The Bad News About the News

http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2014/bad-news#

by jonathansizz • 11 years ago

60 54 11 years ago

dmfdmf4• 11 years ago

This is a long winded version of Clay Shirky's article from 2009 "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable". Shirky's site is down so here is an alternative link; http://edge.org/conversation/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unt...

Its always good to remind ourselves that we are in the middle of the greatest social revolution since the invention of the printing press.

dalke4• 11 years ago

"we are in the middle of the greatest social revolution since the invention of the printing press" sets a very high bar. A Google Books search for the phrase 'greatest social revolution' finds many matches, which includes: the US Civil War, the US civil rights movement, the birth control pill, the switch from feudal societies to nation states, the introduction of women to the workforce, the formation of the USSR, and the English Industrial Revolution.

Which current revolution are you considering which surpasses all of those?

https://books.google.com/books?id=Vc-0lrtU2ZgC&pg=PA486&lpg=... says that the civil rights movement was the "greatest social revolution our nation has known since the Civil War."

https://books.google.com/books?id=SoZMO6lYDNIC&pg=PA209&dq=%... talks about the social revolution from the ancien régime to a new society of individualism and economic ties.

https://books.google.com/books?id=wff_AwAAQBAJ&pg=PR6&dq=%22... writes "I hope the republication of this detailed account of the greatest social revolution of the modern age will be of service to students who are interested in the origin, background and early vicissitudes of the Soviet state ..."

https://books.google.com/books?id=YT-WLCYbLqMC&pg=PT70&dq=%2... comments "The second entrenched reality, this one testing social conservatives, is the sexual revolution, perhaps the greatest social revolution in human history. The invention, and popularization in the mid-1960s, of the birth control pill ... meant that for the first time in human history, women could reliably control reproduction without abstinence."

https://books.google.com/books?id=_6aS8Y4O1MMC&pg=PA220&dq=%... "Perhaps the greatest social revolution in this century in the United States is the influx of women into the paid labor force."

https://books.google.com/books?id=gVUKAQAAIAAJ&q=%22greatest... writes "The English Industrial Revolution, Edwards points out, "was probably the greatest social revolution which has occurred on this planet" ; yet there was almost no violence connected with it."

dmfdmf4• 11 years ago

Yes, a very high bar indeed. In the broad sweep of history the printing press led to a revolution in science, technology and ultimately the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, as Shirky mentions, it destroyed the monolithic political and social power of the Catholic Church. In its heyday the Catholic Church was the sustainer and maintainer of the culture and social order. Eventually, as the Church's power faded it was the newspapers that served this role and what the internet has broken and not yet replaced with a new cultural and social maypole. All we know now is that it won't be the newspapers.

From a different angle, the Industrial Revolution is to body as the Internet Revolution is to mind. The Industrial Revolution leveraged mechanical power to replace human and animal power in the production of goods. The Internet Revolution is leveraging communication to increase the power of the mind in the production of new ideas and knowledge. This has exciting implications for the future if you understand role of the mind in human development and our history.

msandford4• 11 years ago

From the article: "Craigslist has destroyed that business (classifieds) for the Post and every major paper in the country."

Any and all of those local papers could have done their own online classifieds. They could have charged for the ad and both printed it and put it online so it was searchable. They could have charged for one or the other or both. They could have all collaborated and syndicated their individual classifieds into one big database too.

But they did none of this. They fundamentally didn't understand their own businesses in the face of change. And their businesses are failing as a result.

It's sad of course. And it's probably not good for society in the short term. But it's hard for me to get too worked up about it; it's not as though they didn't have HUGE advantages versus craigslist. They just didn't take it seriously and it ate their lunch.

wwweston• 11 years ago

Yep. I'm aware of at least one market where a popular local radio/TV media outlet created an online presence before Craigslist got there and still dominates that niche.

I'm also aware of a print shopper with great circulation which had upper management that saw this coming in the mid 90s, and went to their top management with plans to leverage their print business to become a CL and eBay competitor. Upper management shut them down... until about 10 years later (obviously too late).

