This set of articles, that I collected for another class, are really the backdrop for this project. I am afraid that what has just happened to newspapers will happen to books.
And while I love Lawrence Lessig, so admire his work, I heard him speak on Fresh Air, Terry Gross's NPR program earlier this year.(Fresh Air from WHYY, December 22, 2008) He seemed unconcerned about the newspapers that were failing as he spoke.
So, while he may be right in the broad sense about monopolies, what do we do in the moment. What if book publishing goes the way of newspapers? And as quickly?
1Abell, John C. "Top 25 Newspapers Lose 1 Million Readers Since last March" WIRED April 2009 <
Readership of print newspapers was down nearly 10% overall since March 2008. Some fared worse, USA Today and New York Post. Loss was smallest among Washington Post, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and Chigago Tribune. Their good reports were attributed to having big stories in their areas. Only Wall Street Journal added readership.
This underscores the general understanding that newspapers are in trouble. What it means for librarians may be that at some point, people may no longer want or be able to look at the hard copy. Librarians, however, must be concerned that news is still available to patrons no matter what happens.
2Etheridge, Eric. "Why Newspapers Can't Be Saved, but the News Can" The New York Times March 16, 2009. Accessed March 16, 2009.
This is one of The Times collections of ideas across the blogosphere about the press that was provoked by the terrible news coming out across the country about newspapers. This includes loss of Rocky Mountain News and The Seattle Post, while the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philadelphia Inquirer are all declaring bankruptcy. Etheridge discusses the news' future by repeating the vision of what he calls "future positivists" Clay Shirky and Steven Berlin Johnson. Shirky believes that while what we are witnessing is tough, everything is new and needs to be experimented with. Good stuff can come out of it all.Shirky doesn't believe we need to worry about the publishing industry because the difficulty of making ideas available to the public has been solved by the web. Johnson does not believe that we have lost the democratic intellectual function of newspapers. He believes the web will do it and do it better.
If the role of publisher disappears, then the only ones left to be gatekeepers and knowledgeable about quality and reliability, are going to be librarians.
3Ignatius, David. "Figuring Out our News Future" The Washington Post May 10, 2009.
Ignatius argues that the hand-wringing over newspapers may be a bit overblown. He argues that as readership of news is way up, at The Post online readership is three times larger than the hard copy circulation, that revenue streams are sure to follow, that the only problem is finding a way to do it. The only thing he sees as difficult is the desire of readers today to find particular information, not to be generally informed.
I think Ignatius may be right, though his vision seems to ignore some other information about the three supports of news--advertising, subscriptions, and individual sales. Without subscriptions, all one has is advertising. Unless there is a move to pay by the slice proposed elsewhere. For librarians, the question of the desire of readers that Ignatius suggests, to find particular bits of information rather than to be generally informed, may signal a change in user behavior. If this is the case, should librarians be trying to counter this vision or move with it?
4Issacson, Walter. "How to Save Your Newspaper" Time February 5, 2009. <
In this essay, Issacson argues that the three legs supporting journalism have been advertising, subscriptions and newsstand sales. Today, though readership is way up, the number of people buying the paper, either through subscriptions or through newsstand sales is way down. The solution, therefore, is to replace the consumer driven money through micropayments to the papers online.
There is some sense in what Issacson says here, that people should expect to pay for the fruits of intellectual labor. I am not sure now that it can be done. So much is now online for free, I am not sure how one puts the genie back in the bottle. For librarians, collections would have a problem. Would the hard copy be replaced by the electronic?
5Kinsley, Michael. "You Can't Sell News by the Slice" New York Times February 10, 2009. <
As a direct response to Issacson, Kinsley argues that trying to get people to pay for access to material on the internet does not work. He argues that there is too much competition for anyone to pay for access to the news now. He argues that people paid for the paper, the physical object, not the content. Furthermore, he argues that the news shouldn't use of the resources in terms of paper that it once did. He suggests that advertising will finally end up covering the costs of making news. More competition is good. So what if we lose most of the nation's papers? The web is at our finger tips.
I am less sanguine about this than Kinsley, though I tend to agree about the paying business. I wonder if his vision of the future is correct? I wonder if it is true that people pay for objects and not for intellectual content? If this is so, will people cease to want to pay for libraries? I remember your discussion last semester saying that people like to fund buildings but not librarians or books to fill them. What would this mean for us?
