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Renewing the News
NEW YORK - Last week, rumors from the world of print media were rife: a hundred reporters from The New York Times news desk to be bought out - or to lose their jobs if they refuse; steep cutbacks at British newspapers; staffs slashed at Condé Nast - eight respected editors axed at Glamour magazine. In the United States and elsewhere, there is a sense that the long-foreseen implosion of news publishing is accelerating, having reached a kind of critical mass.
The head of a famous journalism school, echoing sentiments common among her peers, told me recently, "We are preparing students to enter a profession that won't exist as we know it by the time they graduate."
There is no way to disguise the reality: newspapers readers, in the West at least, are getting older; younger readers prefer to get their information online, where readers spend far less time actually reading news than print readers do; and, most agonizingly of all for the industry, people who were willing to pay for newspapers are unwilling pay for the same content on a screen.
But does this mean the death of news, or its evolution? I think we are witnessing something new being born.
There is a great deal to mourn about the passing of the older news model. I had the honor of attending the premiere of The Most Dangerous Man in America , the new documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and his daring release of the Pentagon Papers - against the will of the US government - to The New York Times back in 1971. At that time, newspapers held the public's focus and could be a powerful gadfly. If you were President Richard Nixon, there was no ignoring what appeared on the front page of The New York Times .
The blessings of the Internet are many, but one casualty of our segmentation into online subcultures is the loss of a common focal point. It is easy for a president or prime minister to ignore a thousand Web sites; the multiplicity of outlets and voices online, paradoxically, has weakened the media's power to force accountability from leaders.
But the passing of the old news model has also had a salutary effect. People's relationship to authority figures - doctors, politicians, religious leaders, or, indeed, journalists - is no longer slavishly deferential. But this means that newspapers, in order to survive, will have to abandon their top-down tone, their "we decide what's important" sense of hierarchy, and create more collaborative kinds of documentation and feedback with citizens.
This does not mean merely permitting comments on an article that is published online; it means creating more opportunities for citizens to document, record, curate, and edit news from their own communities. A new form could evolve from this changed power relationship between editors and citizens, potentially becoming as powerful as traditional journalism, if not more so.
First, online news outlets will have to link not just to sources, but to live footage, ideally shot by citizens. I have created op-eds in partnership with a citizens' video news collective, The Glass Bead collective. There is a potent immediacy to documents that have hyperlinks to footage of veterans being trodden underfoot by mounted police at a demonstration at the US presidential debates, or students being gassed in their rooms during the recent G-20 summit. As more citizens become documentarians, online newspapers will have to curate their work to reflect reality on a level of visual urgency that new readers take for granted.
Second, news outlets will have to be interactive: they should regularly teach citizens op-ed writing, for example, so that editors can receive a truly diverse set of submissions - well sourced, well written, and well argued - from people from all walks of life.
Finally, citizens should be able to continue to curate a news story. On Facebook, of all places, I experienced the amazing potential of posting an item and then inviting my "community" to continue the research as well as the debate. To be sure, I have been exposed to flimsy sources, and newspapers of the future should help readers learn what a good source is, and what good citizen journalism requires. But I have also had many eye-opening experiences as people from around the world and from every background deepen my understanding and sourcing about issues as far-ranging as military law, religious practices, and swine flu.
With every shift in medium, there is a period of mourning for the old one. I don't pretend to possess journalism's Holy Grail: a sustainable business plan for the newspaper of the future. But I do know that that goal is far more likely to be achieved if newspapers take their readers seriously and train them as documentarians of their own communities and of their own moments. If newspaper publishers continue merely to rearrange the deck chairs, their elegant, elitist - and currently sinking - ship will deserve its fate.
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32 Comments so far
Show AllGood riddance: the fewer mainstream journalists there are, the better off we will be, for the fewer disseminators of government propaganda there will be.
Their lazy reporting and incompetence results in the dissemination of propaganda.
Good article.
And as Abendland says, yes, let us hope the future of the news is one in which the government cannot spread its propaganda.
The main thrust of Naomi Wolf's piece that is immediately relevant to journalism schools is that amidst the wreckage of the paper and ink news trade into an uncertain online model; there still needs to be editors. Another part of the journalists' trade that will not go away once the new paradigm takes over will be sourcing and fact checking. The most vexing economic problem for online news sources is their relatively minute ad rates, and that will remain so until a methodology is arrived at that can accurately gauge the impact of ads online.
