The Death Rattle of Old Media

So, in case you haven't heard, newspapers and magazines are dying. Most of this has to do with the internet (I'd like to think my blog may have had some small part in dismantling these titans), and some of it has to do with the managers of these institutions not quite catching up with this phenomenon and failing to harness its power and innovate enough. There are a few survivors of the news apocalypse, of course, like the Wall Street Journal, and maybe the AARP gazette, but for the most part if you're young and hip, information is about the last thing you can imagine shelling out money for and anyone that reports news you care about is not able to put food on its table because of that.

With budgetary and editorial slashes galore, the biggest fear circulating around is that the quality of good investigative journalism will take a depressing nose-dive, and the information that floats the internet will be nothing more than an unbridled clusterfuck of rumors and slander. The NY Times, also one of the big-boys claiming to be running on fumes, has a pretty okay article on the current state of print media here.

I think this is partially true and partially perpetuated by the same people who don't quite have a grasp on where we are headed with all of this. My roommate once put it very well when he said "I trust Google more than Government", a kind of nice alliterative axiom that sums up a lot of things. While I don't totally believe in the power of a search engine over expert opinion, its pretty clear the ability to verify information has become easier than ever. Unfortunately, with this ease of validation comes the fact the everybody on the internet may be citing the same faulty source; but, if you look at certain stats on the speed that a Wikipedia page gets scrubbed when something erroneous is reported, or the lightning quickness of the backwards B story being debunked, it gives you a certain pride in the power of peoples curiosity and desire for truth.

While I have a certain faith in this invisible hand, it is only to a certain extent. It seems to only work with pop culture and other certain ephemera, which doesn't cover things that truly matter like corruption, fraud, and political fuckery. These are the things investigative reporters thrived on and tenaciously pursued; partly out of the desire to uncover the truth and partly out of the idea that they would make a name for themselves and become the next Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. With the elimination of the resources for this type of reporting, it gives me the howling fantods that the 4th estate isn't watching the other three, and we may be in for a lot of unreported and unknown shady dealings in the future. Criminals will always adapt to societies shortcomings, and this is a huge one.

Anyway, if you want to get more depressed, watch The Wire creator David Simon interviewed on Charlie Rose and read his article he wrote on his days working at the Sun. It offers a fascinatingly grim assessment of how we got here and where we may go. Then, if you think you can still take it, watch Tom Wolfe explain what he thinks here.