Another Take on Media Survival
Posted by Marie on 01 Oct 2009 at 09:59 am | Tagged as: Uncategorized
William F. Baker, president emeritus of WNET, the country’s largest PBS station and Bernard L. Schwartz Professor and Journalist-in-Residence at Fordham University penned this article for The Nation - “How to Save the News.” Noting that “There’s no doubt that news in America is in trouble” Baker offers his observations, analysis and predictions about the dire consequences of the erosion of print journalism and the broader news media. The full article is available on line at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091012/baker
Let me tease you with the last paragraph in Baker’s article:
“The costs of letting our journalistic institutions decay aren’t visible like collapsed bridges or tent cities, but they’re just as dire. A thriving news media, which America is in real danger of losing, is the unspoken assumption behind not only the First Amendment but the whole idea of self-government. It shouldn’t seem radical to expect the same government that recognizes the freedom of the press to also ensure the survival of the press.” William F. Baker
What do you think of his observations and suggestions?
I think all you need to know about our media and it’s state is by looking at the coverage or lack there of of the John Edwards scandal (when you sit on something like that sham on you) and how no one even mentions him anymore outside FNC. This guys was cheating on his terminally ill wife while running for the office of President. No one lifted a finger. Frauds.
Or the Dan Rather debacle or the ACORN cone of silence for the first week of that story. Take your pick. The “media” is a joke.
Every story I see warning of the cataclysmic consequences of the demise of the mainstream media is written by someone who earns a living from —- the mainstream media. The same folks who wrote editorials condemining government bailouts of banks and car makers see a public rescue of media conglomerates in an entirely different light. More on this later in the weekend . . .
If I wrote a big fat check to save your job don’t you think to a man/woman you would all think I was the cat’s pajamas?
So if any politician cuts a check to save newspapers from going under I’m to believe the reporting of that politician will be fair and down the middle on the Pol?
Give me a break.
I know capitalism is a dirty word for some but if your business model sucks you go under and life goes on. The Edsel was a nice car once upon a time but I think we can all agree that we’re all ok because it ceased to exsist.
Within the last month I wrote my second check to Michael Yon. I don’t read his website every day, but I follow what he is saying one way or another. I gave him $100. He is doing the important work of reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.
In reality we may be seeing a hybridization of media. For instance, Michael Yon, a freelance writer, just had a piece in The Washington Times. He is enroute to Nepal to research an Afghan piece for The New York Times. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review…and a respectably long list. This is hybrid media.
Incidentally, The Washington Times has his description at the end of the article as: “Michael Yon is a writer and former Green Beret who has spent more time in Iraq and Afghanistan with U.S. and British combat forces than any other journalist.”
Maybe, if the news is important to us—and Michael Yon appears to be the Bernard Fall of Afghanistan—we will end up having to support it in less direct manners than paying for the paper to be delivered to our front door.
Regards — Cliff