So you're right. This seems to be pretty self-inflicted. But it doesn't change the fact that these aren't just businesses we're talking about, fungible with any other businesses. They're the businesses we bought our picture of the world from. News organizations having a grassroots revenue stream is a really good way to make sure they're not captured in certain ways.

x0x0• 11 years ago

And they're critically important to keep an eye on government. See, for example, the city administrators in CA paying themselves the better part of $1m/year in cash, plus various vote fraud and open records violations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Bell_scandal

makeitsuckless• 11 years ago

I know a newspaper who's IT guys very early on brought their major classified section (used cars) online, back in the 90s. It was a very low budget project, but it worked well.

Management pulled the plug on that project (because of course online was not core business and they were afraid it competed with print), only to years later buy a startup to get back in the game...

abandonliberty2• 11 years ago

It's almost like we need an organization created and funded by the people in order to serve their best interests.

Or something.

(in all seriousness though the structure of Reuters is very interesting and designed to prevent capture)

batbomb• 11 years ago

I'm sure you are talking about KSL ins Salt Lake City.

abakker• 11 years ago

an example of a newspaper that has good online classifieds is KSL, in Salt Lake. Their classifieds are frequently of higher quality than craigslist posts.

kansface2• 11 years ago

I don't think it was within their power to compete against CL which happily transformed a billion dollar business into a million dollar business. Maybe, just maybe, if the newspapers kept their local monopolies they could have stemmed the bleeding. I tend to think their demise was inevitable - content (news/classifieds) has next to no digital value.

cactusface• 11 years ago

What do you mean news/classifieds have next to no digital value? They're a delivery vehicle for ads, just like TV. They just can't be sold as their own thing. Then again, Craigslist makes a good chunk of its money by charging for classifieds:

https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/posting_fees

azakai• 11 years ago

It's sad of course. And it's probably not good for society in the short term. But it's hard for me to get too worked up about it; it's not as though they didn't have HUGE advantages versus craigslist. They just didn't take it seriously and it ate their lunch.

I think we should get worked up about it.

Yes, they deserve to fail, exactly as you said. "They" here is a very small group of people, those running the Post and other papers.

But also as you said, this is probably not good for society - a far, far larger group of people. I would say that this is not just probably not good, but almost certainly not good, barring a miracle.

So yes, it would be just for a small group of people to get their comeuppance. But for all the rest of society, we are losing one of the crucial mechanisms of a functioning democracy. That should terrify us.

1stop• 11 years ago

It has been/is a fairly flawed mechanism of democracy and is more often used as a propaganda tool than an informative tool.

The larger problem is how do we extract bias from media as I suspect that comes back to money.

toyg2• 11 years ago

"News as we know it is at risk. So is democratic governance, which depends on an effective watchdog news media."

Post-Iraq (and in the days of government-backed Snowden-smearing) that's a problematic statement. If the statement is true, democratic governance is already dead (since news media clearly do not see themselves as watchdogs anymore, nor do they act like they were). If the statement is false and democratic governance is still present, then it clearly does not depend on "news as we know it".

xenophon• 11 years ago

I don't think it's true that news media "clearly" do not see themselves as watchdogs anymore -- that's a pretty massive generalization.

As the article discussed, the universe of news providers writ large has certainly moved in two directions that are problematic: (1) ideological coverage, i.e. the big cable networks, and (2) "short-form"/entertainment/listicle-style coverage that optimizes for page views instead of content, i.e. Buzzfeed (although they're developing a helluva investigative section and stole Mark Schoofs from ProPublica).

But just because the balance has shifted does not mean that all news media have suddenly abrogated social responsibility. The legacy papers aren't dead yet and their quality hasn't diminished notably; on the new media front, folks at places like Ozy and Vox Media aren't half bad at balancing the pageview-centric culture of most online media with depth and quality of topic selection and reporting.

