the IQ of 100 - so Bush wins again. Even if he does not stand for election.

At one point, if someone brought up a certain subject, we could conversely intelligently, or at the polling booth, vote with knowledge. Oh I forgot. Both those are dying arts.

For those who want to be informed, there is still CD. But that's about it.

I am sorry that your way of life is threatened. However, as citizens, as global citizens, our lives are threatened by the MSM, adn that includes big newspapers.

Your bias is easily recognized, you need to make a living. Again, I am sorry, but the consolidation of these media sources is a threat that hides behind 'real journalism'. The average blogger is well known to have particular slants and biases. As citizens, we know this, it is a foregone conclusion, which allows each of us the choice as to whom we choose to read.

The internet allows us to by-pass corporate owned media of which you claim an elite affiliation with. Now each of us has the capability to research and write, to critique and respond.

The media has evolved, whether liked or not, and the people have responded. May I suggest, that like most citizen reporters today, that you start your own blog and let We The People decide if your writing and views are worth supporting through funding drives, just like the rest of us non-elite writers.

You say that the TV media has gone to the dark side, and unfortunately citizens don't see the papers doing any different. The newspapers are compromised sources of info that like to spout their brand of 'truthiness'...and the internet community has responded. Time to adapt.

As usual, a glittering stream of consciousness. Your writing always rewards. The fourth estate is democracy's 'immune' system, and it seems at best only erratically effective as the gorge-fixated 'flesh-eating' bushteria deepens its infection on the Body Politic, and catastrophically, the Constitution itself.

We need what the PNAC gallery most fears: another 'Walter-Cronkite-Type-Event' from the profession of journalism. Remember it? here's the link:

http://www.foggybog.com/movies/cronkite.html

Even though attacked by conservatives in recent years, we still have PBS and NPR. Which brings to mind, why shouldn't we have something like National Public Internet, a very large free site where professional journalists get paid for reporting in a non-commercial format? With a real enforced "fairness docrtine"?

I'm jumping right over the "detail", of course, that this will not happen without massive support from liberals, meaning a massive number of liberals in the national government. Did I mention that voting in some new Democrats might help?

I think ggpearl doesn't fully get it. Citizen journalism is great for digging up this or that local story the MSM may have missed--or lied about. And the internet probably has better opinion columns than newspapers do. But there isn't a whole lot of basic news, with research, on the Net unconnected to MSM--funding is a necessity for everyone who isn't independently wealthy. And MSM used to be a good gatekeeper, screening out unproven assertions and sloppy research and bias. Now, however, the profit motive has so completely taken over nearly all MSM that it's lost this function, of being credible. I happen to live where I can get one of the few decent, family-owned papers left in the country, the Charleston Gazette--which is the only newspaper in WV that doesn't cater to the coal industry, and one that is cited in every issue of the 25 Most Censored Stories (for being one of a handful of MSM sources on a story). But this is rare now. I think we need to recognize that MESIA ARE THE NERVOUS SYSTEM OF DEMOCRACY, AND AS SUCH THEY CANNOT BE PRIVATELY OWNED AND CONTROLLED. This is the heart of the problem with politics--even the problem of putocracy, of politicans whoring out to their campaign contributors at the expense of the public interest, comes about because politicians can't survive elections without money FOR MEDIA ADS.

"Now, however, the profit motive has so completely taken over nearly all MSM that it's lost this function, of being credible."

mwildfire- this was my point. I was being wordy and did not have enough coffee...:)
My attemtp was to redirect the author in to finding a different way of providing for herself. Also, if there is a consolidation of who owns what media source, then why would this principled writer want to work for the very same people who took away the believability of journalism.

And furthermore, DanielDavid adds a great addendum. I would support an NPR internet news source, for writers like this woman. I do not want to lose 'news', I also do not want their livelihoods taken.
The 4th estate has been compromised, and bemoaning its loss does not allow us the time to devote to looking for options.
I am glad you have the ability to still believe in your local paper, and I support this. I hope your paper continues to stand tall against the coal industry, kudos to them!

It is a process of evolution, of change. TPTB have altered our access to reliable news, so as citizens we have taken it upon ourselves to find different sources.

I get it just fine sweety.

