Democracy Can't Exist Without Newspapers?
from the banging-my-head dept
I really want to stop writing stories about clueless newspaper folks making braindead statements about the industry, but it just never stops. The latest is that the former editor of the Scotsman, in Edinburgh (where I'm heading next week), is claiming that democracy can't exist without newspapers. He's upset that the Scotsman has gone downhill apparently -- and that may be the case, but that has little to do with whether or not democracy can or can't exist without a newspaper. The mistake, again (and we keep hearing this) is this weird assumption that without newspapers, it means all news reporting goes away. But that's simply not true.In fact, we're seeing new reporting startups pop up pretty much every day. The Columbia Journalism Review has a great feature piece written by a long-time foreign correspondent for a variety of newspapers who has built a brand new reporting service that is providing news both on its own site and to a number of other news sources (including some of the newspapers who used to employ him). The fact that newspapers might go away hardly means that journalism goes away -- and it certainly doesn't mean that watchdog efforts go away.
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Filed Under: democracy, journalism, newspapers
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The point is that you don't NEED newspapers, they can still be a good source of news, just not the only.
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Legal issues
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truth terrorists
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That's great, because democracies suck!
Democracy is two wolves and sheep deciding what's for dinner. Of course, the fun really starts when the sheep is gone.
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Edit
"A Liberal Democracy Can't Exist Without Newspapers!"
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newspapers=freedom of information
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Credibility
What worries me is that the future could hold too many sources with too many agendas and people will not know who to believe. I get fake stories emailed to me all the time from friends and family, imagine that happening from 100 “independent” news outlets. The important stories will be lost in all the fake stories.
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Watchdogs
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Hear Ye Hear Ye
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The opposite couldn't be more true
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Newspapers
The Santa Maria Times, most of the news is just cut and paste from the Internet.
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Newspapers
it highlights the fact that journalists sit in offices taking PR outputs off newswires and will repurpose the same story in many different styles, languages and ways for different audiences which reinforces audience views and retains readership/viewers. any deviation from the story with comment may open them up to libel suits etc
one of its conclusions is that US people get fed very little news about international stuff that they are largely ignorant about US foreign policy and people's reaction internationally. This is because most news is repurposed outputs from PR machines.
another conclusion is that the decline in real and investigative journalism (which media will not pay for)is the decline in civil liberties as news is repurposed government PR
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Edinburgh
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Liza
homes for sale
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