In short, I don't think that statement is problematic at all. The author is worried about the sustainability of quality news, but it seems wildly inaccurate to deny its current effectiveness at promoting governance.

toyg2• 11 years ago

The legacy papers aren't dead yet and their quality hasn't diminished notably

That's a pretty massive generalisation as well. After Judith Miller, Jayson Blair and today's Tom Harper, I would say there is a good amount of data indicating the quality has in fact diminished across the board. The WaPost itself is a symbol of this decay: in 30 years they went from Watergate hounds to Iraq-invasion cheerleaders. If you look at the average column nowadays, it's all a bunch of "senior official sources" briefing utter lies in order to further their agendas.

but it seems wildly inaccurate to deny its current effectiveness at promoting governance.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "governance".

Note that I'm not saying this shift is entirely the result of market pressure; increased knowledge of the mechanisms and inner workings of news media has produced an increased amount of skilful operators, people who know how to manipulate and interact with journalists better than ever. Still, I think the trend is quite clear.

javadrone• 11 years ago

i wonder if this is why the news media is so hostile to the tech industry and tech workers lately...

SandersAK• 11 years ago

It's important to distinguish the business model of publishing journalism from actual journalism.

The News Industry is dying. But the creation and effective dissemination of important information is thriving.

chris_va• 11 years ago

We spent a fair bit of time researching this trend at Google News (former TL), and talking to the industry. I cannot speak for the company anymore, but the major finding was:

"The newspaper industry was not in the business of delivering the news, it was the the business of delivering ads."

News was their product, but they made their money by delivering ads to everyone's doorstep on a daily basis. The subscription rates they charged consumers were insufficient to cover their costs (by a large margin). The rest of the revenue was made up in classified ads, job listings, consumer ads, etc. None of those markets were particularly efficient, and as a result the industry was highly exposed to any changes in those markets.

Enter the internet, and:

1) Craigslist probably dropped the industry revenue about $20B/year.

2) Monster.com and competitors took another $10B/year or so.

3) Google, Yahoo, DoubleClick, etc took another bite. Though less so, ironically, because newspapers are still considered a great vector for brand advertising, and that sort of advertising is still difficult to quantify online.

4) Equal access to worldwide publication means that you (the consumer) are no longer fully reliant on your local paper. You can read the best article from the best source. This has multiple consequences, good and bad for publishers. The good (well, for cost reasons, not quality reasons) is that publications can skip covering events that will be better covered by a syndication partner (like AP), or just re-hash content from the local sources. The bad news is that the local market no longer has to buy your paper, and can now find a better source online.

The industry also continues to make a lot of strange choices, which don't help. For example, they make more with an extra 20% distribution on ads (publication dependent) than they do from the entirety of their subscription revenue. Given the demand elasticity for news content, one would then expect publications to drop subscription fees entirely. That they don't is somewhat mind boggling, but the explanation I received was that "distribution" (printing, shipping, etc) has its own P&L (for historical reasons). The other angle might be "exclusivity" (you value something you pay $6 more than something you get for free), but I am not enough of a brand expert to judge this argument.

The industry also tries to latch onto online subscriptions and micro-payments, which is maybe the stupidest thing I have seen them do from an economics standpoint. The numbers just don't add up (the number of people willing to pay versus the opportunity cost from lost ad revenue). Even if every person on the internet paid into a newspaper subscription fund, we are still back to the industry was never in the business of selling news.

misuba• 11 years ago

News was their product, but they made their money by delivering ads to everyone's doorstep on a daily basis.

How does Google make money?

kansface2• 11 years ago

I feel like much of what was lost wasn't very valuable. How many reporters do we actually need sitting in the room with the Press Secretary? If reporters just report the news and only the news, how many do we need to send to each natural disaster to get the story? If readers can (and will) read only the best report or the one that most closely aligns with their political beliefs, why bother rewriting the same story one hundred times over (every major paper)?

At any rate, there will always be journalism even if it is wildly unprofitable for the same reason there will always be musicians. Long form journalism is often advanced as the biggest loss - I don't see the equivalent of t shirt sales or patronage keeping it around but I haven't seen any numbers either. Anyone know how it is actually doing?

