Opinion: the media's "domino effect" in downsizing
Posted by Rosemary D'Amour on December 2, 2008 at 10:01 AM
Journalist Michael Smerconish describes the shortage of hard news and investigative journalism as leaving the always-expanding number of news outlets, from 24-hour cable networks and blogs, "scrambling for anything they can parrot to a hungry audience."
Smerconish brings up the "fake McCain advisor" incident of the 2008 presidential election as proof.
When Martin Eisenstadt, the "Borat of the campaign season," a character created by aspiring filmmakers Eitan Gorlin and Dan Miryish "in their quest to get a TV show," taken seriously as a political pundit, reporting rumors that were taken as fact by the likes of Fox News and the Los Angeles Times, it displayed a larger problem that happens in an age of newsroom downsizing, Smerconish says.
A Variety column by Brian Lowry observed that "shrinking print coverage threatens to trigger a 'domino effect' as news operations downsize, feeding the strange Internet age conundrum where there's more information - courtesy of blogs and the Web - but less real news, especially as it pertains to backyard issues."
"Those who report the news are a dying breed, even in the Internet world," Smerconish says, even using himself as an example. His use of newspapers as sources for his own live, "current-events-driven" radio show doesn't require his reporting, but a repetition of the news and often his own opinion.
When "hardly a week goes by without a headline about a major publication trimming newsroom staff," how long will the "dominoes" and the "parrots" be able to repeat accurate reports?
People eager for the next piece of news, Smerconish writes, will be taken in by the fakes. Bad habits, he continues, will "continue to inch their way into cash-strapped, understaffed traditional news-gathering outlets where legitimate reporting is falling by the wayside.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
When Martin Eisenstadt, the "Borat of the campaign season," a character created by aspiring filmmakers Eitan Gorlin and Dan Miryish "in their quest to get a TV show," taken seriously as a political pundit, reporting rumors that were taken as fact by the likes of Fox News and the Los Angeles Times, it displayed a larger problem that happens in an age of newsroom downsizing, Smerconish says.
A Variety column by Brian Lowry observed that "shrinking print coverage threatens to trigger a 'domino effect' as news operations downsize, feeding the strange Internet age conundrum where there's more information - courtesy of blogs and the Web - but less real news, especially as it pertains to backyard issues."
"Those who report the news are a dying breed, even in the Internet world," Smerconish says, even using himself as an example. His use of newspapers as sources for his own live, "current-events-driven" radio show doesn't require his reporting, but a repetition of the news and often his own opinion.
When "hardly a week goes by without a headline about a major publication trimming newsroom staff," how long will the "dominoes" and the "parrots" be able to repeat accurate reports?
People eager for the next piece of news, Smerconish writes, will be taken in by the fakes. Bad habits, he continues, will "continue to inch their way into cash-strapped, understaffed traditional news-gathering outlets where legitimate reporting is falling by the wayside.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Related Entries
- Opinion: "Newspapers-versus-bloggers" not constructive for the industry
- Opinion: NYT' executive editor - shortage of "quality journalism"
- US: Crowdsourcing allows reporters to cover their own layoffs
- US: Huffington's new book on the merge of blogging and traditional media
- Egypt: 89% favor Internet censorship law
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Opinion: the media's "domino effect" in downsizing.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.editorsweblog.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/8182
