The Fate of American Democracy Hangs on the Continued Financial Viability of the Washington Post
(cc photo by krossbow)
As you’ve probably heard, America’s newspapers are in trouble. A mix of the recession and the rise of the internet has left revenues down, and they’re shedding staff. And this is bad. Not just for the people who own newspapers. Not just for the people who work at newspapers. But for democracy itself. Without serious, sophisticated newspaper reporters you’d have nothing but pajama-clad, potty-mouthed bloggers spewing venom and nonsense. No serious reporting whatsoever, no real analysis, no objectivity, no informed citizens.
In an unrelated development, here’s an 800 word Dana Milbank article in The Washington Post about why is Peter Orszag sexy.
Meanwhile, here’s Jeff Frankel (presumably wearing pajamas) talking about Chilean economic policy and the political economy of counter-cyclical budgeting.
27 Responses to “The Fate of American Democracy Hangs on the Continued Financial Viability of the Washington Post”
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February 2nd, 2010 at 10:10 am
Oh, come on, Matt. No philosophy major should advance such lame arguments. I’m too lazy to do it, but would it really demonstrate the importance of newspapers if I linked to some informative, great, newspaper piece and then to some random Birther or Trig Truther rant on a blog? Would that prove anyting?
Lame…people write blogs. People write at newspapers. Some people who write at newspapers are smart. Some people who write blogs are smart. Some who write at both are morons.
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:13 am
Like the potty-mouthed denizens…………here!
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:18 am
Yeah but they have copy editers.
Jeff Frankels blog is written by Jeff Frankel not Jeff Frankels. If Prof Frankel worked for a newspaper, he would be required to call it Jeff Frankel’s blog.
Now one might argue about the relative importance of punctuation and counter-cyclical budgeting but I sure wont argue in favor of punctuation
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:26 am
@3: I’m guessing you haven’t seen the L.A. Times lately. There’s been an increasing number of things like articles titled “Insert Headline Here.”
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:30 am
Without serious, sophisticated newspaper reporters you’d have nothing but pajama-clad, potty-mouthed bloggers spewing venom and nonsense.
Like when a blogger compains about somebody calling someone else a “young lady”.
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:34 am
would it really demonstrate the importance of newspapers if I linked to some informative, great, newspaper piece and then to some random Birther or Trig Truther rant on a blog? Would that prove anyting?
Of course it would. If the CW were that blogs were responsible purveyors of information and newspapers simply amateur purveyors of trash, then you would have made an interesting point. How can you misread the point of MY’s post so badly? He’s not proving “blogs are better”, simply showing that the stereotype disseminated by self-interested print journalists is demonstrably false.
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:40 am
jh,
It’s not as bad an argument as you portray it. Or actually, it’s not an argument at all, rather it is a useful rhetorical device. If he were trying to prove that all newspapers suck, the device wouldn’t be so great, but clearly, the point is that the view underlying so much gnashing of teeth and tear-stained pillows (we’re all doomed because newspapers are great and blogs suck) is silly. Maybe the bawling teeth gnasher is a straw man (look! no links!), but you needn’t look very hard to see the straw man incarnate. Blogger Ethics Panels! woo hoo!
Of course some newspaper writers are awesome and some bloggers are distasteful and dumb, and vice versa. But it is worth considering the possibility that those who think the decline of the newspaper business is a symptom of the decay of intellectualism and western civilization might just think too highly of newspapers.
Maybe there are more outlets for the dissemination of ideas than there used to be, and there aren’t more good ideas, so more of what’s out there is crap. Maybe newspapers have always had a lot of crap in them — we don’t have a worse class of newspapers, but a more discerning class of readers! Whatever.
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:40 am
Of course bloggers can do analysis and comments; but what about news reporting? There is TPM (rarely), and what else on Internet?
And I am not even talking about reporting (or analysis) in Iraq or Afghanistan.
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:57 am
I’m going to sidestep the blogger vs “real” journalist angle here, and comment mostly on Dana Milbank, who really oughta be tossed out of the building of the Washington Post, and sent to write his political gossip and other fatuous nonsense at perhaps Slate.
The NYTimes is not without sin in this regard also, how many more of Maureen Dowd’s 90s-era snarkisms and petty observations must we be subjected to.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:03 am
“Oh, come on, Matt. No philosophy major should advance such lame arguments.”
But he does it about every week on this very subject. The Washington Post bashing long ago entered the zone of mad occupational chauvinism.
The obscurity of the news or commentary source in question actually matters. So does the accessibility. I could note that Foreign Affairs and any number of academic journals of international relations are publishing great work in foreign policy–in print! Sure beats the analysis of Afghanistan that I find even on many of the best foreign policy blogs. But neither are really part of a big conversation in the same way the Washington Post and the NY Times are or were. Didn’t MY once actually argue in earnest that we really don’t need the NY Times international page anymore, because what with the internet and all anyone can dial up India Times online? That’s actually the big problem with almost all blogs–the quality of stuff you read depends mostly on how smart and savvy the reader is and how good they are at putting together a great news feed. And then once you’ve read all that great stuff, you don’t have anyone to talk to about it–they have a different feed.
