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Will you miss newspapers when they're gone?

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JavaJones:
      Every city and town needs a newspaper to do at least one essential thing: let the public know what the local government is doing and how.  each town has its businesses which may, or may not, be serving the public as they should. Who's going to tell citizens about it if not the local newspaper?
     Newspapers are essential to a democracy. Which is why all tyrants suppress try to suppress them.   
     Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797), a British politician, is supposed to have said "that there were three Estates in Parliament [the Lords Temporal, the Lords Spiritual and the Commons], but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important far than they all."
    The internet and TV provide good news services. But none of them, and nothing else, can do what a local newspaper can do.
    However, we do need a *new kind* of newspaper.... Anyone have any suggestions?
           So says an old former editor of his town newspaper.
-Bill Steo (March 09, 2010, 04:47 PM)
--- End quote ---

Then again, what about independent citizen journalism and discussion? Blogs, forums, even Facebook groups. I see them having at least as much power and relevance as a local paper, which may be more prone to influence from local deep pockets anyway. True though that sometimes not enough citizens will really run down a story to quite match up to *good* investigative journalism. On the other hand how many "towns" have good investigative journalism for local events?

- Oshyan

MilesAhead:
The other thing killing them off, other than their own online editions that is, is outfits like ESPN moving into local sports coverage.  They already have:
http://espn.go.com/losangeles/

As time goes on they'll encompass smaller cities, then smaller towns..
there won't be much for the local weekly to report except what's gonna'
be served in the high school cafeteria for the week.

johnk:

Then again, what about independent citizen journalism and discussion? Blogs, forums, even Facebook groups. I see them having at least as much power and relevance as a local paper, which may be more prone to influence from local deep pockets anyway. True though that sometimes not enough citizens will really run down a story to quite match up to *good* investigative journalism. On the other hand how many "towns" have good investigative journalism for local events?

- Oshyan
-JavaJones (March 09, 2010, 06:06 PM)
--- End quote ---

As I alluded to in a previous post, once upon a time (i.e. 20 years ago) more or less very town would have at least one newspaper with a well-trained team of journalists (I'm talking about the UK here). Today, falling newspaper sales mean that is a thing of the past. And no amount of "citizen journalism" will replace it. Again, going back to my previous post, 20 years ago, journalists would attend every local council meeting. Meetings were divided into "part 1" (public) and "part 2" (private), where everyone apart from councillors got thrown out. Of course the private meeting generally contained the interesting stuff. It was part of the journalist's job to leave the meeting with the part two documents in his/her pocket (no, they didn't steal them -- it was all down to contacts). Good journalists could turn a vague whisper into a finished, accurate 250-word story in 20 minutes because, somewhere in their overflowing contacts books, they would have the names and phone numbers of everyone worth knowing on their patch. Citizen journalists tend either to ride hobby horses, or dip in and out on an ad hoc basis as subjects interest them, or as they stumble across news. Citizen journalism has a lot to offer, but it's no replacement for a professional newsroom in every town.

Expect wasteful local government spending to grow exponentially in the coming decades. And you won't know about it until it's too late to save your taxpayer pounds/dollars.

JavaJones:
I dunno, I don't have a great deal of experience with local, professional journalism (though what little contact I've had has never particularly blown my socks off). But I do reckon government spending has ballooned quite nicely in the last 20 years. Maybe that's down to lack of proper reporting already creeping in during that time, though it hasn't really been a crisis for newspapers until the last 5, maybe 10 years. I'm also inherently skeptical of any "it was better in my day" subjective assertions, not that I doubt your experience or your character, just that it's not a particularly compelling argument. ;)

- Oshyan

johnk:
I dunno, I don't have a great deal of experience with local, professional journalism (though what little contact I've had has never particularly blown my socks off). But I do reckon government spending has ballooned quite nicely in the last 20 years. Maybe that's down to lack of proper reporting already creeping in during that time, though it hasn't really been a crisis for newspapers until the last 5, maybe 10 years. I'm also inherently skeptical of any "it was better in my day" subjective assertions, not that I doubt your experience or your character, just that it's not a particularly compelling argument. ;)

- Oshyan
-JavaJones (March 09, 2010, 07:02 PM)
--- End quote ---
The fact that you know government spending has increased by given amounts is probably down to the fact that you've read/heard/watched reliable news reports. And while reliable media sources will probably remain at national level for the foreseeable future, it's at regional/local level that media scrutiny is vanishing. And that just cannot be a good thing.

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