July, 2009

How Would We Craft a Subsidy?

by Clay Shirky
The Conversation
July 24th, 2009

I want to react to Paul Starr’s observations about subsidy, which I largely agree with. To put his observations in economic terms, we have been in the unusual and happy situation, in the 20th century, of having an essential positive externality — an informed public, supported by an aggressive and talented press corps — subsidized [...]

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Research versus Processing

by Steve Yelvington
The Conversation
July 24th, 2009

Philip Meyer writes, “The second trend is moving journalism from a hunter-gatherer activity to one more focused on processing.” In the debate over news on the Internet, what professor Meyer calls “processing” is a point of bitter division. A traditionalist view says there’s no news without a professional reporter to dig it up. This view [...]

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The Newspaper Bundle Doesn’t Make Sense

by Clay Shirky
The Conversation
July 24th, 2009

While I agree with almost everything Steve Yelvington has written about the news business, I do want to take issue with one thing: I think assuming long-term profitability of smaller papers is whistling past a pretty big graveyard, for several reasons. First, the internet businesses that provide better service at less cost for markets like [...]

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From Walter Cronkite to Tiger Beatdown

by Clay Shirky
The Conversation
July 23rd, 2009

When you get four old white guys talking about journalism (45 may make me the baby of this quartet), you usually get re-runs of The Front Page and reminiscing about what a great paper the St. Louis Post-Dispatch used to be. What strikes me about the four posts here is the shared assumption that the [...]

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The Transaction Costs of Creating a Public

by Philip Meyer
The Conversation
July 21st, 2009

Has the Internet drastically reduced transaction costs as Paul Starr suggests? Let’s think about that. To an old print person like me, it seems that the drastic reduction has come in the variable costs of distribution and raw materials. Variable costs were like a tax on growth: double your readers, double the newsprint consumed. For [...]

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Abandon Old Strategies to Survive in a New Era

by Steve Yelvington
Reaction Essay
July 20th, 2009

Steve Yelvington argues that much of the hype about the death of the newspaper business is simply the product of journalistic myopia, in two different forms: First, the news business as a whole made a series of bad business decisions that left it ill-prepared for the information age. And second, the effects of these decisions are all too apparent to reporters, who see them up close in their professional lives. Yet let’s be skeptical of the claim that the newspaper is dying, he says: We are in the middle of a very serious recession, and many other industries are also suffering. No one, however, suggests that we will stop banking, say, or driving cars. Tax breaks, subsidies, bailouts, and laws forbidding hyperlinks to copyrighted content are not only unnecessary — they are harmful, because they will prevent the news industry from developing the new strategies it desperately needs.

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The Public May Need to Subsidize Itself

by Paul Starr
Reaction Essay
July 17th, 2009

Paul Starr agrees with much of Clay Shirky’s lead essay, but he is not optimistic about the power of the public to self-organize. He argues that law, politics, and the unequal fortunes of people in society will all influence the process, and that this means that if we want responsible public-service journalism, we will likely have to subsidize it in a viewpoint- and platform-neutral manner, perhaps with tax exemptions.

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Some Patterns in the Chaos

by Philip Meyer
Reaction Essay
July 15th, 2009

In his response essay, Philip Meyer argues that while newspapers may be in financial trouble, journalism is on the move. In particular, citizen journalism, done by individuals who may have other careers or life paths outside of full-time journalism, is a key trend for the future. Certification for these journalists — whether through reputation metrics or through a formal certification process — will become increasingly important. Evidence-based journalism, specialty niche journalism, and journalism done through philanthropic foundations are some of the other key trends that are accompanying the decline of the generalist newspapers that dominated the twentieth century. Evidence-based journalism is more open to ordinary citizens, who may not have the contacts of traditional newspaper reporters. Niche journalism had a hard time finding an outlet in the old days. And, although the prospect may be unsettling, philanthropy is increasingly an important source of funding for these projects.

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