@vanya “He’s not proving “blogs are better”, simply showing that the stereotype disseminated by self-interested print journalists is demonstrably false.”
Then that’s a really lame point, and MY has made it way too many times for how lame it is. If you want Dana Milbank to admit that newspapers have stupid things in them sometimes and some obscure blogs are doing intelligent work, I’m sure he would have acknowledged that a long time ago. At any rate, jh’s point still stands–sterotype or not, citing isolated, unrepresentative examples does not show that a generalization is “demonstrably false”.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:05 am
The NYT has its problems, but comparisons between it and WaPo are invidious. I wish the Grahams would just sell the damn thing to the right Rev. Moon or Murdoch.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:12 am
A tax on google that subsidices newspapers would be great anyway. The blogs can also get something of the cake, as long as the cake is equal distributed between republican and democrats prophaganda blogs
. Problem solved, blogs also love the song now, since they also get a part of the lets avoid it subsidy cake.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:26 am
Reading bloggers whine about newspapers is like listening to tape worms complain about their host’s diet.
During the Iranian street protests, we got a preview of the future of reporting: Andrew Sullivan, in a big green font, posting whatever crap caught his eye on Twitter. Did he get the story right? I have no idea. I have neither the time nor the inclination to spend all damn day reading Twitters to figure out what the hell’s going on in Iran.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:43 am
Yup, it took an actual socialist to hold the line on Keynesianism. Is that irony, or just Alanis-irony? Bachelet and Velasco held on to revenues in boom times, then were able to step in with ample resources when the lean years hit. Straight outta the story of Joseph. And it made them popular when times were tough.
Of course, despite the unusual genuinely counter-cyclical approach of the government, Chile still isn’t as different from us as we might thereby think. Bachelet did such a good job keeping the fiscal house in order that Chilean voters decided it was time to elect a right-wing big business advocate as president. I wonder if he’ll go the Paul Ryan route, and re-introduce pension privatization as if it were a brilliant new idea.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:49 am
Excellent. And, after you’ve finished reading Milbank, you can check out Richard “Honey Bunny” Cohen explaining why he has to go pee-pee whenever Obama talks about terrorism. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/01/AR2010020102854.html
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:51 am
Why does a newspaper have to printed on paper to have ‘real journalists’? It’s not the medium, it’s the content.
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:20 pm
All you need to know about newspapers: My newspaper’s circulation started falling off the cliff two years ago. Since then, they have doubled the newsstand price.
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:42 pm
The era of advertising-supported journalism is coming to an end. The problem isn’t the Grahams, or the Sulzbergers, or even the Moon family (not to defend them, but their heinousness is just incidental). The problem is that the old business model which supported newsgathering is broken, and can’t be fixed or recreated.
Bundling up the motley collection of information forming a classic newspaper, imprinting it on dead trees, and trucking it out into an urban landscape, just can’t be done profitably anymore. Nor will it ever again, so long as there is an internet. Nor will it work to try selling the same bundle of information in electronic form. The newspaper is dead.
With its most important physical manifestation gone, whence journalism? Well, if we want it we’ll need to subsidize it explicitly. No more hiding behind advertisers.
We don’t expect to pay for our military through commercial sponsorships. I’d argue journalism is at least as important as all the gold-plated penis extensions the Pentagon gets trillions for.
If we want journalism in future, we’ll need to pay for it publicly. The alternative is a society getting its information from the likes of Fox News, i.e. a society on the fast track into the toilet. Take your pick.
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:56 pm
We may be potty mouthed, but at least we’re potty trained.
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:15 pm
[...] Matt Yglesias: In an unrelated development, here’s an 800 word Dana Milbank article in The Washington Post [...]
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:20 pm
You can’t line bird cages or wrap fish with blog posts.
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Interestingly, two of Bachelet’s big achievements had to do with shoring up the disasters of two privatization movements from the Pinochet era [one of which MY is a big supporter of!]: social security & education.
We could learn a lot about pensions and public education policy from Chile if we take the time to look… but that damn ideology just keeps on getting in the way, doesn’t it Matt?
As with your trip to Finland, you have some huge blind spots that you can apparently ignore without cognitive dissonance.
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:31 pm
The title of this post made me laugh out loud. Great snark recently, Matt.
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Robert McChesney has some interesting things to say about ways to save the American newspaper.
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:07 pm
19 FTW.
Mike K saves his dirty words for those sexual fantasies about Megan McArdle spanking him with a copy of Atlas Shrugged
February 2nd, 2010 at 9:12 pm
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February 3rd, 2010 at 9:17 am
Exactly. For the longest time now I’ve been thinking that the Post should just have an “Another Slow News Day at the Washington Post” section.