End of an Era; Beginning of a New One

Truly a sad loss.

Wow, I haven't read it for a long time, but I remember it as a surprisingly well-written, smart, objective paper.
.
Maybe that was where they went wrong.

Today, you hear calls for the same improvements in the media, which has come to be dominated again by those "commercial and political monopolists."

KT,

Your previous post about health care reform and the important part of your story that didn't make the "cut" for the dead tree edition, speaks volumes about the state of modern journalism. "Old Media" face enough challenges in the age of the internet revolution. The internet has been useful in informing the people about the credibility (or lack thereof)of our media institutions. The more people become informed, the more they realize that our (media) emperor has no clothes. As long as this trend continues, the old media institutions will continue to fall.

Perhaps if you could come up with an outlet for real investigative journalism, honest reporting, and challenging, evidenced-based opinion I think you could charge subscription prices and get them if subscribers would be guaranteed a news source devoid of self-interest aside from being an outlet speaking the truth regardless of who benefits and who loses.
.
I was only half-heartedly joking in an earlier comment about enabling us as a society to publicly shun anyone who failed to leave their self-interest at the door, but we should at least be able to provide a model that following the immortal words of Maddow by "privileging correct information over incorrect information."
.
The assumption of the bean counters and the marketing gurus is that the public wont pay for an online version of the news, what they failed to consider is that the public won't pay for any version of the news because it's the content not the mode of distribution that's responsible for their objection. People who can get television for free still donate to public television because they get a product they can't get anywhere else and the same can be said about cable.
.
Perhaps the news organizations will have to morph into itunes like entities and fund their reporters, columnists and editorial writers, etc., and as a subscriber I can put together the daily dose of information I want to read and the cost will depend on what I chose to include in my download. You want to keep me as a reader choosing to include you in my "daily dose" (I like that term so if anyone decides to use it they should have to pay me a small royalty), then give me a better product. At least that would be one way to turn every member of the media into a critic and rethink the crap they write about before posting.

My impression of the CSMonitor was of it standing out during the Iraq war run up for its thoroughness and depth. Do I need to mention that I was reading it online as a result of individual articles being link targets?

My dad was the editor/publisher of a string of small-town weeklies in the Housatonic River valley back in the 1960s and 70s, and he read the CSM every day, preferring it to the NY Times (he said the Times was "too local").

"place principle before dividends, and that will be fair, frank and honest with the people on all subjects and under whatever pressure — a truly independent voice not controlled by commercial and political monopolists."

Wait, isn't that what Fox News is?

If Fox News was a print edition think of how well informed, well adjusted, and morally upstanding the parakeets of this nation would be.

I read CSM throughout high school. Great paper.

Bottom line: we can no longer trust American corporations to report the news and it doesn't matter if it's in print, on teevee or on the web.
.

'Mr. Cuomo argued that banks and appraisers had colluded to push prices higher. It is a marker of how swiftly the culture has changed that his charges, which now are received wisdom, struck Mr. Cramer in 2007 as the words of, well a …
.
“Communist. Cuomo's about confiscation — genuine communist,” Mr. Cramer said. “The Chinese are capitalist, we got a communist.” Can I give you the real headline?” Mr. Cramer said. “Cuomo says let's make it harder to get a mortgage, let's make it harder to lend."'
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/was-cuomo-appraisal-another-cramer-miscue/#more-16023
.

KT, thanks so much for this post.

It's frustrating at how awful the MSM is. We have more news sources than ever and yet the very competition has driven them into being nothing but pushers of the Village memes. Politico is a piece of crap. CNN is so horrified of being perceived as being "liberal" that its usefullness for actually becoming informed has been greatly diminished.

The Christian Science folks used to have libraries in SF with all the daily papers on racks (and lots of books) and it was a fun place to visit from time to time. Don't know when they stopped doing that though. I have very fond memories of that place.

EMT: "Quick – we have to get this man to a hospital!"
Victim: "But I'm a Christian Scientist!'
EMT: "Quick – we have to get this man to a reading room!"
.
Seriously, I agree entirely – a newspaper with the primary purpose of gathering and disseminating accurate information. What a concept!

This is a provocative piece: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/27/did-canadacare-kill-natasha-richardson/

Is this what we want to return to, journalistically? Post-like tabloidism?

Now, obviously, these questions need to be asked--just not so "in your face".

Southernbelle: It's frustrating at how awful the MSM is. Speaking of which, here is a "serious" reporter from the Washinghton Post demonstrating that the rot isn't just a cable teevee phenomenon. I'll ask in advance if KT is embarrassed by this. Via Media Matters: Gibbs ridicules media's teleprompter obsession
.
Washington Post reporter Lois Romano interviews White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:

MS. ROMANO: The teleprompter changed last night.

