Kowabunga

The Probable Demise of the MSM

Here’s a good one from the Red Star Tribune by Aggergaard. He is complaining that the recent sale of the Strib, along with earlier sales of the Pioneer Press has had a dramatic impact, bringing job uncertainty to the newsroom.

The sales remind us that local journalism is about money. But for those who work in local journalism, the industry also is about uncertainty and (lack of) job security. Their plight should concern us all, and we should ready ourselves to do something about it.

Welcome to the ranks of the real world. It’s about time, too. Most working Americans constantly have to worry about the security of their own job. Layoffs are a “threat” that lingers throughout most industries, especially in the high tech field in which I am employed.

The trick to surviving and overcoming a layoff is keeping job skills fresh and being adaptable. Not difficult to do in high tech, but some industries are less adaptable than others, like airplane mechanics and pilots (as well as others in the airline industry). There are only so many jobs in that field, and if a major employer goes under, or has to reduce its workforce, that results in a glut on the job market for that particular field.

The same is true with journalism, although there are other avenues open to those who are adaptable, like copy writing for advertisers, or writing tech manuals, etc. Those jobs don’t have the same caché as writing for a newspaper. There is also the possibility in going into a completely different field as Aggergaard did (he went to Law School).

After he rants on for a few paragraphs about where “news” comes from and the demise of the print media (news papers) he comes up with these gems:

Local newspaper employees earn decent wages, particularly when compared with those who work in smaller news markets. They have health insurance, and many have 401(k)s. But their content is used, if not stolen, by other media whose workers are not paid as well, if at all. The irony is that those “new” media increasingly gain the public’s trust while Mainstream Media lose both trust and their workforce.

Sure, the big papers pay well, especially compared to the small town papers that publish once or twice a week. They have a much larger market. As for losing trust to the New Media (I.E. the Internet and bloggers), they have to clean up their own backyard first, and not just in the print media like the guy from the New York times who was caught not only plagerizing, but making up facts to fit his stories (good gravy, anybody remember his name?). It also has to happen with televised news casters, like Dan Ra^ther, who use forged memos to justify a political position and create a controversy over something that never happened. It was a blogger, Little Green Footballs, that exposed that one, and brought us Ra^thergate during the 2004 election cycle.

When things like this take place on a recurring basis, it is no wonder that people lose their trust in the Main Stream Media. Then people turn to products that they can trust.

Mainstream Media’s demise is welcomed by some, particularly those who find it biased and accordingly rely on blogs and other less-filtered media to define their truths. I am a blogger too, but I would never suggest that a blog, or at least my blog, should be a primary place for information. I do not have time to be a true journalist anymore because I’m too busy trying to make a living.

What he is saying here is that it’s the bloggers fault that Main Stream Media is losing it’s credibility and market, not the fact that news papers and other elements of the MSM are failing to deliver high quality and accurate (and, most importantly, UNBIASED) reporting.

He blames bloggers, but, in fact, bloggers are not to blame. If the MSM wants to stay viable (and it should) it needs to foster a culture of adaptability, and clean up its backyard. The role of newspapers is to report the facts, NOT set an agenda and steer the public discourse, which is what it so desires to do.

I will give Aggergaard one point. One should not get all of their news from bloggers. Most are not into reporting the news, but analyzing and commenting on it. Occasionaly reporting on events that they witness. Sometimes even exposing the faults, more frequently the bias, that infects newspaper journalism.