I just did a Google Search on the phrase "decline of journalism".
The items I found right off the top, were interesting and disturbing, both at the same time.
Still not quite sure what to make of the many accelerating trends in "information production" ?
-- Should be "food for thought", if nothing else ... Hope you're hungry ...
Dan Rather laments journalism's rapid decline in Aspen appearance
Rick Carroll, The Aspen Times -- July 29, 2009
[...]
Appearing at the Greenwald Pavilion as part of the Aspen Institute's McCloskey Speaker Series, [Dan] Rather said "traditional journalism is under siege" and called for media reform to become an "immediate national priority."
"A democracy and free people cannot thrive without a fiercely independent press," he said.
[...]
Today, Rather runs and anchors his own news program, Dan Rather Reports, for HDNet.
"At my age and stage I've finally reached the point where I don't have to kiss up to anybody," he said. "What a wonderful feeling it is."
Even so, his talk emphasized what he believes is the erosion of quality journalism, because of the corporatization, politicization, and "trivialization" of news. Those three factors, Rather argued, have fueled the "dumbing down and sleezing up of news" and the decline of "great American journalism."
Likening media consolidation to that of the banking industry, Rather claimed that "roughly 80 percent" of the media is controlled by no more than six, and possibly as few as four, corporations.
This predicted "future of journalism" is occurring, even as we watch it happen ... even as we try to step in and reverse the long slow decline ... to turn that "dumbing down" into a "smartening up".
Good luck with that, bloggers.
Now a different take on the "decline of Journalism" from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist ...
On the decline of Journalism and other words of wisdom from Chris Hedges
April 24, 2009
[...]
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, gave the Stuart Bullion Memorial Lecture in Journalism. His speech "The Death of News and the Rise of the Entertainment Culture" touched on the major factors facing journalism in general, and newspapers in particular, today. Here are some excerpts:
[...]
Television journalism is largely a farce. Celebrity reporters, masquerading as journalists, who make millions a year give a platform to the powerful and the famous so they can spin, equivocate, and lie. Sitting in a studio, putting on makeup, and chatting with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, or Lawrence Summers has little to do with journalism. If you are a true journalist, you should start to worry if you make $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that serving the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike journalists – and they should. Ask Amy Goodman, Seymour Hersh, Walter Pincus, Robert Scheer or David Cay Johnston.
[...]
Those who rely on the Internet gravitate to sites that reinforce their beliefs. The filtering of information through an ideological lens, which is destroying television journalism, defies the purpose of reporting. Journalism is about transmitting information that doesn’t care what you think. Reporting challenges, countermands or destabilizes established beliefs. Reporting, which is time-consuming and often expensive, begins from the premise that there are things we need to know and understand, even if these things make us uncomfortable. If we lose this ethic we are left with pandering, packaging and partisanship. We are left awash in a sea of competing propaganda. Bloggers, unlike most established reporters, rarely admit errors. They cannot get fired. Facts, for many bloggers, are interchangeable with opinions. Take a look at The Drudge Report. This may be the new face of what we call news.
Next we hear from a journalist making the case that the Information we are being fed -- is worth what we pay for it.
Hmmm? that would explain a lot, wouldn't it. Money, money, money.
the decline of journalism
Public Opinion, Weblog, by Gary Sauer-Thompson -- May 19, 2011
Annabel Crabb in her "Finding a coin for the journalistic juke box" at The Drum refers to the ongoing decline of quality journalism from falling sales of metropolitan newspapers and advertising revenue.
The standard corporate response has been cost cutting and restructuring to cover the media corporation's costs of production. The inference is that there simply will be less journalism created by professional journalists and the slide of much of contemporary journalism into banality will continue.
Crabb says that:
The internet has corroded so many of the structural basics of the journalistic transaction. Our monopoly over basic source information is significantly undermined, seeing as anyone can now watch parliament, or press conferences, or go through company reports online or tinker around with the websites of government departments. Our monopoly over the dissemination of information is damaged too, seeing as anyone can now set up a cheap publishing platform.
[...]
Now the criticisms of political journalism are substantive -- it is now less about enlightening democratic citizens about debates around policy issues that matter to the public, and more trivia and spin, gotcha politics and partisan deception.
When all News is Free -- we'll all be Rich, right?
The Internet is lowering barriers -- the question is -- which ones?
Finding a coin for the journalistic juke box
by Annabel Crabb, ABC The Drum -- May 13, 2011
[...] the Cooks Source controversy has an impressively detailed and lavishly-referenced entry in Wikipedia. This significant campaign for people to be paid for what they do, in other words, has been immortalised on a website [Wikipedia] that is perhaps the greatest monument in the world today to one of the internet's astounding truths: People will often work very hard, and quite happily, for no pay at all.
So evolves one of the most fascinating paradoxes in the online community.
Four out of five internet users don't want to pay for content.
[...]
And yet so many people continue to work for free. Take the Huffington Post, one of the great online-startup success stories,
[...] he couldn't have cared less about the money: "I wanted the exposure."
It turns out that plenty of people wanted the exposure that publication on HuffPo brought, as well as the chance to be part of an exciting and ambitious - and in a short space of time, very successful -- venture that seemed a bright new innovation in a grim media landscape.
[...]
But a group of people [Huffington Post unpaid bloggers] went from contentment to resentment in a very short time, because the spirit of the arrangement changed. More particularly, Ms Huffington became very rich, very suddenly, and very much due to the efforts of her volunteer army.
The future of journalism is not for sale ... or is it?
I'm so confused ... maybe you have some 'journalistic words of wisdom' to add the Information Dissemination discussion?
What do you see coming down the Information Highway with its oh so many Echo Chamber Cul-de-sacs ?
Oh yeah, leave a quarter in the Tip Jar too, on your way out -- Thanks!
I'm working for peanuts, here ...