MR. GIBBS: Mm-hmm.

MS. ROMANO: What was that about that? It's a big jumbotron now.

MR. GIBBS: You know can I tell you this?

MS. ROMANO: Yes.

MR. GIBBS: I am absolutely amazed that anybody in America cares about who the President picks at a news conference or the mechanism by which he reads his prepared remarks. You know, I guess America is a wonderful country.

MS. ROMANO: You're saying this is all Washington Beltway stuff?

MR. GIBBS: I don't even know if it's that. I don't think I should implicate the many people that live in Washington.

MR. GIBBS: No, I you know, I don't think the President let me just say this: My historical research has demonstrated that the President is not the first to use prepared remarks nor the first to use a teleprompter.

wvng, I'm so depressed now at the state of the American media that I need to go and find a nice kitteh diary to make me smile.

"CNN is so horrified of being perceived as being "liberal" that its usefullness for actually becoming informed has been greatly diminished."

CNN is liberal. I mean, really, any news network that consistently labels Roman Polanski as an exile (vice fugitive) is just that. In any event, CNN lost all credibility when it traded objectivity for access in Iraq.

I bet Gibbs would rather have those questions than tough ones from Jake Tapper.

A very intelligent elderly woman I know was telling me today how much she likes the short little summaries on the front page of the Burlington Free Press now, so she doesn't have to read "those long articles to see what they're about." sigh.
.
But in fairness, although I read a few long articles in the NYT and Wapo every day, there are hundreds of articles I don't read at all. And I no longer get my local paper.
.
There has a to be a solution to this dilemma. We need investigative reporting. Some of the net sites will have to start charging again. Why should I get major newspapers for free, and if I do why should I pay for dead tree editions?
.
jose: - ditto for the CS reading room in Albany, NY.

And here's some more bad journalism from WaPo. This piece is agenda journalism at its worst:
.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/04/AR2009020403852.html

CNN is so horrified of being perceived as being "liberal" that its usefullness for actually becoming informed has been greatly diminished.
-
I disagree. I think CNN is so desperate for eyeballs that you actually become less informed by watching it. (And what on Earth has Roman Polanski got to do with liberal vs. conservative categorizations?) It comes across more as pro-moron than liberal or conservative.
-
I never did see Idiocracy. Maybe it'd look like a documentary by now.
-
I used to subscribe to the CSM. A fine paper. I hope they can continue to be a source of solid reporting.

Elvis, one great litmus test for lib leaning is how a news organization deals with criminals. See, e.g., Dallas Morning News and Kenneth Foster.

wvng -- sosuthernbell -- I think Mr. Gibbs may be wrong about one thing. I think a lot of folks in side Washington did take notice of who the President chose to take questions from in the conference, and they loved it.
.
For the first time in history probably, Ebony magazine, a publication that is a mainstay in darn near every black home in America, was chosen to pose a question to the first African American president of the United States. Talk about optics, in the black community this was huge.
.
But you know what else is huge, and has not been discussed yet on any of the posts since the press conference, is how racists some of the main stream media's statements have been in regards to this issue. Actually saying that these reporters were not real reporters, sounded eerily like something Sara Palin might say.
.
So I have to ask, when I hear the media complain that by shutting out the NY Times, the Washington Post, USA today, etc. the President was really shutting out America's elite reporters, the only ones that would ask tough questions, the only real reporters, etc. should I take offense? I mean really is Ebony magazine inferior because it is a magazine, a black magazine, has black reporters, what?
.
Granted, putting this kind of focus on politics is a new course for the magazine, but does newness automatically translate to inferior or illegitimacy and if it did, what is newness mean exactly? Ebony magazine has been the number one source of print journalism in the African American home for generations, the relatively recent focus on electoral politics is because this is the first time their core audience has been this engaged in the process and has felt like primary stakeholders, not because they just open their doors.
.
Now I am willing to give the media the benefit of the doubt maybe -- especially if they hurry up and apologize for this misunderstanding. But I still think as a groups they are a bunch of low lifes because I haven't heard anyone of them say that it is despicable for them to pick with the President because he put his family ahead of the gridiron dinner.

"the President was really shutting out America's elite reporters, the only ones that would ask tough questions, the only real reporters, etc."
.
Dee the deeper irony is that the Ebony reporter's- Kevin Chappell-question was the one that BHO chose to punt on.

PNNTO -- isn't that truly ironic? My only wish is that more of them would watch daytime television so they could recognize real crazies when they see them (look in the mirror).