Digital Journalism: How Good Is It?

[katfco]

It is really interesting, and DH, as the digital/social media manager for a group of newspapers has seen firsthand how a lot of things have changed, not only in business expectations but in readership expectations. His company has seen deep cuts in the last several years, largely because CEOs and stockholders still expect to see the high profits they used to. It's a different world now, and newspapers are trying to keep up.

They've also had to deal with people who don't quite understand the difference between journalism and blogging, sharing and copying. "Why should I pay for it when I can read the 'same' thing on a free, amateur blog site?" "It's the Internet! It's supposed to be free!"

[LadySusan]

May 30, 2015 11:08:16 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

This is interesting to me because it is my industry, but you guys are big news consumers so thought you might find it interesting too.

I do find it interesting because journalism plays such a crucial role in democracy.

There are so many traditional local newspapers that are dying so it lifts my spirits a little to know that there are so many online publications out there.  It sounds as though there are plenty of growing pains.  Also, I'm skeptical that most of those jobs are as secure or as high-paying as a local newspaper job would have been 30 years ago.  But that's true of so many jobs in so many industries...

[lilibet]

May 30, 2015 11:46:52 GMT -5 katfco said:

It is really interesting, and DH, as the digital/social media manager for a group of newspapers has seen firsthand how a lot of things have changed, not only in business expectations but in readership expectations. His company has seen deep cuts in the last several years, largely because CEOs and stockholders still expect to see the high profits they used to. It's a different world now, and newspapers are trying to keep up.

They've also had to deal with people who don't quite understand the difference between journalism and blogging, sharing and copying. "Why should I pay for it when I can read the 'same' thing on a free, amateur blog site?" "It's the Internet! It's supposed to be free!"

Yes, people really do not get the difference.


This all interests me because when I was in school for journalism there was a new and emerging digital tech focus you could select but few people actually did and basically it was just how to put newspaper features online, not nearly what one would need today. And that was in the mid-late 2000s. I wonder how digital journalism will change as the older reporters/managers/etc start retiring and the newer ones who may have had some form of schooling on digital themes take over. 

[Deleted]

This is so interesting to me in how online news has developed. I mean, we run into it on this very board with citing sources and why the quality of the source actually matters. With the internet making everyone think they are an expert in areas where they've only read up on a few links vs. working or studying aggressively in that topic or field, opinions "supported" by data or ideas taken out of context are shared as news by the public which cares more about being the first to share it vs. sharing something accurate. (Ha, I know when I happen upon a good link, I race over here to see if I'll be the first to post it.)

I thought the piece about Andrew Sullivan was very interesting as well, in that it seemed like whatever his next move was had to solely be based upon his offerings vs. trying to pull in other sources which could have made his site more successful.

I'm really interested to see what they say about Buzzfeed.

ETA: OK, it turns out I have more thoughts. One area this piece focused on was the "journalism" that is propelled by fears and rage of the readers. While I'm not terribly surprised this piece honed in solely on how conservative sites do this (when there are certainly liberal sites which also spin the news to prime and propel their readers on emotion), I really really really hate that there doesn't seem to be any real journalism out there that is as objective as possible. I know I turn to BBC and Al Jazeera to try to get objective reporting, but as long as humans are translating the news, it'll never be truly objective. I just wish there was even a lame attempt to keep it as black-and-white as possible.

Which leads me to my frustration with us as a news-absorbing audience. We don't care enough about the news spin anymore to combat it. We take what we can get and rely on our individual ability to filter the shit from the fact.

[zoegirltx]

confess: TL:DR

But i've been interested in this for a while. I was a big sullivan fan. Happy to see his model succeed, sad to see him retire. I paid to read his content- very happily. I thought his long-form stuff was really worthy writing... I really do think there is a place on the internet for a really good, high quality aggregator that finds & distributes the best content in a responsible manner.

I've also been reading Drudge (a shithole aggregator at it the bottom of the barrel) and other places like HuffPo & TPM. It's interesting to ee their different business models. HuffPo is all about click bait for most of their stuff, but they are just so useful and cover to many areas... I do like TPM & I'm considering subscribing.

And I can't believe how far down the shit hole my local newpaper (digital version) has gone. It's practically unreadable & of no value. We're the 4th largest city in the coutnry & most of the stories are lifetstyle, food, entertainment...numerous times their main page isn't even covering a major national/global story.