Speaking of the NYT...

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
I don't see any reason why the same principle shouldn't operate just as effectively in other realms...
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A court determines facts: who did what to whom, when, with whom, and, sometimes, why.

Much of the dissonance among news and "truthy" outlets pertains to evaluations of the usefulness, value, propriety, etc., of a given event. These are statements concerning ethics, and possibly predictions of future events, so there is no appropriate venue for resolving the dispute.

P.S. Anyone who thinks the New York Times is objective or neutral in any fashion is as delusional as anyone who thinks the same of Fox News.
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Not even close, guy.
 
Richard Rodriguez has an excellent essay on the demise of newspapers in the November issue of Harper's.
Imagine if Herb Caen could post on wine disorder...

Brad
 
originally posted by Thor:

I'm sorry. Was that harsh and far too black/white? Remind me not to post after drinking.
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The tooth fairy comment was too harsh? For here?

And if posting after drinking is to be avoided, the wine internet will die an early death.
 
originally posted by Brad Widelock:
Richard Rodriguez has an excellent essay on the demise of newspapers in the November issue of Harper's.
Imagine if Herb Caen could post on wine disorder...

Brad
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Agreed, brilliant essay.
 
The thing I rarely see discussed on the "dying newspapers" debates is news readers - the people who used to pay for the system - directly and indirectly by viewing ads. The real issue is that they have abandoned the papers in droves. Nor are they showing up on the papers' online sites. Yes, there are exceptions, like the NYT. But as an industry, from big city to village rags, readers have evaporated.

If you're serious about knowing what's happening, you have to ask why. From what I can tell talking to and surveying news readers, they grew to hate their local sheets. Hate. At best they we necessary evils that kept them up on local goings on. But over and over I've heard people complain about their pettiness and provincialism, reams of non-news, third-rate journalism, the inflated price (at least that was the complaint during the years of hikes) and most of all too many ads to wade through to even figure out where the content is.

The local products really, really declined. At least that's what I've noticed.

How many people here read their local paper? (Shut up NYMFs and all you freaky foreigners.)
 
What a lot of this comes down to is that there are fewer and fewer "news" media where the content isn't pay for play. Fox News is apotheosis because it's basically a 24/7 ad for the Republican Party. But if you didn't catch this Leslie Sbrocco segment (http://www.13wham.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoId=210147@wokr.daypo), it offers a good lesson in how "news" works.

Are there more ethical news media operations? Absolutely.

Are there many? No.

Paid "news" will always have a bias - usually a surreptitious one.

They brought this on themselves - I forgot to mention that I've also surveyed people about the reviews in news media. On average over 75% believe that reviews are paid for - music, food, movies, cars, you name it.
 
Newspapers are in a bad place and in general aren't going to survive like they used to survive. Craigslist gutted a prime source of profit and the digital world in general doesn't generate the revenue that print used to generate.
I'm not sure newspapers will ever go completely away for a couple of reasons. One is that they're still the most effective way to deliver complex content. Computers included. There's something to be said for letting people peruse both stories and advertising in a low-tech that lets them absorb a lot of information.
Not all papers suffer from the same problems, though. San Francisco and Philaphelphia both suffer from major distribution problems, but not the same distrubtion problems. In San Francisco, at least a few years ago, the guys who sold you newspapers out of the street corner booths were within a nine-iron of earning as much as entry level reporters, thanks to the powerful unions. And there were a lot of corners where there were three booths.
Philly, on the other hand, has lots of readers but they're all spread out and hard to get to.
The people who pine for days of so-called objectivity are really wanting the days of the 1950s and early 1960s, the "Mad Men" days, when the agenda was largely upper middle class white Rotarians.
There's never been a purely objective story written. There's never been a story written that didn't omit significant facts. And I'll include non-fiction books in my definintion of stories. But that doesn't mean journalists shouldn't try and many often come close.
The big problem is that with all the budget cuts there's more drive-by journalism in newspapers. It's more like TV coverage.
Despite the decline of newspapers, the worst journalism today is on the cable news networks and it's noit because of perceived bias. It's because they've got a lot of air to fill, so they fill it with speculation. A lot of times it's in the firm of an authority, like a profiler. For this balloon boy case the brought in an expert to read body language to suggest the boy's parents were lying. This is nothing more than 21st century phrenology.
 
originally posted by SteveTimko: For this balloon boy case the brought in an expert to read body language to suggest the boy's parents were lying. This is nothing more than 21st century phrenology.
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I guess you're not a fan of Lie to Me?
 
Somewhere I read an interesting point about newspapers versus online media: While citizens have always held diverse opinions, there was not so much splintering of "the culture". Oh, sure, there were Commie newspapers and the like, but most people read the papers from the big outlets. And, agree with it or not, everyone was (literally) on the same page.

In the shiny online world, it is possible to read only that which supports what you already believe. It can feel like you are staying abreast but, in truth, everyone is simply ossifying -- and getting belligerent -- in their own little corner.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Somewhere I read an interesting point about newspapers versus online media: While citizens have always held diverse opinions, there was not so much splintering of "the culture". Oh, sure, there were Commie newspapers and the like, but most people read the papers from the big outlets. And, agree with it or not, everyone was (literally) on the same page.

In the shiny online world, it is possible to read only that which supports what you already believe. It can feel like you are staying abreast but, in truth, everyone is simply ossifying -- and getting belligerent -- in their own little corner.
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Wired was predicting this about 15 years ago.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Somewhere I read an interesting point about newspapers versus online media: While citizens have always held diverse opinions, there was not so much splintering of "the culture". Oh, sure, there were Commie newspapers and the like, but most people read the papers from the big outlets. And, agree with it or not, everyone was (literally) on the same page.

In the shiny online world, it is possible to read only that which supports what you already believe. It can feel like you are staying abreast but, in truth, everyone is simply ossifying -- and getting belligerent -- in their own little corner.
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Try taking a look at 19th century newspapers in both the US and England. Make the internet look like a Cambridge tea group. Both the London Times and the NY Times, though, did attempt actual journalism even then.
 
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