Breaking News: Post-mortem needs electroshock?

By PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/12/2019 - 4:21am |

For those who aren’t quite sure why these media layoffs keep happening, or think “it’s the internet!” or “people don’t pay to subscribe,” there’s a lot more going on. Though that is part of that. Here’s a cliffs notes version - not exhaustive but it hits the highlights:
— Jeremy Littau (@JeremyLittau) January 24, 2019

URL:

https://twitter.com/JeremyLittau/status/1088503510184927233

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Ran across this "glass half full, not half empty" argument on topic yesterday:

>> @antoniogm: "The path to the next golden age in American journalism isn't nostalgia for a vanishing past but the same way that led to the previous golden age, namely, that of profit." And more than likely "this will mean some partiality..." https://t.co/JnG54xmsMw
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 12, 2019

I don't see much golden in the olden-tyme partisan style journalism, I think the movement to make it a profession with objectivity goals in the 20th century was a good thing, i.e. "progress". But I try to keep an open mind, because: there's no going back on everyone having the powah of the printing press with cell phones and the internet. So if that was progress, we can't really have it anymore, just reality.

by artappraiser on Tue, 02/12/2019 - 3:09pm

They're safe as ling as they don't have any assets to sell iff (real estate, printing press, trucks, kids...)

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-ultimate-cash-flow-mercenary...

by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/13/2019 - 1:48am

I agree with your thinking about objective journalism. But also, this is a terrible article. Worse yet it's from a magazine that built it's reputation on tech savvy analysis of the digital age. That one can find similarities between the lack of objectivity of revolutionary war era journalism and today doesn't mean that history is repeating itself. There are more than two ways and this could, and imo is, something new. It's not like the money isn't there are that there isn't a large audience for objective news. It's that a large majority of those ad dollars are going to monopolies, google and facebook, that set prices as they choose and produce no content. They take the lion's share of the money doing nothing more than linking you to the content producers. One would expect Wired to offer an astute analysis of this issue.

And why is it that these right wing screeds always have to lie and insult?

It’s heartwarming to think the American public rallied to support abstract principles like the free press by subscribing to the Times. In reality, they forked over their hard-earned money because they wanted to see a highly unpopular president roasted endlessly, and they got what they wanted.

If the public subscribed to see the president endlessly roasted there are many free sites to do that. Free sites that are much more vicious and much less objective than the WP and the NYT. In fact it's the conservative never Trumper sites that are the most viciously anti-Trump. As I saw it there was a tremendous backlash against fake news after Hillary lost and a feeling that it helped Trump win. Many publications like the WP and the NYT made a heavy push to point out that if people want quality news they need to help pay for it. People responded by subscribing to the most objective and comprehensive news sites, the WP and the NYT. Yes they lean left but still of all the news, the most objective and comprehensive. There is a huge appetite for news and if it wasn't for google and facebook sucking up most of the ad dollars we could have an incredibly robust news media in the internet age.

by ocean-kat on Wed, 02/13/2019 - 4:26pm

Let's say they subscribed to the 2 best known names in print journalism, not coincidentally in New York & Washington (hey, where Amazon also chose its 2 new Headquarters). "Objectivity" has been pretty poor on some of the most important stories, with the NY Times continuing to take anonymous shill feeds from somewhere in the cabinet or the GOP that feeds their bullshit line on things. Elsewhere Carole Cadwalladr/Guardian & Ronan Farrow & Jane Mayer (New Yorker) and Mother Jones (becoming I think more respectable/thorough) and a ton of Twitterverse citizen/independent journalists have kept up some of the neglected / distorted side of these important stories. We saw this a decade ago when Firedog Lake was covering the Bradley Manning trial in Quantico south of DC, while none of the major news outlets would take the time.

by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/13/2019 - 4:43pm

Interesting, that related is an issue in Japan right now:

Japanese newspaper union says Abe administration seeks "to exclude reporters whose views are at odds with the government” after chief cabinet secretary repeatedly critiques one reporter’s questions during press conferences https://t.co/nMwOJf5Wvd
— Motoko Rich (@motokorich) February 14, 2019

by artappraiser on Wed, 02/13/2019 - 8:04pm

Damn wimmin won't stay in their place.

by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/13/2019 - 11:34pm

One news site, the Daily Banter cited Facebook as the cause for shifting to an email subscription model. Facebook closed off the revenue stream

How Facebook Destroyed Us

Over the years, we built a large, vibrant community on Facebook with over 40,000 active followers who shared and engaged with our content on a daily basis. Small publishers are almost completely reliant on social media to build and sustain their audiences, so having access to our followers has been vital to our survival. In 2018 however, Facebook basically closed off that access and our articles now reach a thousand people at best.

Not only have Facebook obliterated our audience, they have radically reduced the advertising rates we get from them. Previously, Facebook filled 80% of the ad space on articles shared via their platform (Facebook Instant Articles). That has gone down to about 60%. Furthermore, Facebook has drastically cut back on ads they run on political sites, so the value of those ads have now plummeted. The ads payout about 50% of what they used to compared to 2017, and that is on 20% less traffic. Given Facebook has taken away 90% of the traffic they sent us, we make next to nothing from them. Imagine you made $10,000 a month at your current job, then suddenly your boss announced you would be making $400 from now on. It has been that severe

https://thedailybanter.com/2019/02/11/the-daily-banter-is-closing-down/

by rmrd0000 on Tue, 02/12/2019 - 4:56pm

That is very interesting, thanks for sharing it. Certainly shows up the highly generalized advice from supposed business experts along the lines of "you've got to get on social media" to be sorely lacking in nuance. It should be more like: you need to be careful about trusting social media companies with all your blood sweat and tears. Seems like a variant of the "balance your portfolio" thing should apply...

by artappraiser on Tue, 02/12/2019 - 5:08pm

Breaking News: Post-mortem needs electroshock?

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