Yochai Benkler on the Future of the News
Yochai Benkler has a nice piece gently pushing back on some of the alarmism about the decline of newspapers. There are a couple of different parts to this, but one is simply the observation that the old media isn’t necessarily as consistently awesome as newspaper nostalgics make it out to be. The rest is observing that the opportunities for promising new forms of media are better than the nostalgics often seem willing to admit. Largely, though, whether one likes this trend or not is sort of irrelevant because everyone agrees that the world is changing. But the reason I think it’s important to be clear about this is that there clearly are some real downsides to what’s happening. And insofar as people are urging philanthropic action to help plug those gaps, it’s important to be precisely and clear-sighted about what the gaps really are and how they can be plugged effectively. As Benkler says:
Perhaps, as Starr proposes, there is room to enlist philanthropic support for local reporting. I would suspect, however, that doing so would achieve more if it created state-level online muckraking organizations with a generation of young journalists who have grown on the Net than by propping up older establishments that still depend on much higher ratios of organizational, financial, and physical capital to talent than the new, lighter, networked models permit. We are still very much at the beginning of the new era. It is indeed possible that news reporting, national or local, will prove more resistant to a shift to mixed networked models with a large role for social production in its creation than was true of operating systems, web server software, or an encyclopedia. But I doubt it.
Indeed. Part of what’s going on is that recent innovation seems to have had primarily non-commercial benefits—catastrophic for owners of media properties, bad for professional producers of media content, good for consumers of said content.
9 Responses to “Yochai Benkler on the Future of the News”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
March 5th, 2009 at 9:55 am
it’s also going to be key that the new muck-rakers, whether they work for papers or strictly on-line, thoroughly repudiate the “access” model of journalism.
the deepest stories of the last 8 years have come from people without access to the high and mighty. that’s because access corrupts. the price of access is keeping a blind eye, a deaf ear, and a silent tongue.
mcclatchy, meanwhile, and josh marshall, and even your own self to some extent, did really good work from public sources and lower-down grunts.
i’ll take you armed with good command of google, over judy miller with “access” to rumsfeld and scooter, any day.
speaking of which–watch those breakfasts with pelosi. nothing against her, nothing against you, but, you know–it’s insidious stuff. free breakfast isn’t worth that much, you know?
March 5th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Beyond the issue in the article of journalists working for less — right now, the average is actually pretty low — lies the problem (discussed in Starr’s article and by others concerned with the decline of the newspaper) of long term investigative journalism.
So let me ask bluntly: How can the new models pay for long term investigative reporting at the local and international level? Can any do it now?
As to the claim that this will not necessarily lead to corruption, as long as local governments make all information transparent — isn’t this a little circular? “The fall of the newspaper won’t lead to corruption, because we’re going to fight corruption.” (?)
March 5th, 2009 at 10:10 am
PS I would also take some issue with calling defenders of newspapers “nostalgic” — Starr certainly understands the complexity of the old media’s record.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:31 am
So let me ask bluntly: How can the new models pay for long term investigative reporting at the local and international level? Can any do it now?
What point said.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:52 am
What I’m struggling with is the absence of a business model for local investigative journalism.
Perhaps it should revert to the non-profit model?
March 5th, 2009 at 10:56 am
“So let me ask bluntly: How can the new models pay for long term investigative reporting at the local and international level? Can any do it now?”
I would say TPM is the model for indepedent investigative reporting by new media. There aren’t a whole lot of other success stories though.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I’m not quite seeing it. It’s hard for a statewide muckraking organization to make much of an impact.
Most of the value of journalism is having people who are in the community every day. And much of it is preventative. If the local officials know there’s someone coming to their council meetings every week, that discourages the production of new much.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
In fairness, I must point out that the blogosphere isn’t necessarily as consistently awesome as new media enthusiasts make it out to be. I wish there were more success stories, but I think it would also require more bloggers to step up to the challenge.