I am a boomer and have noticed that during the past 40 years American's have significantly expanded the number of "services" they are willing to pay for (call it personal outsourcing ?). When I was a kid the average American dined out only on special occasions and hardly anybody washed their car at a car wash. Today the opposite is true. I could cite dozens of similar examples.

Unfortunately, most Americans have also outsourced poltical activism. While successful democracy depends upon citizen participation, most Americans figure that the money they pay the IRS is tantamount to paying somebody to cook their food or wash their car. Abolition of the draft and expansion of "contract" military forces has accelerated this mindset.

Most newspapers do a good job of providing a detailed treatment of news and that does not fit the personal outsourcing model.

It's difficult to find "objective" reporting. During the early years of the Iraq Invasion/Occupation I attended a number of anti-war rallies/marches which either weren't covered in the local paper or were covered but under reported, by at least half, the number of participants. The stories were never on the front page and rarely included photos of the thousands of people marching.

Television news stories were just as bad. The shots would be close-ups of individuals, never crowd shots which would give you an idea of the magnitude of the march. Television also gave the same amount of time interviewing the handful of pro-war protestors as they gave to anti-war protestors (usually represented by what appeared to be homeless individuals).

I attended another anti-war gathering on the corner of a small town street. The gathering was small, barely a hundred people. The local newspaper covered the story, but used a picture showing ONE protestor (the photographer had to kneel down and shoot up to get a picture that eliminated everyone else). The paper also has an online edition. Somehow, although all the other stories made it online, the story of the protest was absent.

There was/is clearly a bias against accurate reporting of anti-war marches.

That being said, the local Indy Media is no better. It isn't unusual at these marches to see a small group of anarchists (25 or less) wearing black clothing with their faces covered by black bandanas. They often try to get the protest marchers to go off the approved route for the march. They try to block traffic and are LOVED by the television stations because peaceful marches are not as interesting as people clashing with the police. During one march the anarchists were telling people the police had no right to confine the march and they managed to get off the route and into a physical confrontation with the police.

Well, the next day Indy Media was full of outraged comments about police brutality. I wrote a comment saying that the Anarchists had gotten what they were looking for and why is it that they never held their own events but always piggy-backed onto events organized by others.

My comments were deleted. The only comments on Indy Media were ones praising the anarchists and condemning the police.

So, it isn't just mainstream media that presents an ideologically biased view.

"Take away The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and there wouldn't be much to talk about on the Web."

Wow. You Americans really are rather full of yourselves aren't you?

Daniel David asks, ..."why shouldn't we have something like National Public Internet, a very large free site where professional journalists get paid for reporting in a non-commercial format? With a real enforced "fairness doctrine"?

This is one of the BEST ideas I've read on CD. I would gladly pay for a subscription to such a site, as long as it included consistent coverage of all the REAL NEWS that the MSM censors out or buries on page 34. The late great Studs Terkel would have loved this!

National Public Internet? Sure, good idea, but it's not a panacea. It doesn't get at the concentration of media ownership. There is no substitute for getting your news from a wide variety of sources; seeing how different stories are told in contrasting ways by genuinely independent writers. In this regard the internet affords me the luxury of reading papers from around the world. You better keep after that FCC, not only to stop the mergers, but to role back the ludicrous decisions that have made your democracy's eyes and ears the property of mega entertainment companies.

Journalism 101---All print media at best is 2nd recounting of a possible or actual observance or participation of an occurrence. Good reporting; that is, most reporting, is the 3rd or 4th recounting. All news is mediated reality. None of it is real. One must read and watch a mountain of news from many sources before reaching personal conclusions. Media readers of this type knew the selling of the Iraq war was a piss-poor PR job from the very beginning. After 9/11, readers of this type were appalled as MSM quickly became a propaganda monster. Professional reporters and editors, by definition, are readers of this type. Now they question the loss of reader confidence when they should be on their knees begging forgiveness for their vile role in the needless death of over 800,000 completely innocent Iraqi men, women, and children.

I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the condition, "Take away the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. . ." is already in place in my household.

I need not bother with the Pravda On the Hudson or the Izvestia On the Potomac. Their reporting is laughable: slanted, inaccurate, and mostly PR releases from the current Administration.

Since I can read Le Monde, the Economist, and a veritable torrent of other news sources, I can and do choose to go without the dumb and dumber pundits you suggest the Internet cannot do without.