SovietDissident• 11 years ago

"Editors and producers pursued stories that interested them, without much concern for how readers or viewers might react to the journalism that resulted. Members of this tribe of journalists shared a sense of what “the news” was. The most influential of them were the editors and reporters on the best newspapers, whose decisions were systematically embraced and echoed by other editors and writers, as well as by the producers of television news. As many have noted now that their power has declined, these news executives were gatekeepers of a kind, deciding which stories got the most attention. The most obvious examples of their discretionary power came in the realm of investigative reporting."

Should I really bemoan the loss of a system in which a handful of individuals picked the news which was deemed worthy of publication or air-time?

hackuser2• 11 years ago

Should I really bemoan the loss of a system in which a handful of individuals picked the news which was deemed worthy of publication or air-time?

What is a better alternative? I'm not sure I know an answer. Crowd-sourcing editorial decisions doesn't seem useful. The crowd lacks expertise to judge what is important, at least in many fields. Also, they (well, we) censor what is unpopular or uncomfortable. Also, outside algorithmic aggregators like Google News, editors still make the decisions.

Consider tech news. Would the general public do a good job of which tech stories are significant? (Hacker News readers are a specialized subset, and still I don't agree with most editorial decisions.) It's the same in economics, domestic policy, foreign policy, etc.

untog2• 11 years ago

Do you think that Reddit has the best list of news stories every day? Or Hacker News?

At the end of the day, someone has to decide. And I'm yet to see an algorithm or crowdsource method that does it well.

jqm• 11 years ago

Given that national news seems little more than tired and ridiculous propaganda (for the last decade and a half at least) whatever happens to the outlets is of little concern to me.

seizethecheese• 11 years ago

Newspapers have never been an unbiased source of information as a public good. My dad was a newspaper journalist and tells a story of almost getting fired for a minor factual error in a story about a major advertiser. Newspapers have always been businesses primarily.

InclinedPlane3• 11 years ago

Bias isn't necessarily a bad thing in reporting, in many ways it's good to have an agenda (examples: anti-corruption, pro-world peace, pro liberty, etc.) It's when the agenda overrides the facts or when the agenda is covert rather than overt that things get messy.

habitue3• 11 years ago

Ok, so a lot of people are nit-picking this essay by attacking the weaker points (whether the gate-keeper role is one we want centralized, whether news media was truly unbiased etc).

The much stronger central point that needs to be answered is "Where will in-depth investigative journalism get funding to continue?" Yes, in-depth investigative journalism is not all that traditional media does/did. Yes, some of what investigative journalism does can be taken over by better data-mining and cheaper methods these days.

But there remains, after all that, a certain amount that cannot be done by bloggers and data mining. That's the central question posed by this essay that needs answering, and it's obvious there isn't a good answer right now. That doesn't mean saving traditional media is the best way to solve this problem, but it does mean this aspect of traditional media needs a viable replacement we don't have yet.

x5n1• 11 years ago

"Where will in-depth investigative journalism get funding to continue?"

From people like Snowden and Greenwald who are willing to sacrifice their lives to get the truth out. As has always been the case. Media for the most part has been a mechanism for distributing propaganda. That business losing its profitability does not concern me one bit. As for people who want to be reporters losing jobs and not having that as a career option, well this is a systemic problem with the new economy, and that is a much deeper problem than a business model not working any more because of tech.

afarrell• 11 years ago

How many such people are there and how wealthy are they?

habitue3• 11 years ago

I'm talking less about whether anyone will do it and more about whether there a system in place to encourage enough people to do it

untog2• 11 years ago

Snowden and Greenwald aren't independently funded, though, so you're not answering the question.

Greenwald is bankrolled by a generous billionaire, for now. Relying on such generosity does not seem wise. Would he be as effective if he had to balance a full time job?

InclinedPlane3• 11 years ago

The premise that the traditional media has been doing a competent job with in-depth investigative journalism is a false one. They have not been. More so, the subset of the media that has been doing that work, such as it is, is still very much smaller than the current remaining size of traditional media. Additionally, organizations that do a good job on such things are overall the least under threat of not existing in the near future.