The MSM has been and still is not really news. BO said Fox News was not news, but left out most of the MSM that is not much better. The MSM sychophants for the most part, are marginalized on what they report, because they are beholden to their publishers and editors who are sychophants for the corportocracy and for the most part are very conservative, so they know the parameters in order to keep their paychecks and job security; just like anyone that works for any large company, but here is the ignominy: they are suppose to be unbiased,fair and balanced and not spouting propaganda but alas, that is nothing but an Orwellian slogan! The net is the antidote to this MSM miasma.
That sums it up nicely Paul Revere
While Wolf makes salient points and describes the shift that has been happening for some time now, I don't know if I can be optimistic yet. For those of us that really pay attention and know where to go to get quality information, the new technology is indeed an invaluable tool to circumvent the corporate oligopoly. However, the vast majority of Americans still get most of their "news" from the TV and mewspapers.
So, while we have reason to help create an alternative for news information, it will be quite difficult to compete with TV/newspapers. We can hope and work toward building a new platform to challenge the way news is generated and presented, but I fear the corporate oligopoly will not sit idly by and let their power slip away.
10 years ago students complained when required to use an Internet source in a research assignment. For 5 years or so, all the complaints have to do with being required to visit a library.
Those of the minority of students who do keep up with news do not know who Time, Newsweek, or Life Magazines are.
Almost all students in my admittedly informal polls get whatever news they do get from some online source.
The second largest group? Word of mouth.
They people they read do read people who read papers, or something of the sort.
The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 grants the president unlimited powers in shutting down the Internet as they wish. Getting news from the Internet is not only free but good for the environment and nobody has to travel around to throw the papers. Where are the same environmentalists who complain about cutting trees on this?
Maybe so, but the president can only do it for US, the USA, not for the rest of the world, and if they ever do cut us off, the rest of the world will know it, in due course of time, and there can, even for the USA, be accountability, as uncommon as that has been, in the past.
I do not think he should have this power.
I do not expect him to use it.
If he does, I predict he will suffer disastrous results, in polls, and any further politics once his current term is over.
PS - Over all, I was pro-Obama, but now, on a different topic from this (health care), I am duly disappointed.
"Getting news from the Internet is not only free but good for the environment and nobody has to travel around to throw the papers. Where are the same environmentalists who complain about cutting trees on this?"
Are you deliberately trolling?
You are aware that computers require electricity to run yes? Without electricity there would be no internet.
You are aware of all the various materials that go into making a computer yes? Materials that are often toxic on the environment when old computers are discarded?
Not to mention all the servers where information is stored. Apparently playing online computer games uses a horrible amount of energy, thanks to the dedicated servers that must be running to support it.
"You are aware that computers require electricity to run yes? Without electricity there would be no internet."
Ever heard of solar panels to harness energy from the sun?
"You are aware of all the various materials that go into making a computer yes? Materials that are often toxic on the environment when old computers are discarded?"
I already know that. I don't change computers often. There are methods of re-manufacturing certain computer parts to keep up with people and businesses constantly changing their PCs and servers.
You know, Facebook gets a bad rap, as does YouTube. But I have a Facebook page, and I have posted quite a few CD articles there -- CD also has a Facebook page, by the way. It can be a great medium for spreading news that doesn't get onto the corporate, mainstream pile of crap.
Oh yeah, I almost post a CD article a day on there. FaceBook is great.
It reaches a great many of my friends and acquaintances who would never read or see anything from CD. That doesn't necessarily mean they will read it when i post it, but the seeds are there for anyone willing to take a little time. People on this site (myself included) have always expressed their frustration that these fantastic and important articles will never reach the mainstream. Well, I truly think Facebook can be one such means.
Yeah, and I've had some friends repost the articles I link to.
But since most of my friends are hippies, communists, environmental activists, and other generally politically aware people, I wouldn't quite call it the mainstream. But you never know.
Sometimes, the greatest risks in life are not taking them. Keep plugging away. They'll make it to mainstream sooner or later.
Commercial news has performed so badly of late that one cannot mourn its passing.
At least now we don't have to buy a propaganda paper like the NYTimes to glean a few gems out of it. Online media attracts readers because it has to be consistently good or readers will go to other of many and growing choices. Some of the more popular online news media like the Huffpost and the Daily Kos seem to be thriving.
Its great not to have to pay for propaganda bombardment. I can hardly wait for online teevee and radio to take over and for the MSM to die.
But this means that newspapers, in order to survive, will have to abandon their top-down tone, their "we decide what's important" sense of hierarchy, and create more collaborative kinds of documentation and feedback with citizens
Gee, THIS sounds a lot like Ms Wolf is saying we need to go back to the way things were reported back in the 50's.... The sad truth to the matter is however, the corporate advertisers will not permit such a backstep and would rather see the printed word fade into history.
