Comments on: Circling the Drain – Maybe the Government Can Help?

By: Joshua Allen

Joshua Allen — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:15:40 +0000

Cool; thanks for sharing your perspective.I guess I can stop hyperventilating now

By: Charles

Charles — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:10:31 +0000

Joshua,I think investigative journalism will survive just fine.It doesn’t have to be wedded to a broadsheet-sized piece of paper. Look at the various episodes in recent years where bloggers have been holding traditional media accountable – investigating the investigator (turns out big media needs scrutiny too). This will only expand and they’re not bottlenecked by a handful of big publications that set their editorial agenda based on an annual run at the Pulitzers.Bloomberg puts a lot on their web site for free. I am amazed by the breadth and depth of reporting and analysis that is out there for free, never mind the paid stuff. It isn’t like the newspapers were free. if you really want news, you can still pay for it.As for the question of how much of the population actually cares what is going on, that I don’t have a solution for. Watching Jon Stewart is probably better than not consuming any news. A lot of those disappearing reporters weren’t exactly Woodward and Bernstein; they were doing entertainment, "cat rescued from tree" stories and content that looked good next to specific kinds of advertising (e.g. the auto section exists because they can sell car ads and need some token content). It is very disruptive for the people and institutions involved, but the world will survive.

By: Joshua Allen

Joshua Allen — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:35:54 +0000

As always, great post.I’ve been following this whole implosion with some concern over the past couple of years, and would love to get your opinion about something.My gut feeling is that it’s very bad for society; the number of real journalists has dropped dramatically, papers going out of business, and so on.True business and finance journalism is now essentailly inaccessible to normal citizens who cannot afford Bloomberg’s monthly fee.And political investigative journalism is severely weakened.In the meantime, 30% of Americans say that Colbert and Stewart are replacing mainstream news.On the other hand, I remember you explaining to me probably 10 years ago that news was most entertainment anyway.So my question is, am I overreacting?Or to put it a different way: how does the quality and number of "real" journalists today compare with what we had 50 years ago or 100 years ago?I suppose it’s true that we are a lot worse off than we were 10 years ago; but are we really worse off than we were for the rest of the contry’s history?I’m asking because I wouldn’t even know where to start to answer that question.And in the absence of any other informed situation, things look very dire right now.