Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Bad Days for Newsrooms—and Democracy

 The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the
antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the
Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is
not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of
the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on
the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual
poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is
conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.
All these forces have combined to strangle newspapers. And the blood
on the floor, this year alone, is disheartening. Some 6,000
journalists nationwide have lost their jobs, news pages are being
radically cut back and newspaper stocks have tumbled. Advertising
revenues are dramatically falling off with many papers seeing double-
digit drops. McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, has seen
its shares fall by 77 percent this year. Lee Enterprises Inc., which
owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is down 84 percent. Gannett Co.,
which publishes USA Today, is trading at nearly a 17-year low. The San
Francisco Chronicle is now losing $1 million a week.
The Internet will not save newspapers. Although all major newspapers,
and most smaller ones, have Web sites, and have had for a while,
newspaper Web sites make up less than 10 percent of newspaper ad
revenue. Analysts say that although Net advertising amounts to $21
billion a year, that amount is actually relatively small. So far, the
really big advertisers have stayed away, either unsure of how to use
the Internet or suspicious that it can’t match the viewer attention of
older media.
Newspapers, when well run, are a public trust. They provide, at their
best, the means for citizens to examine themselves, to ferret out lies
and the abuse of power by elected officials and corrupt businesses, to
give a voice to those who would, without the press, have no voice, and
to follow, in ways a private citizen cannot, the daily workings of
local, state and federal government. Newspapers hire people to write
about city hall, the state capital, political campaigns, sports,
music, art and theater. They keep citizens engaged with their
cultural, civic and political life. When I began as a foreign
correspondent 25 years ago, most major city papers had bureaus in
Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Moscow. Reporters and
photographers showed Americans how the world beyond our borders
looked, thought and believed. Most of this is vanishing or has
vanished.
We live under the happy illusion that we can transfer news-gathering
to the Internet. News-gathering will continue to exist, as it does on
this Web site and sites such as ProPublica and Slate, but these
traditions now have to contend with a new, widespread and
ideologically driven partisanship that dominates the dissemination of
views and information, from Fox News to blogger screeds. The majority
of bloggers and Internet addicts, like the endless rows of talking
heads on television, do not report. They are largely parasites who
cling to traditional news outlets. They can produce stinging and
insightful commentary, which has happily seen the monopoly on opinion
pieces by large papers shattered, but they rarely pick up the phone,
much less go out and find a story. Nearly all reporting—I would guess
at least 80 percent—is done by newspapers and the wire services. Take
that away and we have a huge black hole.
Those who rely on the Internet gravitate to sites that reinforce their
beliefs. The filtering of information through an ideological lens,
which is destroying television journalism, defies the purpose of
reporting. Journalism is about transmitting information that doesn’t
care what you think. Reporting challenges, countermands or
destabilizes established beliefs. Reporting, which is time-consuming
and often expensive, begins from the premise that there are things we
need to know and understand, even if these things make us
uncomfortable. If we lose this ethic we are left with pandering,
packaging and partisanship. We are left awash in a sea of competing
propaganda. Bloggers, unlike most established reporters, rarely admit
errors. They cannot get fired. Facts, for many bloggers, are
interchangeable with opinions. Take a look at The Drudge Report. This
may be the new face of what we call news.
When the traditional news organizations go belly up we will lose a
vast well of expertise and information. Our democracy will suffer a
body blow. Not that many will notice. The average time a reader of The
New York Times spends with the printed paper is about 45 minutes. The
average time a viewer spends on The New York Times Web site is about
seven minutes. There is a difference between browsing and reading. And
the Web is built for browsing rather than for reading. When there is a
long piece on the Internet, most of us have to print it out to get
through it.
The rise of our corporate state has done the most, however, to
decimate traditional news-gathering. Time Warner, Disney, Rupert
Murdoch’s News Corp., General Electric and Viacom control nearly
everything we read, watch, hear and ultimately think. And news that
does not make a profit, as well as divert viewers from civic
participation and challenging the status quo, is not worth pursuing.
This is why the networks have shut down their foreign bureaus. This is
why cable newscasts, with their chatty anchors, all look and sound
like the “Today” show. This is why the FCC, in an example of how far
our standards have fallen, defines shows like Fox’s celebrity gossip
program “TMZ" and the Christian Broadcast Network’s “700 Club” as
“bona fide newscasts.” This is why television news personalities,
people like Katie Couric, have become celebrities earning, in her
case, $15 million a year. This is why newspapers like the Los Angeles
Times and Chicago Tribune are being ruthlessly cannibalized by
corporate trolls like Sam Zell, turned into empty husks that focus
increasingly on boutique journalism. Corporations are not in the
business of news. They hate news, real news. Real news is not
convenient to their rape of the nation. Real news makes people ask
questions. They prefer to close the prying eyes of reporters. They
prefer to transform news into another form of mindless amusement and
entertainment.
A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and
impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth.
Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and
entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on
television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the
powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of
the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the
traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.
We are cleverly entertained during our descent. We have our own
version of ancient Rome’s bread and circuses with our ubiquitous and
elaborate spectacles, sporting events, celebrity gossip and television
reality shows. Societies in decline, as the Roman philosopher Cicero
wrote, see their civic and political discourse contaminated by the
excitement and emotional life of the arena. And the citizens in these
degraded societies, he warned, always end up ruled by a despot, a Nero
or a George W. Bush.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080721_so_goes_the_newsroom_the_empire_and_the_world/