I unpluged Rupert's Ministry of Truth years ago.
To be perfectly specific, the MSM has lost our interest because of their failure to report some of the most important news of the last few years:
* The electronic theft of the 2004 presidential election
* The assassinations of Paul Wellstone, Gary Webb, Mike Connell, Athan Gibbs, and many others.
* CIA involvement in drug trafficking.
Perhaps most egregious is that the MSM dignifies the "war on terror" with serious coverage and debate, despite the fact that there is no evidence of a substantial international Islamic threat.
9/11 was the MSM's greatest failure. No questions were asked, even when Building 7 fell down without any explanation whatever, and when the government's story of what happened in the hijacked planes was based entirely on allegedly taped cell phone calls from airplanes. (Cell phones don't function above 2,000 feet.) When the Bush Administration claimed that an airplane with a 150-foot wingspan disappeared into an 18-foot hole in the Pentagon and then vaporized, no questions were asked.
"But the passing of the old news model has also had a salutary effect. People's relationship to authority figures - doctors, politicians, religious leaders, or, indeed, journalists - is no longer slavishly deferential.
But this means that newspapers, in order to survive, will have to abandon their top-down tone, their "we decide what's important" sense of hierarchy, and create more collaborative kinds of documentation and feedback with citizens."
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You have identified the central point in this whole matter and jumped to a wrong conclusion Naomi Wolf.
This is based probably on the wrong aasumption that "newspapers" and other print publications exist for the sake of their editorial content.
They do not--they exist as a means to captivate the attention of enough subscribers to view the advertising of their patrons, the advertisers. What is going on is exactly what print publications and their masters have always wanted--the promotion of docile consummers, undisturbed and unfettered by any information that might get in the way of the promation of the businesses of their patrons--the advertisers, not the readers.
The same is true of elctronic media by which I mean to include the Internet.
Support net neutrality and Common Dreams!
"The only way to have freedom of the press is to own one."
Dr. James Cone
Poet
The disappearance of the MSM as a common focal point for news, facts, and the determing of shared values is a phenomenon that can cut in directions both desirable and disastrous.
In an era of fatally corrupt mainstream news mediums, their disappearance does seem like a desirable development. It's hard to argue with that. We're at the bottom and need to reach upward..
But the techno fragmentation of newssources --the process that is now displacing the old centralized rot -- comes with no odds that favor, let alone certainties that guarantee objective journalism's rescue -- or the democratic re-empowerment of people.
So far, most of what I see on major cybernews sites, right and left, is increasingly polarized disputes over the veracity of raw facts, along with ever shallower puddles of ideological fury posing as fact-based oceans of wisdom.
I fall into this latter trap, myself, all too often. Possibly even here? Well, I hope not; since I'm trying not to be angry tonight.
Maybe a new, organic commons of trustable mainstream news (a self-regulating People's World Square) will emerge out of cyberspace's news chaos; one that begins to inform and enworld diverse human interests and values, free of the poison of ruling class trip wires, propaganda, and domination agendas.
But this could only, possibly happen, it seems clear, if the internet first remains radically unrestricted, and is extended to become freely accessible to all; and then further along the way, if the resulting creativity it might mass-liberate in us, helps us create more light, both within and between us, than dark,
We'll see, Ms Naomi. I know a woman with a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science that thinks Obama is a Muslim. I know people with advanced technical skills that can scarcely compose a sentence. I know people, working folks, that got sucked into the fake populism of the graphics intensive, FOX news bombardment during the Clinton years, and now they are "citizen journalists" of the delusional, paranoid variety.
I know people that exist in a pop culture/consumerist bubble, sustained by credit. Television and You-tube dictate their preferences, and morals. Classism, racism, ethno-centricity, sexism, materialism, nativism and consumerism dominate them in terms of attitudes and behavior. They are so deluged with disinformation, have so many secrets from themselves, they can assert completely contradictory beliefs in the same breath, and not even notice.
Citizen/Journalists? These people need therapy and accurate information. Don't count on their collective efforts to streamline the process and cut through the crap, in the post-newspaper future.
The Net is getting MSMd with the likes of Politico and Huffpo, with ideological preferences creating information markets and even more division. We live on different planets. Batgirl and Elvis had a child with Alien DNA and it's been spotted in the White House Rose Garden. Link to You-tube, from Fluffington Post.
You're such a smarty, Ms Naomi. I've never felt this way about a woman before.
Grandma Siezures