Did we need the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal to tell us about Al Gore in the 2000 election? -- in point of fact, most of what they reported was lies. They wanted to slander Gore, and they did.

You are stuck in an obsolete mind-set to think that the large nespaper reporters are the primary source of "news" on the Internet.

The job of providing information to the public has been forsaken by the reporters whom you grew up idolizing, and those "amateurs" consider it too important to wait until they get paid to do it. The rest of us citizens are learning about the news in a more rapid, more intelligent, and more balanced form than we have gotten from your Pravda on the Potomac or Izvestia on the Hudson.

Thank heavens.

"Take away The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and there wouldn't be much to talk about on the Web. Very few blogs are doing original reporting, although there are some very good sites."

What can a few journalists do that a few billion people online can't? Filter the news for us? Don't we already do that by visiting good sites like CD and reading posts from people we like? How can journalists claim to have a monopoly on the truth when the MSM has become a fascist tool?

And what's to stop journalists from posting on the internet? At least you'll be able to post whatever you want, without having your articles filtered by editors. Lots of journalists post here and on other progressive sites. Granted, they don't get paid much for it, but they do it for the love of the craft and for the betterment of humanity. Working only for money is part of the problems that beset our society.

NPR and PBS are firmly in the MSM. They hopped aboard the train that supported the Iraq war. They similarly focus on the candidates that the MSM early on decided were electable. They feature the same "spectrum" of voices (far right to almost center)that you can read in the big papers. A recent report showed that the vast majority of guests invited onto the Lehrer news hour were heavily weighted towards conservatives.

Thus, if NPR or PBS on the internet resembled the real world versions, they would offer far less than cites like CD offer us now--a forum where another point of view can actual be found. Thank God. And the Goddess.

A "Journalist" is someone who keeps a journal. In other words - a log. If such a jornal is on the web, it's a weBlog. Bloggers are doing exactly the same thing that pamphleteers were doing 100 and 200 years ago. Only problem is that they havent yet worked out how to charge a penny a sheet.

When the internet gets its act togeter and it becomes easy to charge people without all the complicated access forms, the publishers (newspapers and RIAA) will finally be finished, and "content" will rule.

To AdeleTheCzech: Studs Terkel may be great, but he is not late.

One thing is abundantly clear. If true news reporting dries up and goes away, bloggers (or "citizen reporters") will then have nothing to talk about except themselves.

Because as one early poster put it, "All print media at best is 2nd recounting of a possible or actual observance or participation of an occurrence. Good reporting; that is, most reporting, is the 3rd or 4th recounting." If that's true then all citizen reporting is, is the 5th-10th recounting that's also spun to the biases of the blogger.

Bloggers may be great at taking multiple sources and connecting the dots or pointing out deficiencies and such but they still rely on the MSM as their primary source of info for anything current, because they aren't out there gathering the info the themselves.

"We traded wisdom for knowledge, then we traded knowledge for information."---T.S. Eliot
If I may take the liberty of expanding on the quote, "now we are trading information for content."
I think the influence of the digital revoloution needs to be mentioned here. Everything is seen as data to be processed for ad hoc purposes---the chief one being to market on behalf of one's own "rational self-interest". Capitalism and digitalism have a symbiotic relationship that makes it harder for the truth to survive and be spoken. In the "Brave New World" humanity is a quaint notion.

I admire Joyce Marcel's dedication to the craft.

I'm not sure, though, why she thinks a report about rats in restaurants is an example of the "dark side" of journalism. It seems to me that public health is important, not frivolous.

The major news papers along with the TV news is an abysmal pit of propaganda and pure unmitigated bull shit! The loss of these papers will be no great loss. The internet will pick up the slack as it has been doing for quite sometime. These "News" organizations are owned and operated by the elite pigs. I don't buy papers or watch TV news. I do a lot. Maybe too much considering my stress levels. I would not worry too much about the loss of an other Murdock News paper going the way of the dodo bird. Remember, nature abhors a vacuum. That includes a news vacuum. Something will fill that void like the internet or the birth of new independent News organizations. What would you NOT know if you didn't read the New York Times or the Washington Post? What Brittney threw up last night after dinner? Who gives a damn? They are not meant to inform. They are meant to confuse and propagandize. Let them all go to news paper heaven! Or would that be hell. See, I'm a bit confused. I need to stop reading the Boston Globe. My thanks to sites like Commondreams and Counterpunch. They could be the new leaders in journalism if we could kill the fake news organizations by NOT BUYING their bullshit papers and news shows.

