March 4 reading

I bascially couldn't sympathize with Joe Mathews more - the news industry obviously needs an injection. It seems that what's happened though is that over time, the industry has just been trying to stay afloat and evolving however it saw fit to do that - but the larger picture didn't turn out exactly as we expected it to. Peter Osnos then called it the "demonstrably broken business model of metropolitan newspapers and news magazines" And now, we are left with a skeleton of what has historically been the newspaper industry. It does what it's supposed to do at half the cost - but obviously some, Joe Mathews, would argue that it's only doing half what it's supposed to do. To be honest, our Top 20 idea for class almost perpetuates the problem Mathews describes. It's not to say I don't think it's still a good idea (we are going to choose the Top 20 stories relative to the lives of 20-somethings every day), but it's an example of how the industry has changed. I actually think that our Web site could be really successful. That's because people our age only want 20 stories. Maybe it's because any 20-something who hasn't studied journalism doesn't know what it used to be. I think that a lot of people don't realize that journalism isn't doing what it used to do - exposes and meaningful investigative reports are few and far between. And it's sad that an entire industry, and even the entire realm of expectations for that industry, have changed because of budgetary restrictions.

I think that the way some of today's readings relate is through society's expectations of what journalism does and how that has evolved. It's sort of a chicken or the egg question: did the expecations change because the business model forced journalism to change or was it the other way around? But let's imagine a city without it's daily newspaper, as David Folkenflik writes about. It saddens me as much as any newsie, but people would get by. I think that right now, the up and coming news audience - the 20 somethings we want to serve in our project - care more about news by niche (in this case 20 somethings) than by region. I don't know any 20-somethings that care what happened at the local board of education meeting but they do want to know how to get a job, if they have health insurance, even which club is best for a Friday night.

I'm really not sure there's still a way to keep funding local newspapers when the industry finally collapses. ProPublica has been a huge success, but it's backed by one wealthy family. I agree with Peter Osnos, who funds this? If you don't have a check you can rely on then you don't really have a stable business model. ProPublica is appealing to financial backers because of the nature of the work, but what about other kinds of work. Will someone fund a Web site that only runs feature stories? Profiles? Will we lose those stories altogether? Just because they aren't shining light on corruption doesn't mean they aren't stories valuable to the community. That's my worry in moving to a ProPublica-type model. Do I have a solution? Definitely not.