Sunday, August 09, 2009

Killing the news to save it


You know the feeling, you look at the mac (ok PC) and think, Nah! You read another blog and you think recycled. And the website seizes to hold the allure it once paraded when you could proudly proclaim to friends and family over fried chicken.

"Guys I have something to tell you. I have a website".

"You have a website" Damn! Cyber births to match the real thing.

Admittedly that was 1997.

I get that bluesy feeling every year, just about.. NOW! If I had the wherewithal, I'd check myself into the Praire - psychiatric solutions for the rich and famous.

So instead I have chewed a few pen tops.

Time magazine, my Saturday read that still comes in this external corpus form - more a thid than thud on the post mat gave me food to take my mind of such petty matters.

Killing the News to save it Ann Arbor is the first big town to lose its daily paper - now it's a laboratory for new media- page 35.

Whilst James Poniewozik comments What price journalism? News, ( damnit, my words) isn't free.

Much of today's current journalism debates are unavoidably tribal- the big conglomerates losing ad monies and feeling the whack of the net and its pesky users who want something free, so clever marketers are doing everything they've never done to win eyeballs and sell their ware, except paying market rates for space.

Et Voila!

AnnArbor.com reports Time is a model everyone is hoping to dear journalism fairy godmother succeeds. A once local newspaper killed off replaced by the vision of media utopia - a website only.

If it cuts to the quick it's because the framing of the piece entails local democracy, local newspapers, and heavens knows that in the absence of a correctional body, those municipal councils that run our affairs, would, well, rundown our affairs.

The problem is just as acute in the shires of the UK, where grey suits will (when?) slice away the BBC's money to get local media back on the ground.

The somebody will have to pay by Poniewozik posits the brief passing of the nuclear question. Is it possible nothing will save journalism?

Which raises an obvious question what are students being taught at Uni regarding journalism. Tom Kennedy, ex head of video at Washington Post twitted about " stop turning over students into journalism factories".

There's no consensus, debates yes! about what's to be done. In 2005 Prof Leonard Witts was one of the first to read the tea leaves in the post Youtube era staging a conference in San Antonio asking can you trust the media?

I guess we do, except these are the worst of times and best of times to (aw shucks!)

It's for this very reason that I was staying away from the Mac, now I have gone all commentary again..... ( David abandoned this post to art direct his workstation for a photoshoot this week, showing his IMVJ approach)