RE:Spiny Norman December 7th, 2007 2:16 am
Thanks, Spiny. I was going to suggest the same thing. Studs was just recently interviewed on Democracy Now by Amy Goodman. He is truly one of our past and current heroes, along with Gore Vidal. Unfortunately, one is not likely to see their names presented prominently on the MSM because they do not compliment this medium of information. There are many others who fall within the "ignored class" of content providers. That is why I ignore the MSM, except to see what is being mis-informed to the general "consumer" of MSM content.

What passes for knowledge and information misses the deep wisdom of radical inquiry: to delve into the consciousness of a nation's assumptions and relate them to one's own assumptions and beliefs is most revealing. As I so often offer as a mantrum for self-inquiry: You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi. Therein lies the transformation of humanity. Look within for your answers. They do not lie outside the self. We live in the Era of Reflectology. Dare to look into the mirrors all around you and reveal who you are and who you may become. It is your choice.

peace,
st john

ZeroPointField, you're right -- newspaper op-eds used to enlighten and take a contrarian point of view of current events, and they even occasionally tried to expand the reader's mental universe; today they just parrot bland talking points, usually those of a political party or corporate interest. Sydney J. Harris and Mike Royko likely wouldn't have a job writing for a major newspaper these days -- Harris was too erudite and knowledgeable and Royko stuck the needle into politicians and other poltroons too deep. For that matter, who would hire Jack Anderson or Drew Pearson in the current climate? Even Helen Thomas, one of the last of the real journalists, has a hard time getting in a question at a White House press conference.

Most of America, unfortunately, gets its news from TV in 2007 and, as Joyce Marcel notes, the Magic Picture Box went over to the dark side long ago. Sadly, having encountered some of the 'communications graduates' working in television these days, I can tell you I don't think they're smart enough to tell the difference between dark and light -- it's all about posturing and appearance and advancing your career, not ethically reporting inconvenient fact or uncovering unsettling truth -- that will get you fired. Why afflict the comfortable when you can be one of them?

Even the journalism school basics -- facts such as who, what, when, why and how -- are gone now for the most part, replaced by fuzzy comprehension, unproven assertions, and endless idle speculation.

To the readers of Common Dreams I'm sure it's not surprising that the cable news channels are no better, devoting large chunks of airtime investigating every aspect of sewer-pipe effluvia like Paris Hilton's DUI arrest or Britney's child custody battles -- stories that have no affect on most of us personally -- while complacently reciting government press releases when it comes to the infringement of our Constitutional rights or the latest White House war plans. Our leaders are lying to us on a daily basis, but it's time to cut to another Cialis ad. I've run out of invectives to hurl at the TV when I watch the simple-minded scat our corporate media masters plant on the screen and call news.

If you've heard the inane spin-the-prole-wheel pop dribble that the music industry also calls 'content' -- a component it actually lacks -- then you know this affliction is endemic to any form of media owned by the pap-producing five major US news and entertainment corporations who control most of what we read, see and hear. Make it fast, make it cheap, make it dumb, are the bywords -- and, most of all, never provide the peasantry with anything to think about; nothing that might disturb their bovine complacency.

So we watch the latest manufactured outrage or fake controversy hatched by the marketing department and designed to get free media play for a book or film or CD, and the need for real reporting is obviated by the need to sell 'product,' another music industry term for the soulless vacuous crapola they peddle as music.

Of course, graduates of the Judith Miller School of Crony Journalism or the Jeff Gerth College of Hearsay Communications will have jobs in the future; they don't cost much and won't trouble the interests of the well-heeled; all others need not apply.

If you're a writer, you might as well type formulaic children's books, guides for dummies, or Chinese fortune cookie messages for money; for the most part, journalism in America is as dead as Joseph Pulitzer.

