Response Blog: State of the News Media

1. With the newspaper industry losing over $1 billion in annual reporting and editing capacity since 2000, and network television taking a large hit as well, I don’t see it being too long before all media is on the internet. Already we are seeing new technology like Internet TV making television a little more obsolete. Many people surpass news and television altogether and hop straight to the internet because it is searchable and they can quickly find the information they want, instead of waiting for the reporters to eventually get to the news. The problem is, television and newspapers are not customizable. People can’t really bookmark a portion of a newscast as easily as they can on the internet. It is possible to cut out an article from a newspaper, but it’s easily lost in a stack of papers. As reporters begin to lose their on-air jobs, many will head to internet reporting, leading to an overload of reporters.

2. The question here isn’t one of credibility, it is a question of reliability. Subscription based sites have a tendency to be more reliable because they are in charge of dispensing new information. The coagulators may pull from too many sources and mess up important information. Although many citizen journalists and mass news sifting blogs will get all of the information eventually, the creators have the quickest and most reliable system. Some people don’t think that reliability is worth paying for, but many are okay with shelling out a few dollars a month for a subscription. Someone brought up in class that a subscription also had to do with paying for the style. The New York Times is going to have a much different flow in their paper than your local online paper. Also, as we travel into the citizen journalist era, I do think the information on the gathering sites will be less reliable. People writing about first-hand accounts may not have the same access or information as the standard reporter and will miss the meat of the story.

3. I think it goes back to the reliability issue. Of course people want their news as quickly as possible, but not if it comes at the cost of good information. With citizen sites having only half the amount of new news as the subscription sites, I’d say people will be more likely to head for the subscription news. Looking at it from an economic standpoint, you’re paying for the news, but you are getting twice the amount of news as you would if you relied on the free sites.