Here’s P-I columnist Art Thiel, making the case that Seattle, more than any other city, is the right place for a new, working business model for journalism to emerge from the (seemingly inevitable) closure of his newspaper:
The industry, having given itself away for free for years on the Internet to the point of bankruptcy, is desperate for a new way of doing business. If ever there were a place where private wealth, invention, technology, emergency, opportunity and desire are in abundance for a new idea, it is here, now.
Even in a profound recession, some things cannot be surrendered.
And he is 100% correct.
Part of the problem is that what they are giving away is also being given away by many others. Classifieds, opinion, comics, sports scores, most columns, ect are all available for free all over the internet.
The one thing the PI and Times do, that is hard to find else where is in depth local reporting. TV and radio do some, but it is much more surface level and cursory. Thats what I’ll miss assuming a viable buisness model or public funding option cannot be found.
sgiffy is right, the only thing of value the PI can provide at this point is local coverage.
sgiffy..
I agree but your also leaving something out.
Not only are these thing being given away by others but the business model and revenue stream has been been completely gutted.
Not so long ago, if you were having a garage sale, selling a car, looking to screw around on your spouse, etc… You’d post an ad in the paper. These days websites such as craigslist do all that for you for free.. and with more of an impact.
Journalism is a trade… as is running a printing press, working in circulation, being a driver, the paper salesman, ink supplier, etc…
I think the sad part is, we are focusing the attention on just the reporters who will be out of work when the big impact is going to be on the large support staff that’s going to be out of work as well.
Sadly @2 is right.
But doing puff pieces and not having corner ads on the front page, as well as switching to a tabloid version, was a bad move.
Wow, he’s brilliant, only problem is that NOBODY CAN COME UP WITH A WORKABLE MODEL
I think David Brewster is a bit ahead of him there.
What’s happening to journalism schools around the country? Is enrollment down? Is it too soon to tell?
Isn’t it a little too late to “not surrender”?
Weird tangent to this whole situation (and I apologize if this heads into Charles Mudede-ish territory)…is the lost of trust in the media…and our lowering of standards for the information we depend on.
Where once we might have depended on newspapers to tell us the truth about what has happened and what is happening, we now seek out the truths we already believe…and discount whatever we disagree with.
In fact, we’re getting to the point where we don’t even want news…we just want some sort of validation of our opinions of what we think is happening–that’s why so many “news” shows are just pundits yelling their opinions at each other.
And it’s the same with opinions–we’ve moved past the idea that one person’s learned opinion is in someway valuable, compared to the massed opinion of the cloud (yelp, rotten tomatoes, amazon.com reviews, etc.)…which, of course, our merely confirmations of the general groupthink…
Miles Murphy is shot by police…and I didn’t find out about this from the newspaper, the radio or the television…I found out about this story from THE SLOG…and as I read wild speculation, outrageous opinion, personal witnesses, friends and relatives recollections…I didn’t really learn any sort of objective truthful news…I put together a narrative of my own from filtering through semi-accurate information and opinion to create the impression that most satisfied me…
And, other than for access to the internet and the momentary distraction from side-bar advertisements, I paid NOTHING for it.
Well, except in the idea that there IS an objective truthful moment of news that a trained professional could have compiled and published that would give me a true understanding of the actual events that happened–but, these days…would I trust that a reporter would be giving me that…or would I be convinced that any news report is, itself, tainted by the process by which that information is given to me…
We’ve been trained to be paranoid–to distrust the experts…especially if we disagree with them.
At the same time, we’ve been trained to accept incomplete information…like we’ve been trained to accept the sound of MP3’s (or ringtones) versus the full resolution of sound…the portability and immediate access being more important than the truth.
What, that a newspaper once offered us, is worth paying for…when we’re getting the answers that confirm what we already want in easily portable and accessible forms that we’re already filtering through for free?
(I’m not saying that any of this is good. I’m saying…this is a question that I wish I had an answer to…because I’d like to think that journalism is as valuable or as noble as it convinces itself it is.)