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.
There was a time in which most people couldn’t write their own truth, because they weren’t good enough typists to produce the exacting standards required for a proper reading by others. Those who did that, were typists and journalists, the modern-day “scribes,” whose major function is not to determine truth but replicate a readable copy, that they eventually co-opted to say what they wanted to say, and not what the original author intended.
But now, because of the miracle of word-processors, many more people are capable of composing their own message (thesis) in the manner uniquely authentic to their understanding — which is not the old mediated message of before, which makes everything uniform and seem the same — losing the most important information of those discoveries and insights, which is the manner in which they came to decide upon the truth. That is the most helpful information in thinking about anything — “how” to think and not “what” to think, which is the mass media style of information transmission — but now there is the possibility of an even higher truth.
In the old media way of seeing the world, truth is just what the authority says it is — which can turn out to be entirely arbitrary unless one can trace the methodology by which one came upon their truth. That is the value of original writing — as is being produced by the countless truth-seekerrs in the world today — and not just by one self-designated group of people claiming to be exclusively “objective.”
That has to be determined by each source on a case by case basis, and not simply as a class, because somebody says, “Trust me, I’m a professional manipulator.”
The question is, do you think a person CAN be an objective observer of an event, and objectively report it?
If not, it doesn’t really matter where the information comes from. If yes, then the question is can anybody do it, or does it require a skill and time and effort which is best obtained by paying someone to do the job?
I believe that if I was sent to an event, I could satisfactorily provide the objective truth of the occurances at that event. But if nobody else would believe me unless “they were there themselves”, it doesn’t matter if I could do so or not.
There was a time that we trusted journalists to faithfully report what happened, and to keep opinion and bias in the analysis pieces. Not any more, and I thik that’s a loss because as an opinion columnist, I am dependent on SOMEONE getting the truth and reporting it.
I have LITTLE trust of the internet “reporters”. They aren’t paid, they aren’t edited, they have no checks and balances. They MIGHT be truthful, but if they aren’t there’s nobody to call them on it or fix it.
There was a time when news couldn’t be too biased because if you learned it you’d drop them. Now we seem to ENJOY bias, so long as it’s for our side. I personally fault ANY reporter, right or left, who can’t give me the facts. I hate writing an opinion and finding out the facts I based the opinion on were not accurate or complete.
PRAVDABCNNBCBS sucks "BIGTIME!!!" (Just ask Dick Cheney)
Ping to #44 reply to Grampa Dave’s comment
Absolutely true. What you're paying for in a good newspaper or magazine is editing.
Since production costs for electronic news sources and magazines will be very low in the future, it will be much more difficult for the MSM to maintain a stranglehold on national news. I can still see small town papers holding monopolies, but not big city and national papers.
PRAVDABCNNBCBS sucks "BIGTIME!!!" (Just ask Dick Cheney)
PRAVDABCNNBCBS sucks "BIGTIME!!!" (Just ask Dick Cheney)
PRAVDABCNNBCBS sucks "BIGTIME!!!" (Just ask Dick Cheney)
PRAVDABCNNBCBS sucks "BIGTIME!!!" (Just ask Dick Cheney)
PRAVDABCNNBCBS sucks "BIGTIME!!!" (Just ask Dick Cheney)
Well, all they put out anymore is GANG-GREEN puss!!!
Brokaw:’Probably’ Dead in 10 Years
I think that's why many people have adopted, to various degrees, the idea that "for each argument there is an equal and opposite argument," and why so many people can seemingly hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously, without any sign of mental discomfort.
This is one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern conception of objective journalism. Like public schooling, the content is worthless, but the methodology is even worse.
Maybe originally (but probably not) reporters just reported on an event without influencing that event — but if you’re really paying attention, they distort the event so greatly that the real subject for that reporting becomes secondary to the reporter’s own spin — or what they would like the public to think in their noble, selfless quest for the Pulitzer/Nobel prize.
Of course I believe any person can be objective — and should be trained to be so as the very basis of modern education, rather than just regurgitating the “facts” as they have been taught up to now — which is also why modern education is increasingly irrelevant and useless.
Most people now have the tools to discover the truth of anything for themselves — as their primary source of truth — and not relying on somebody to do it for them, as their primary source of information. One of the disastrous indoctrinations of the last century was the increasing professionalization, specialization, categorization and fragmentation of understanding so few would venture out of their own comfort zone and area of expertise.
Now, that venturing out is done routinely by people because they are empowered to do so by generalized data processing tools — which allows them to understand most things without becoming experts and learning the jargon that excludes all but a few. This is the major “news” story the news people don’t want us to know about — happening in every life, and what every individual needs to discover for themselves, as the evolutionary development of these times.
In debate, you are taught how to argue any side. But that just made me appreciate the art of examining all the facts to reach sound conclusions, it didn’t make me think there were really two sides to an issue.
But it DID give me a great disdain for those who argue there are “two sides to every issue”, because in fact there are a LOT more than two sides. It’s why I think the CONCEPT of the “fairness doctrine” is faulty, because it envisions a world where there is an “opposing view”, when in fact there are many different opposing views.
For example, Rush Limbaugh is not presenting MY side of the issue, he is giving HIS. If someone argued they needed equal time with him, I would request my own equal time.
Brokaw is 10 years behind. Its dead right now, it just hasn’t rolled over.
PRAVDABCNNBCBS will starting the final leg of its self destuction during the 2008 elections. This time they will po and turnoff a large % of the undecided/uncommited voters.
Their Dixie Chick Marketing strategy has turned most republicans and conservatives off. They will intensify the Dixie Chick Marketing strategy in 2008, and that will be their final chapter as a big influence in America.
Catering to the mentally ill and morally corrupt left is not a very wise marketing strategy.
Wull, are they done re-arranging the danged deck chairs yet??? I hope you guys drilled those holes in the lifeboats that were requisitioned after the inquisition.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
You’d think that the left would love this — just think about all of the trees that will be saved.
I think Gramps,in his subtle, understated way, HAS NAILED IT.
Jefferson particularly wanted government to be vulnerable in a public battle of ideas. He hoped that the attacks of a multitude of opinions would hone its operation, as well as clarify the public's will. In a letter to George Washington he said of government, "if virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth whether in religion, law, or politics."
America has strayed far from his vision for news. Jefferson might be puzzled by modern journalism's mandate to sanctify facts over opinion, when the formation of individual opinion was exactly what he believed was required in America's new form of government. In fact, to help mold public opinion in his own time, he and James Madison launched their own highly opinionated newspaper, critical of Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists. He would no doubt be discouraged by today's prevalence of a single national conversation, in which most outlets seem to present the same news stories and angles.
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