I think it's actually a double-edged sword that sort of signals the death-knell for newspapers.
Large newspapers and small, all over the place, are suffering and going belly-up. Part of the reason for that is - as you say - because we're simply not holding them in high regard. They're slow to get us "news", and their news is mostly regurgitated wire-stories we read on CNN.COM or an RSS or Twitter feed the day before. The days of hard-hitting investigative journalism, and/or a willingness to come down hard and take a real stand on their editorial pages, are long since gone.
But the problem for newspapers is it's too late to correct that. Their subscriber levels are at all time lows. They can't afford to hire the quality journalists they need, and are too "at-risk" of going under to really take on various interests via their editorial pages anymore. The risk that a poorly received editorial will cause them to go under is just too high any more.
I'm not going to stand here and say "Death of newspapers, film at eleven!", because they'll still hang on for a while, but I don't think we'll ever see them at the value-levels of the Woodward and Bernstein era....
no subject
Large newspapers and small, all over the place, are suffering and going belly-up. Part of the reason for that is - as you say - because we're simply not holding them in high regard. They're slow to get us "news", and their news is mostly regurgitated wire-stories we read on CNN.COM or an RSS or Twitter feed the day before. The days of hard-hitting investigative journalism, and/or a willingness to come down hard and take a real stand on their editorial pages, are long since gone.
But the problem for newspapers is it's too late to correct that. Their subscriber levels are at all time lows. They can't afford to hire the quality journalists they need, and are too "at-risk" of going under to really take on various interests via their editorial pages anymore. The risk that a poorly received editorial will cause them to go under is just too high any more.
I'm not going to stand here and say "Death of newspapers, film at eleven!", because they'll still hang on for a while, but I don't think we'll ever see them at the value-levels of the Woodward and Bernstein era....