 la carta igienica in Italia...
Se è per quello non li distinguo nemmeno io.
A differenza del Foglio, che ha una consistenza inimitabile.
Tb


wrote:

Vero...al cesso lo si distingue ad occhi chiusi mentre lo si usa per
pulirsi il culo.
Il Manifesto e Liberazione tendono a rompersi..sai carta ecologica..ma
alla bisogna vanno bene anche loro.
MMAX
-- 
http://bloggoanchio.splinder.com

 A differenza del Foglio, che ha una consistenza inimitabile.
Quant'e' che non lo compri?
Palmiro Pangloss

 Quant'e' che non lo compri?
E' diventato un po' più morbido, ma sempre riconoscibile.
Comunque cambia a seconda di dove lo stampano. E anche a seconda delle 
giornate.
Tb

 giornate.
Comperano la carta su ebay?
Palmiro Pangloss

may be the new face of what we call news.
In Italia abbiamo una lunga tradizione di giornalismo ideologico,
detto anche giornalismo dimezzato.

 Un po' un'iperbole per parlare di roba come il Manifesto e Liberazione.
solo un cretino può parlare di Manifesto o Liberazione in un articolo
che parla del declino globaledel giornalismo cartaceo, con qualcosa
come 6000 giornalisti licenziati nei soli USA. Rileggiti la parte in
cui spiega perchè internet nonostante teoricamente permetta di fornire
informazioni a chiunque nei fatti non risolva affatto la crisi del
giornalismo, ma al contrario la rafforza.
Those who rely on the Internet gravitate to sites that reinforce their
beliefs. The filtering of information through an ideological lens,
which is destroying television journalism, defies the purpose of
reporting. Journalism is about transmitting information that doesn’t
care what you think. Reporting challenges, countermands or
destabilizes established beliefs. Reporting, which is time-consuming
and often expensive, begins from the premise that there are things we
need to know and understand, even if these things make us
uncomfortable. If we lose this ethic we are left with pandering,
packaging and partisanship. We are left awash in a sea of competing
propaganda. Bloggers, unlike most established reporters, rarely admit
errors. They cannot get fired. Facts, for many bloggers, are
interchangeable with opinions. When the traditional news organizations
go belly up we will lose a vast well of expertise and information. Our
democracy will suffer a body blow. Not that many will notice. The
average time a reader of The New York Times spends with the printed
paper is about 45 minutes. The average time a viewer spends on The New
York Times Web site is about seven minutes. There is a difference
between browsing and reading. And the Web is built for browsing rather
than for reading. Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.,
General Electric and Viacom control nearly everything we read, watch,
hear and ultimately think. And news that does not make a profit, as
well as divert viewers from civic participation and challenging the
status quo, is not worth pursuing. Corporations are not in the


 Il declino del cartaceo e' inevitabile, e anche ecologico.
il problema non è il declino del cartaceo, è il declino del
giornalismo tout court, per le ragioni che l'articolo spiega
dettagliatamente.

 10 anni fa?
mi elencheresti le fonti di informazione che abbiamo in più di 10 anni
fa? Poter leggere la stampa straniera non vuol dire essere più
informati, perchè quella c'era già. Sei più informato se ci sono più
giornalisti che fanno inchieste e scrivono. MA come appena dimostrato,
i giornalisti vengono licenziati a migliaia, ergo le informazioni
valide sono molte di meno. O pensi che tra 10 giornali cartacei che
hanno ognuno il proprio inviato nel paese straniero in cui succede un
evento che va a verificare di persona le notizie e 100 giornali on
line che hanno dismesso gli inviati all'estero e copincollano i lanci
di agenzia sei più informato nel secondo caso?

 Il problema sono i lettori, che in Italia sono pochi, come gia' detto.
l'articolo parla degli USA, non dell'Italia, imbecille...

 Forse in Italia.
NEGLI USA, IMBECILLE! LEGGI L'ARTICOLO E POI PARLA!

 YAWN!
puoi andare, analfababy

 Am.
che resti agli atti