BTW, good point, ctrl-z; I've noticed this shabby coverage of peace marches on CNN as well. If you ever think the MSM isn't partial to Bush, remember that in 2000 and 2004 the broadcast and cable channels would show photos of Junior purportedly speaking before a large, enthusiastic crowd of supporters; thanks to C-SPAN, I saw of couple of those 'crowds' when they pulled the camera back to take in the auditorium, revealing perhaps 30 or 40 people frantically waving signs gathered around the front of the stage, while the rest of the seats were empty. The MSM cameras always focused on Bush and his fans in the front rows, and I never heard one MSM reporter allude to the fact that most of the seats in these venues were empty.

Danielnolan, you also have a good point: Americans have no place being arrogant about their media; the British papers The Guardian and The Independent, just to name two, do a much better job on international news than the NY Times, Washington Post or WSJ.

"Bloggers may be great at taking multiple sources and connecting the dots or pointing out deficiencies and such but they still rely on the MSM as their primary source of info for anything current, because they aren't out there gathering the info the themselves".

Well with the internet, we can go and check what Russia, china or Iran has to say about the latest Bush lies can't we? No need to call up the local 'representative' hired because he speaks English and kowtows to the media line, to speak in front of the camera, to 'interpret' what the situation is.
We can judge for ourselves what propaganda is coming from where, inspite of our obvious biases against Bush.

Do white folks get an orgasm from sounding gratuitously cynical or what? What's all this end of the world stuff? Are y'all subliminally confusing the end of the planet Earth with that point in the far future when the closest thing to a caucasian will be an Ice T/Mariah Carey lookalike?

I remember when I was a kid, I thought the Betamax would replace movie theaters ... just as I'm sure there were those who thought TV would replace the movies ... well, guess what? Theaters are still here! Betamax ain't, but theaters are ..!

The Internet will augment, and at times, offset the so-called mainstream media, period (How do you think those photos from Abu Gharib got around so quick?). The biggest problem with journalism was best described by Professor Howard Zinn in his book Failure to Quit: Free speech isn't just a quality, it's also a QUANTITY. In other words, it ain't as simple as some good ol' boy patting himself on the back and saying, "We have the First Amendment and Castro's Cuba doesn't -- nya-nya!" It's ALSO a matter of HOW MUCH free speech do you have?

When you speak for the rich/powerful (the right-wing), the rich/powerful got your back, which is why FOX News is so dominant -- it's not only paid for by the rich/powerful, but it goes out of its way to appeal to the rich/powerful (and their economically masochistic wannabes -- think of familiars from Blade). However, if you speak for the poor/oppressed (the left-wing), guess what? You're usually broke, because by definiton, the poor/oppressed can't afford to take care of themselves -- let alone anyone else. THAT'S why Joyce Marcel is having such a hard time getting paid. NOT because of "the inevitable changes in the industry" or some such damn rhetorical nonsense ...

It takes TWO things to do anything in life, desire and the means, and since, by definition, the rich/powerful can afford to pay for column space and air time, guess who has MORE free speech? Who's got the BIGGER audience? Bill O'Reilly or Amy Goodman from Democracy Now?

AND WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF O'REILLY BEING MORE FAMOUS THAN GOODMAN??

THIS is why the Fairness Doctrine is soooo important and exactly why Ronald (six letters) Wilson (six letters) Reagan (six letters) struck it down the same year G.E. (who makes parts for nukes) bought NBC ... and why advice like this ...

"start your own blog and let We The People decide if your writing and views are worth supporting through funding drives"

... is worse than Marie Antoinette dismissively saying "Let 'em eat cake." How in the Hell is We The People going to even know your blog is out there? Telethapy? Ask any third party candidate: You caN'T choose something you doN'T know exists!

There's NOTHING inherently noble about being shy and humble, activists! THE NAME OF THE GAME IS FAME! If you truly want to help journalism, get famous and get funding! Marlon Brando paid the bail of jailed Black Panthers -- so find a similar sponsor!

If you want the public to care about the victims of Amerikkka's policy in Gitmo (and NOT continue to obsess over bread and circuses like Britney Spears), then make it the subject of EVERY conversation! Don't talk about the weather or who won the game, talk about the School of the Americas or what Amnesty International said about C.I.A. renditioning people to be tortured! Doing so may keep you from being invited to a couple of parties, but you'll be doing your part to keep hope alive! As they say, freedom ain't free ...