Jeff Jarvis recalls "the golden age" of newspapers when "cities had many papers, many voices, many views, and papers still spoke for and with the people." And that's where we're headed again with the internet but "now it's the people talking."
"I have no doubt that there is a sustainable business in local news. The problem is that, at least for the present, the current and former owners of local news ruined it. Thanks to them, news has cooties."
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What I see when we have this discussion about “the business of news” is the divergence of citizenship from the marketplace. This is a good thing.
As I have said before, not everything should be framed in the context of markets and profit centers. I would count participation in the fourth estate (in whatever form technology enables it to take) as a part of this.
The fact that the average long-tail-resident weblog is difficult to monetize means the motives behind the content will not be poisoned by sponsorship or circulation demands. At the same time, it’s true that lowering the barriers to entry– so it’s no longer a domain of a professional “reporter” class– can be a big problem.
But, while we lose a single-source level of impartiality, the dividend we get outweighs the loss. We can aggregate thousands of imperfect sources and form a consensus without needing the centralized infrastructure traditional media has always provided.
Trust me, it will all make sense five years from now.