Yesterday I posted an article on what I think is going to happen with newspapers and TV stations over the next five years and it got commented at Newsvine and reddit.
The gist of the comments was: I had no evidence, and newspapers will always be a preferred source of information, therefore they will always use and pay for journalists. Another comment dealt with the nature of futuristic predictions — aren't we all still waiting for our robot maids? In other words the future never works out as predicted.
First things first. Opinion and objectivity.
On a blog I don't feel the need to supply evidence if what I'm doing is giving an opinion on where things are going, just like when I write an opinion piece in The Irish Times I'm not bound by the normal rules of reporting.
What I find interesting about opinion in newspapers is this. You read a cross section of them and you know there's a huge amount of bias by any one paper and by its writers and that ultimately news pros are guided by belief as much as by the disciplines of the profession. But taken as a whole they present enough viewpoints for a reader to make up his or her mind. Some sense of objectivity emerges from the cross-section of views rather than from the newspaper's point of view.
What I've just described is also an adequate description of what happens with blogging. You wouldn't make your mind up based on the views of one blogger but once you get the cross-section you start to see sense.
In other words journalists, newspapers, and bloggers criss-cross the same spaces.
Second, though, let's see what is actually happening. Newspapers are taking in free content. That can happen in a number of ways: The Guardian keeps it at arms length in Comment is Free. In fact the Guardian began using bloggers inside the paper to tell the public about how papers are produced. Now it incorporates blogging as an additional journalistic tool. The Washington Post meanwhile is experimenting with blogs on its home page and experimenting in sharing revenue with bloggers (though the blogger is on a no foal no fee deal).
In addition there are now sites that exist solely to parley blog content to newspapers, and the blogger's financial position is tenuous. They may or may not receive fees from that process. Blogburst is one but it's a route that Technorati have also gone down, linking bloggers to 440 papers via a deal with the Associated Press.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
You don't mention one great intermodal reason for many (certainly not all) blogs to exist - because they steal or link to content in newspapers, which is, still and stupidly, IMHO, given free.
I like the NY TImes Select model, while those who - shock, have to pay for something - do not.
Incomplete thoughts there, but wanted to comment in passing.
i don't know if your articles before have really gone into the different models of European press vs. American press, either professionally or as business.
2 - Nancy
I guess I'm an old fogie, but I lIKE reading a newspaper. It's easier to keep track of than an online blog while I'm reading, and I just like holding it, I guess (altho I could do without the ink rubbing off). Besides, trying to read the news on a tiny hand-held machine is impossible.
3 - Bruce Kratofil
Newspaper readers are only one part of the equation here. The cost of producing a newspaper is borne almost entirely by advertisers -- not by subscription fees.
And some of the major sources of advertising revenue to newspapers -- classifieds, auto, real estate advertinsing to name three -- are all finding alternative channels on the Web.
In the US, almost all newspapers are losing circulation -- even in growing metropolitan areas. Given the fact that newspapers have fat profit margins (profit margins that oil companies only dream about) they are not at death's door. But just about every significant trend for newspapers is pointing the wrong way.
4 - Shari
"On a blog I don't feel the need to supply evidence if what I'm doing is giving an opinion on where things are going, just like when I write an opinion piece in The Irish Times I'm not bound by the normal rules of reporting."
Part of the problem all content providers face is that their readers aren't asking for evidence in most cases. In fact, most can't tell the difference between opinion and fact anymore. One reason for this is that journalism has become so entertainment-oriented that it skews its message constantly.
I think blogs have the potential to augment newspaper content by doing partial digestion on it for some readers. It's not that people are too stupid to think things over themselves but mainly that they are too busy or too overstimulated by an avalanche of information to give much time to any one bit of news. So, yes, blogs link to news pieces but they aren't a substitute.
Newspapers may not have much of a future but journalists always will since bloggers tend not to go out and find news. They are mainly reactive but that's not a useless or bad thing.