Posts Tagged ‘Financial Crisis’
Another take on journalism
This time from Matthew Yglesias who writes that:
People should also recall that a catastrophic collapse of the newspaper industry would hardly be without precedent. The real heyday of American newspapering came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the United States features a literate population and no broadcast media. The rise of radio and television had a devastating impact on the industry and caused massive shrinkage in the volume of papers. This shrinkage then led to what journalists consider the heyday of Americanjournalism when the industry had fallen so far that most papers faced little-to-no competition and could serve as authoritative “objective” sources of information. We’re now once again amidst and era in which technological change is going to kill off a lot of existing business models. But all this has happened before, and all this will happen again.
While the simple fact that a decline has precedent doesn’t mean that we should disregard the current decline in print journalism it is nonetheless important when we read doom and gloom articles about the current state of the newspaper industry. The idea that Yglesias brings up in his post (i.e. that money ought to be invested in non-profit media institutions) is a good one, and hopefully one that philanthropists like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates will listen to.
Ultimately I see the eventual decline of print journalism as inevitable. Over the past decades society as a whole has simply moved toward more image-based and more fragmented modes of consuming information. This can be seen with the rapid growth of the television and then the internet. Both of these mediums encourage people to digest news in short blurbs and bursts and do not require the time that reading newspaper articles does. Overall, I think that a vast percentage of society has been conditioned to not have the attention span needed for reading through the New York Times or the Atlantic Monthly. It’s too bad, but I fear it’s true.
Another article on the decline of journalism
Just when I thought I had read everything up on The Atlantic’s website right now I came across a wonderful piece by James Warren concerning the frighteningly increasing decline of newspapers and traditional print journalism. In it he writes that:
This matters because of the unique role journalism plays in a democracy. So much public information and official government knowledge depends on a private business model that is now failing. Journalism acknowledges and illuminates complexity, and at the same time prioritizes, helping us to evaluate the relative significance of developments playing out all around us. A very shrewd journalist-entrepreneur I know, Steve Brill, asks that one just imagine walking into a library and seeing the pages of all the books scattered on the floors and stairwells. To be sure, editors are human and subjectivity plays a role, but a newspaper places those pages—and thus the news—in some sensible order.
And, importantly, there’s a sense of social mission. Good journalism keeps public and private officials honest and helps citizens make thoughtful decisions. It does this by systematically gathering, processing, and checking relevant information, and by doing it with a spirit of independence. It’s how two previously unknown Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, put together the Watergate puzzle that forced the 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon.
While I do think that much of the problems that are currently inherent to print journalism have been self-created by the industry I nonetheless find it sad every time that I read about a newspaper laying off hundreds of workers. Like Warren says in his article the reality is that many of the most trafficked sites on the internet rely heavily upon newspapers for their content and reporting; were it not for newspapers I believe that some of the sites he lists (Huffington, etc.) would not have anywhere near the content they need for survival. As an addict of news and reading in general I find it personally sad that I would lose sources like the New York Times, LA Times, and Washington Post.
The next few years will certainly be interesting ones (and hopefully not too depressing of ones) for print journalism and I just really hope that at least some of the large print institutions survive and provide a model for others to follow in the rebuilding of newspapers.
Newspapers and their future
Michael Hirschorn over at The Atlantic writes of The New York Times that:
The paper’s credit crisis comes against a backdrop of ongoing and accelerating drops in circulation, massive cutbacks in advertising revenue, and the worst economic climate in almost 80 years. As of December, its stock had fallen so far that the entire company could theoretically be had for about $1 billion. The former Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal often said he couldn’t imagine a world without The Times. Perhaps we should start.
That’s a scary thought, but perhaps is one that is slowly but surely become more of reality. I don’t like to think of a world without The New York Times or many other large newspapers, but I still fail to see how they are adapting to new technologies in a speedy and efficient manner. The next few years will be interesting, and potentially lethal to the newspaper industry. I’m glad I’m did not go into school with dreams of writing for the Times.
$15 billion more to banks
USA Today has posted a story detailing how the government recently approved a further payment of $15 billion from the $700 billion stimulus plan. In that article it provides some figures for how much money has gone to various banks over the past few months. It writes of how the:
Treasury also said it had provided an additional $20 billion to Citigroup Inc. on Dec. 31 under a program it has dubbed its “targeted investment program” to provide support for the banking giant. It already had provided Citigroup an initial $25 billion.
Not only was $45 billion giving to Citigroup, but much has gone to non-banking institutions too. Describing the automakers bailout the article describes how:
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said last month when the Bush administration announced it would provide emergency loans to GM and Chrysler LLC that it had committed the first half of the $700 billion rescue program and Congress would need to authorize use of the final $350 billion.
Frankly, it’s a little scary to me that we don’t even blink at numbers this large anymore. We think of $15 billion as a small amount of money, which is just horrendous. Furthermore, it is deeply troubling that none of these banks will provide concrete details as to where they spent this money.
Link via Gov’t supplies another $15B to banks – USATODAY.com.
Skaters Jump In as Foreclosures Drain the Pool
Reminds me of that movie that came out a couple years ago called “Dogtown.” At least these foreclosed homes are being used for something.
Across the nation, the ultimate symbol of suburban success has become one more reminder of the economic meltdown, with builders going under, pools going to seed and skaters finding a surplus of deserted pools in which to perfect their acrobatic aerials.
Link via Skaters Jump In as Foreclosures Drain the Pool – NYTimes.com.