Secondarily, the idea that there is some sort of strong divide between "bloggers" and "journalists" is a fantasy. A journalist is someone who does journalism, period. It doesn't require a degree or special training, it requires doing it well. And there are many folks who have been doing it well despite being outside the realm of traditional journalism. It's insulting to call them "bloggers" or "amateurs" or whatever other nickname you can throw at them. To the degree that they do professional quality journalism, they are journalists.

Meanwhile, we labor under this idea that the established news media has been a particularly good example of journalistic quality. Largely this is because there weren't other examples to compare against. The reality is that the actual quantity of legitimate reporting, investigation, and worthwhile analysis in a newspaper or in a TV news broadcast has generally been incredibly tiny. A slim collection of pages, a handful of minutes. But we've gotten used to the patterns, the production values, the mythos, the sense of gravitas.

The reality is that most of it is pablum and the rest is thin gruel. CNN? An alien from another planet who just landed on Earth would look at the media and tell you to your face that there is a hair's breadth difference between CNN and buzzfeed, and not always necessarily in the favor of CNN. Most of the rest of the media is in the same shape, with only the tiniest handful of exclusions.

As you allude, preserving the traditional media isn't the right way to solve the problem, because they weren't solving it. Indeed, in some cases (FOX News, etc.) they have a tendency to make their viewers less informed and more ignorant. We shouldn't be asking ourselves how to get back to the glory days of the traditional media, that's largely a fantasy. We should be asking ourselves how people become informed in the digital age, and that's a much vaster topic than just the "news".

habitue3• 11 years ago

My intent wasn't to belittle bloggers, but the point remains that bloggers generally have less funding to do long term in-depth reporting. Unless they're independently funded, advertising revenue on a blog can't support it. Advertising revenue on a big newspaper's site like the NYT probably can't afford it either.

The Bob Woodwards of the world don't come out of a vacuum. They're part of a larger system in which digging into a problem takes time, and many don't succeed. That means you need a lot of people trying to do it. That means you need some system that is paying for and encouraging people to do this, you can't rely on a couple of independently funded bloggers to carry the load for everyone.

Given your "most of it pablum" talk above, I can guess you don't know anyone who works in a good newspaper or a local television station's investigative unit. I agree 24 hour news networks are full of filler. Local news and the better newspaper's are a better representation of what "traditional journalism" looks like. They just have vastly reduced resources. But you get the people we're talking about here who dig into stories and find out what's going on. And when you talk to them, you hear about journalistic integrity. Yes really! I know it's fun to be cynical on HN, but journalistic integrity is a real thing that is alive and well but its funding is dwindling.

InclinedPlane3• 11 years ago

Seems like the same old story in new clothing: the internet and craigslist destroyed the jobs of those poor little old honest, hardworking newspapermen.

This is a very sexy narrative, especially for newspapermen, but I think it's a false one. The problem hasn't been ad dollars, the problem was that newspapers survived largely because they were a medium and because they had a sort of monopoly on a communication channel that people had come to rely on.

The reality is that newspapers had not been doing a particularly good job for a very long time. The conceit is that the office at a newspaper is a buzz of journalistic activity. The reality is that it was mostly drudge work, just going through the motions to ensure that classified ads, lazy PR puff pieces, marmaduke cartoons, and regurgitated wire reports got churned out day to day. The kernels of quality, original reporting, investigative journalism, have typically been very tiny even at the best newspapers of the 20th century through today, and completely absent at many others. It's foolish to believe that people didn't notice, that the public doesn't care because they are just a bunch of uninterested, unsophisticated louts. The news media spent decades methodically transforming themselves into a useless, valueless tabloid media caricature of themselves.

It's shocking that some of the best journalism in traditional media being done today is being done by comedians. But the narrative that newspapers are dying due to no fault of their own remains firmly entrenched, and for that reason I don't expect them to be able to claw themselves back from the abyss they've found themselves in.

The Bad News About the News

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