The Net's Effect on Journalism 149
An Associated Press article about the impact of the internet on journalism has a few interesting findings. A few years ago, it was expected that the internet would democratize news coverage. While print media is being rapidly reborn online, web-based news appears to be constraining the number of conversations instead of expanding them. "The news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report. Two stories - the war in Iraq and the 2008 presidential election campaign - represented more than a quarter of the stories in newspapers, on television and online last year, the project found. Take away Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, and news from all of the other countries in the world combined filled up less than 6 percent of the American news hole, the project said."
Re:Not the Net's fault... (Score:5, Interesting)
> the news so because they are the most important issues we
> currently face.
It might also be that there's a huge propaganda effort going on. Remember what Noam Chomksy said about the Propaganda model [wikipedia.org] in his 1998 "Manufacturing Concent":
I'd like to see the study (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the problem with mainstream media. They are so used to summarizing stories for us little people that they seldom give links to the material they use in their stories. It would be nice to be able to independently corroborate Wired's assessment of the paper, wouldn't it? A paper written by industry people is summarized for us by industry people. Forgive me for being a bit skeptical.
In fact (Score:5, Interesting)
All in all, I believe that the net is doing the work that mainstream is no longer doing. Of course, the vast majority of Americans are sick of worthless news.
Re:Not the Net's fault... (Score:4, Interesting)
There isn't any secret that the web has lead to a deluge of crap sites, or thousands of sites all writing about the same topics. But to say that because of this there is no alternative news is misinterpreting the numbers - an extra ten thousand cookie cutter sites doesn't mean there are any less unique ones, it just means that the signal to noise ratio has got worse.
Re:Well DUH (Score:2, Interesting)
What's more pertinent, that you expected the Guardian not to have the story, or the fact that it did?
What about journalism before the net? (Score:5, Interesting)
I submit that the condition of dialog in US and maybe the world would be MUCH worse than it is now if the internet didn't exist, and the advent of its popularization is grossly underrated in the effect it has had on society. We have a population that regularly and instantly interacts with foreign nationals, hears and expresses opinions opposing the standard line fed by mainstream media outlets, accesses articles and information in quantities and variation vastly beyond the past, and has the capability to organize efforts around issues that would have never been exposed by the powers that be. We might cowering under a state of martial law at this point if the critical mass of voices weren't heard opposing the current administration's policies.
While there is still a place for journalistic principles and rigorous training in the discipline, the majority of "journalism" that people were exposed to before the internet hardly made an attempt to meet that standard. Anyone can and should be a journalist, even if it simply means having a cell-phone camera at the right place and right time.
LS
Re:Not the Net's fault... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is that obvious? Isn't the state of the media today proof enough? If market pressures aren't the driving force behind this vapid propagandistic state of the media, what is?
Re:Why Democratize? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then how do you explain the huge failure (failure from the public's perspective not the business perspective) of the mainstream media coverage on the invasion and occupation of Iraq (failures which persist to this day) and the continued narrowing of debate on health care, both of which are incredibly important issues of the day? The failure to adequately report on the war is all too evident (particularly today as the mainstream media ignores an important weekend war panel where soldiers were speaking out); Jeff Greenfield's "analysis" is an example of the failure to convey what Americans want in health care [counterpunch.org]. The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour tried a similar scam [fair.org] years ago with Dr. Steffi Woolhandler when she spoke about single-payer universal health care (if you have access to Lexis-Nexis you can probably get a complete transcript of the charade). There aren't that many news sources, the media ownership is shrinking and they're all multinational corporations with largely compatible ends. Not that you accused anyone of saying so, but one apparently doesn't need any smoke-filled room conspiracy to get them to behave in such a way that they all profoundly misreport. Chomsky's analysis of this (quoted elsewhere in this /. discussion) seems far more accurate to me.