Osler's Razor

On the other hand, the Internet is a burgeoning source of investigation.

On the third hand (this is Shiva, OK?), there is precious little quality control on the Internet. If you'll follow this link, with not-safe-for-work-or-small-children-language, Internet cartoonists explain the phenomenon. This anonymity and low bar for entry make for some... er... interesting sites.

Not that the signal-to-noise ratio is necessarily any worse than major TV news networks or your average newspaper. The difference between "mainstream" media and Internet media is fluff versus insanity. Mainstream media provides you meaningless fluff (stories about kittens or celebrities) and Internet media provides you insanity (Barack Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist that is going to put Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed in your bedroom and force you to gay-marry him with the help of space aliens and the Illuminati. Lizard people may or may not be involved, depending on the position of Saturn).

On the fourth hand, what if the corruption that needs to be exposed is in the private sector, and the private sector owns the newspaper? I mean, I can't see the Wall Street Journal that eager to expose corruption in News Corp., or the Times doing an in-depth investigation into its own investigative reporting (who watches the watchmen?).

You mention the "institutional presence in American law," as law evolves, so must the presence within it. The "institutional" presence is going to shift from newspapers to a much more decentralized, grassroots-type presence. The case of Megan Meier provides an excellent example of how individual-created web content is going to become that sort of influence. The boundaries between what forms of communication between citizen and government have been established. Now we need to define the boundaries of speech between citizen and citizen.
 

First of all, for those that are all for this stimulus nonsense, please read this article, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310466514522309.html, and then explain to me what exactly it is that we are trying to stimulate again....

Newspapers won't go away, but eventually they will be completely online and supported by ads on their webpages. More importantly, even if newspapers go away journalism will survive. They may have to find creative ways to support themselves and their careers, but journalism is prospering on the internet (it is much easier to read George Will on a weekly basis now than it was 10 years ago).
 

I too love newspapers, but their role as omniscient neutral observers is something only those of us who lived in the last half of the 20th Century know anything about. For most of history, newspapers were partisan, opiniated and not at all unbiased advocates of opinion.

The local Falls Church Virginia paper that I read every week is a left-wing scandal sheet published by an openly gay man who makes gay rights a priority for coverage. Fine. Not the most important issue for me, but I know where he's coming from. Doesn't bother me. Let him sound off.

NPR, the Washington Post, the NYT, etc. All are biased in some respects. As are the Weekly Standard, National Review and other conservative publications. I know that. And so do most readers.

And most people who read articles on the Web know it too.

Those who DO believe everything they read on the internet probably believed everything they read in the paper too. And the fact is, not everything they read in the paper was absolutely true. Or at least not all angles or opinions are reported.

I grew up in a newspaper reading family (and later delivered both the Washington Post and late lamented Washington Star). Part of the morning ritual with my 2 year old is to go outside and get the newspaper in the morning. I read the sports and metro at the table and she takes some other section and looks at it along with me. She'll be a newspaper reader too.

There's hope yet!
 

It is really really sad But hopefully people will still READ them, but just online only.

I love the NY TImes but I frankly cannot afford to read it anywhere but online. The only paper we get is the Canby Herald. How sad is that? but I have to keep up with who won the goat competitions and so forth. My fav part are the letters to the Editor about how all the kids at the homecoming Dance at the HS were "freak Dancing" and the whole "what is this world coming to" thing. The debate raged on and on for weeks.
 

Where did everybody go? Doesn't anyone want to fight on political mayhem Thursday anymore? I can't even fight with Lane because he says stuff like "signal-to-noise ratio" in a completely earnest manner, and that throws me off my game.

I will defend just about anything just to get a good fight going. Heck, I might even be able to come up with a defense of Rush Limbaugh if that will get somebody's motor running. I mean, I'm not above saying things I don't believe in just to get a rise out of somebody. You've read my posts in the past, right?

If this is what Obama meant by changing the tone of our political discourse then I'm out. I'm going to the bar to find some drunks that will argue with me for no apparent reason.
 

Oh RRL . . . goodness, goodness.

I was going to say how great all of these posts are; really interesting observations about the press.

I can't really argue . . . I would say to Osler's post that it seems there are other venues for freedom-of-speech issues to be tested and defended, particularly on the Internet. I agree, I don't want to see newspapers go away, because even my internet-savvy students will read a newspaper on the Metro sometimes. Everybody likes the tangible, hold-it-in-your-hands quality of the newspaper.

But Tyd's right; it's easier to read a bigger variety of papers via the internet, since most are free, and that's got to be a good thing as well.
 

BUT, the internet has not worked as a financial basis for newspapers, and probably never will. If they are reduced to digitized form, they will cease to exist, most likely.
 

And that is troubling, because I think one other contribution the most prominent newspapers make is to serious investigative journalism, good writing, and especially to overseas reporting. But only the New York Times and a couple others can afford those things, and I guess even they are less able to afford them now.
 

I like a good old fashioned newspaper. I really don't like trying to read them on-line as I read them in a specific order and feel messed up when I skip around ~ incomplete.


How will your children read the comics, the box scores and all of the stock quotes.

When I read a newspaper they 'attempt' to provide varied opinions. Do you want to force me to watch O'Reily and Chris Matthews and listen to Rush Limbaugh and Amy Goodman to attempt to find balance.

Call me old school, but I don't really enjoy surfing the web to find news. I have others things I would rather spend my time doing.


Stimulus Package: I'm too tired to think about it.
 

Thanks, Mark, for this post and thanks to commenters for their sympathy to newspapers' plight. I've covered the arts and entertainment scene in Waco (and, yes, that's not an oxymoron) for the newspaper here for most of my career, but find myself contemplating the end of a job I truly enjoy within a few years.

Our experience in Waco mirrors that found elsewhere. We get more readers online (OK, page hits - not necessarily the same thing) than in print, yet print still provides 90 percent of our revenue. We try and facilitate dialogue with readers, but find the obnoxious and vitriolic too often are the ones who comment - and who drive away more rational voices. We're constantly behind the tech curve of many of our readers, yet have as many, if not more, who don't want to follow us electronically. It has been the most frustrating of times and no one can see the shape of our future.

The current Internet-fueled appetite for news promises to support some form of transmuted journalism in our future. With a host of smaller, more nimble news providers to choose from and follow, however, I wonder how we will fuse the institutional or community focus that files the FOI paperwork to see government records, that finds a megaphone for action broader than one's Facebook community of friends, that defends an individual's freedom of speech when that speech is transmitted over a privately owned Internet provider with restrictive rules of service.

If anyone finds the YouTube video with the answer, send me the link . . .