Posted on 11/20/2007 8:24:27 AM PST by 3AngelaD
hen Tom Brokaw, an old-time mainstream media figure in his own right, says he thinks print newspapers won’t be around in 10 years, that’s probably not a good sign for the industry. The former NBC “Nightly News” anchor appeared at the Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C. on November 19 to promote his new book..Brokaw said he envisioned a major newspaper going completely digital in 10 years.
“I was at The Washington Post earlier today,” Brokaw said. “And in the lobby they’ve got a wonderful graphic describing how the printing press works and where it is … 75,000 copies an hour it can turn out. Its last run is at 2:15 in the morning and [has] an automatic paper roll that comes when they run out of paper and the ink is recharge and I looked at all that and I thought – ‘Ten years from now, will it be here?’
" I don’t know. Probably … if you would do a hardcore analysis – probably not. It’ll be probably digital 10 years from now.”
Brokaw referred to how the younger generations rely solely on digital forms media to get their information.
“You talk to them about the tactile experience at the newspaper and they look at you, and it’s like ‘Man, what planet were you born on?’” Brokaw quipped.
However, Brokaw said there will still be a demand for journalists to interpret information.
“There will never not be a need for professional people to take complicated information, put it into a form that viewers and readers will need to know and want to understand,” he said.
According to Editor & Publisher, daily circulation at The Washington Post was down 3.2 percent to 635,087 and Sunday was down 3.9 percent to 894,428 for the six-month period ending September 2007.
Journalists "interpret information"? Why don't they just give us the information and let us "interpret" it? Maybe that's the reason newspapers are dying, Brokaw.
SO DAMN LONG????????
Can I do anything more to speed up the demise of your lefty rag.... other than just throwing your mail with subscription offers straigh in the trash?
Have a nice day :)
Bigger party at the Nixon Library!
There will never not be the desire, on the part of viewers and readers, to choose for themselves which professional people they want to take complicated information and put it into a form that viewers and readers want to know.
The first takedown of the internet during an enemy attack or government action will see newspapers being printed and sold on every corner...like they were 90 years ago.
A smart man like Murdoch understands this, I'm sure.
How about the need for a journalist who can present an idea without using a double negative?
There has been a huge void in my life since Tom Brokaw left the airwaves, because I don't have anybody to process complicated information and tell me what I need to know and what I want to understand...
He also used to cut my meat for me and pre-chew my food...
Broke-jaw is a tool...he is the younger version of Cronkite, in 10 years his beady little soul will be as dried up as Walter’s is today!
“When Tom Brokaw, an old-time mainstream media figure in his own right, says he thinks print newspapers won’t be around in 10 years, that’s probably not a good sign for the industry.”
Tom, you are probably correct.
Of course PRAVDABCNNBCBS will slide into the Liberal Cesspool before 10 years.
The greatest casualty of the Information Age is journalism and journalists — because we don’t need the “interpreters,” but the world’s foremost experts on their subject matter are capable of transmitting their information directly to people capable of understanding.
Not everybody will be receptive to great insights and understanding — which is the first task of communications — identifying the proper audience, and not just (broad-)casting pearls before swine, thinking that is an intelligent thing to do.
That’s the first task in effective communications — and not simply ranting to the world, thinking one’s message will be heard and understood by the proper recipients of that message. There are thousands of people broadcasting their messages on the street corners of the world everyday — and nobody is listening to them either.
And that is the problem of what the random, broadcast message has become in today’s world of communications and information — in which, the first thing done, is to identify the right audience for that information — rather than demanding the acknowledgment of their superiority of understanding that enables them to reduce the complicated to a simpler form.
Instead, most journalists make a simple matter complicated, to prove the superiority of their understanding — which is the ONLY thing they are communicating anymore, and why they are turning people off (and vice-versa).
With the bias liberal left slant the Post displays, the death knell watch has started. When the NY Slimes completely disintegrates, the Post will follow.
I’m thinking about the mundane, “what happened” type of journalism. It’s not an expert issue, it’s an issue of someone having the job of finding out “what happened”, figuring out if “what happened” is related to other things that did or did not happen, and presenting that without bias in a way we can understand.
Plus, we need objective arbiters of the truth. I know we conservatives are sure we have the truth on our side, and the liberals seem to feel the same way. But truth isn’t a pliable commodity, and our country will not survive if we have two sets of truth coming from two sets of sources. If we can’t get the truth in common, we can’t do anything.
We need an unbiased media to filter out the fiction from the fact. We get too much of a “he-said/she-said”, “two-side” to the story today. No matter how stupid the idea, the talk shows can present one person for each side, making it look like genuine competing stories.
This is why more people today seem to firmly believe the truth of things that are absurdly false, even conservatives fall for it. Because we are NOT smart enough to be able to tell who can be trusted, and who can’t, we don’t have the time to thoroughly research a story, or the money to do it right, or the access we need to get all the details.
The internet provides easy access, but that’s only part — it’s WHAT we have easy access to that’s important.
Sure, if there is a film of something, we don’t need someone to tell us what we are looking at. But most of the time we need someone to do the grunt work and collect the facts on the ground, so we can use OUR time deciding what those facts MEAN.
Did Tom mention how long he thought that television news would be around?
Depth of understanding communicates itself — and not just one’s protestations that they are “objective” when they are obviously not.
In the new age of understanding, we have to look beyond what someone is telling us is the truth — into their understanding of what is the truth, as their basis of credibility and integrity, and then there is some validity in relying on that source for information. But if everything that person says is untrustworthy, we need to locate sources that are trustworthy — rather than engaging in futile and frustrating arguments about what is truth — when they obviously have no idea what that is about while their whole objective is to convince you of whatever they tell you — as their ego/power-trip in life.
That’s what is being taught in the media and journalism schools — just as the education schools teach how one is to “appear” credible rather than truly having a mastery of a subject matter, which is far more important than a person claiming to be fair and impartial while having no understanding of what they are really talking about. So one needs to have that depth of understanding and insight that communicates itself — rather than merely pretending to be a credible source — that is contradicted with everything they say, and everything they reveal, is arbitrary with no substantiation or connection to any other reality.
That is uniquely the problem of “mediated” reality — in a world of increasing authenticity.
BrokenJaw has the credibility of toejam.
I agree that today’s media is largely failing in the task we need them to do. But that doesn’t obviate the need for that task to be done.
However, it’s been so long since it was done correctly that most people have lost the ability to believe it COULD be done. So when they are confronted with a truth they don’t like, they simply dismiss the message by dismissing the messenger.
Remember Joe Friday’s demand: “The facts, maam, just the facts.”
Agree. Ten years is a stretch. It would mean hanging on by bleeding fingernails, massive newsStar pay cuts (ain’t gonna happen), sale of assets, whoring out add dollars (already happening) and big changes in format designed to attract audience/buyers, which will never happen because they are incapable of changing a decades old, liberal mindset.
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