Soccer Dad

Parasites of the media

In a Tech Central Station column "Newspapers in Trouble" a few weeks ago, Instapundit took a new look at what newspapers are and how they do their jobs. Among his suggestions are that the newspaper has to view its product and employees differently. Newspapers need to view their product as news and their delivery system as paper. And he believes that paper is obsolete. Furthermore he argues that newspapers ought to combine the job of reporter/photographer, insisting that reporters learn to take their own pictures.

One other idea he has is that news organizations should take blog criticism seriously and incorporate constructive criticism of bias and inaccuracy into the final product. (This idea is echoed here in a review of Army of Davids.)

I had wondered about a different idea, that involves a different type of reorganization.

Certain newspapers (the New York Times and Washington Post come to mind) have reputations of "national" newspapers with established bureaus around the world. A paper like the Baltimore Sun has some international staff but hardly on the same level. I realize that there's a lot of prestige in having foreign bureaus.

But maybe newspapers should concentrate on what they do best. Perhaps a second tier newspaper like the Baltimore Sun should forget about its foreign bureaus and concentrate its efforts on local reporting.

Then rather than publishing independently, it could offer its local reportage to the NY Times (for example) so that the Times could have a national edition for the Baltimore area. Other local newspapers could do make similar arrangements.

However, for now, newspapers still need to deal with the reality of today.

NRO's media blog reports on falling circulation of newspapers

Editor & Publisher reports that newspapers have suffered a historically large circulation drop of 2.5 percent over the past six months, but that newspaper Web sites are drawing 8 percent more traffic than last year...

This leads to

The big question is whether newspapers will start charging for online content, and what kinds of content they will reserve for subscribers.

Bloggers are media parasites. Or maybe I should qualify that: bloggers like me are media parasites. I rarely do my own reporting, I just comment on the content that's already out there. If I didn't have access to original (if extremely flawed) reporting I'd probably cut down on my blogging a lot.

However it might not be necessary to avoid using newspapers as sources for blogging even if the newspapers start charging individuals for their content. Newspapers already charge institutions for access to their archives. And if you have a relationship with those institutions you qualify for access to those archives.

The most accessible source for news content is your public library. In Maryland, now, you don't have to go to the library to research the library's archives. If you have a library card, you have access to the system of the jurisdiction for which you have the card from your home computer.

Some organizations give their employees access to newspaper archives too. And I would guess, though I don't know for certain, that many colleges give access to their faculty and students.

The libraries have paid the news companies large sums of money to hae access to the archives, there's no reason not to use them.

In the future newspapers might present news without the paper. In nearer term its possible that even current content will cost.

But for now I'm just going to continue my parasitical relationship with newspapers.

Technorati tags: Blogging, Journalism, Newspapers.

Posted by SoccerDad at May 11, 2006 7:13 AM