Frank Rich writes a very interesting piece today about the future of journalism, and all the financial troubles papers are facing today. Frank's essential point is that, sure, we mock the media for going to the Correspondents' Dinner (well, Frank and Joe mock, I kind of enjoyed it when I went a few years ago), but the media serves an important role in American democracy, and that role is in jeopardy.
I'm not sure what the answer is. I'd hate to see newspapers make all of their content "for pay." And while folks like the Associated Press think all we do is steal their content, the reality is more nuanced. As much as we criticize the traditional media, we rely on them as bloggers, and as citizens. Our anger at the media during the Bush years wasn't that they exist (which is why the conservatives don't like them), but rather, as I think Atrios once said, that they aren't doing their job.
Almost every post we write on this blog is based on a story in the traditional media. Usually there's some value-added, sometimes, as in this post, there's a lot of value-added. We use the traditional media's story as a starting point to discuss a larger idea. We excerpt the story, link to it, then add our own unique, original analysis. Rather than stealing the news, I believe we enhance it, and help it by linking back, sending our readers to, and overall promoting the big stories of the big media. That's why many journalists today SEND US their stories, hoping for a link. And we send our stories, and even our tips, back to them.
Sometimes, we take a traditional media story that isn't getting attention, like the cell phone privacy issue, and blow it up nationally so it gets the attention it deserves. And other times, we create news without relying on the traditional media at all, such as when we revealed that the Mormons had baptized Obama's deceased mother, or when we uncovered that conservative White House "reporter" Jeff Gannon was really a gay male prostitute.
The relationship is, and can be, incredibly symbiotic. But that doesn't necessarily equal money. I didn't make enough writing this blog to have it be anything other than a hobby the first few years. Then our readership got high enough, and the ad revenues followed, for me to make this my full-time job AND at the same time pay my writers a decent stipend. Now with the economic downturn, that's changing. Ad revenues are down, my income is down, as I'm sure is the income of every blogger out there. In a very real way, we are in the same position as the traditional media, in terms of keeping a watchful eye on our pocketbook and our future.
I have no idea how to solve the problem of the traditional media, or the blogs. We've written before about how large organizations, the Democratic party, and even the White House, don't even think of trying to help the blogs financially, even though we help them far more than we nip at their heels, and we are the first people they come to when they're in trouble and need a friend. But it does seem that both the blogs and the traditional media need some kind of sugar daddy to step in when times are lean, when ad revenues are down, or else the best of citizen journalism, and the dead tree kind, may end up being a passing fancy.
And if you want to donate to the blog, to help support our work, please do. You'll see the big red donation box at the top of the next column to the right. You can donate one-time, or set up a recurring donation where each month you donate X amount of money automatically (like, say, $5 a month, totaling $60 a year). Donations are not tax-deductible, and the system we use is PayPal, so it's secure.
Here's Frank:
What can’t be reinvented is the wheel of commerce. Just because information wants to be free on the Internet doesn’t mean it can always be free. Web advertising will never be profitable enough to support ambitious news gathering. If a public that thinks nothing of spending money on texting or pornography doesn’t foot the bill for such reportage, it won’t happen.
That’s why the debate among journalists about possible forms of payment (subscriptions, NPR-style donations, iTunes-style micropayments, foundation grants) is inside baseball. So is the acrimonious sniping between old media and new. The real question is for the public, not journalists: Does it want to pony up for news, whatever the media that prevail?
It’s all a matter of priorities. Not long ago, we laughed at the idea of pay TV. Free television was considered an inalienable American right (as long as it was paid for by advertisers). Then cable and satellite became the national standard.
By all means let’s mock the old mainstream media as they preen and party on in a Washington ballroom. Let’s deplore the tabloid journalism that, like the cockroach, will always be with us. But if a comprehensive array of real news is to be part of the picture as well, the time will soon arrive for us to put up or shut up. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end we will get what we pay for.