6Kramer, Staci D. "paidContent.org-Dallas Morning News to Senate: Amazon Kindle Is Not a Business Model for Newspapers" Washington Post <
According to Kramer James Moroney of Dallas Morning News argued that Amazon will serve newspapers through their Kindle reader only if it acquires extensive licensing and large revenues. These agreements would not save the newspaper industry.
I tend to agree from other materials that I have read that through the Kindle, Amazon is trying to position itself as the Microsoft of the book world. I do see monopoly as a problem.
7Kurtz, Howard. "Lack of Vision to Blame for Newspaper Woes" The Washington Post May 11, 2009 <
Kurtz suggests that he had been optimistic about the future of newspapers until recently. Now he acknowledges that perhaps papers were too conservative in terms of methods of delivery and in style of content. What he says is that without them, there will be no organizations that can allow a journalist to investigate a story for weeks or months before writing. He argues that without the newspaper we will lose a sense of community. He posits that internet news readers don't look at the whole paper, but only individual bits and so learn less. He discusses alternatives to the newspaper funding structure: the pay by slice, the not for profit model. He seems resigned nothing will work and is deeply nostalgic.
If he is right, that newspapers will no longer exist, that we will have lost the only method we have of true investigative reporting, I am not sure what to do. For librarians, we will need to make known what has been lost. Because the elements he suggests we are losing are vital to democracy.
8Lavoie, Denise. "Agreement keeps Boston Globe alive, but what next?" The Washington Post May 6, 2009 <
This article details the losses The Globe's employees have had to take as The Globe's new owner, The New York Times, threatened to close down the 137 year old paper. It puts their plights within the context of similar drastic cuts throughout the nation's major newspapers.
The uncertainty of the future of newspapers is indeed dire, even newspapers with long standing places in their communities. This is evidence of the revolution of communications that we are going through.
9Luscombe, Belinda. "As Newrooms Cut Back, Who Covers the Statehouse?" Time May 7, 2009. <
Luscombe discusses the future dearth of state and local reporting given the state of newspapers finances. She argues that the few web journalists who try to take up this task (1 of 11 journalists in Connecticut) are not funded and do the work as a labor of love and not as a profession. She reports that David Simon, creator of The Wire and former newspaper man, made this point at Congressional hearings last week. Simon also argued that corruption is sure to rise as the coverage drops.
This article stresses that another of the real costs of the loss of reporting and publishing as we have known, beyond whether people in general know what is going on or whether or not we feel like a community, is that we are losing watchdogs. The newspaper reporters are a kind of security guard against corruption. That first line of defense is being lost. To provide information, information must be produced. I can't help but believe that lobbying for the production of knowledge becomes a kind of sign of a nation's intellectual freedom.
10McIntyre, Douglas A. "Blaming Newspaper Management for Newspaper Problems" Time March 27, 2009. <
McIntyre suggests that the newspaper CEO's whose job it is to be thinking about what might come up in ten years that might bring a company thought only about postage and unions. Not a single major newspaper thought about the internet. In short, McIntyre says, the CEOs failed at their major responsibility. So, we better not count on the market and CEOs to safeguard intellectual production.
11Miga, Andrew. "Senate hears a dim forecast for newspapers' future." The Washington Post May 06, 2009 <
The article mentions three visions of the future of newspapers: Sen Cardin of Maryland argues that small papers should, could become non-profits; David Simon, creator of The WIre, argues that somehow high end journalism needs a new economic model; Ariana Huffington says that hand-wringing doesn't take into account what a good time it is for news consumers.
I find the three ideas not exactly in competition, but not fully synchronous either. Yes, it may be that news consumers can find and hold information in ways never before possible. But unless information is produced in significant ways, we will none of us find what we need. And while I like the idea of non-profits, as Simon suggests, high-end journalism is dying. I have seen very few high-end non profits. I worry that there will not be enough feet on the ground. Is there some technology that makes the production of knowledge easier that we need to supply people with? I cannot believe we can do good news on the cheap. How will librarians address a dearth of news? We will need to be watching media more carefully. But at the same time, the plethora of blogs could finally be a distraction. We have to have librarians' response to this.
12Nichols, John and Robert W. McChesney. “The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers” The Nation 288:13 April 6, 2009 11-19.
Nichols and McChesney open this essay listing the failure of many large newspapers that have already taken place, the possible closure of several others, and the general dismantling of many, many more due to budget cuts. They then suggest that the dismantling of our greatest news gathering entity is a commercial failure and that the for profit motive of most news organizations has failed news gathering. The authors further argue that the commercial model not only cannot sustain the media financially, it has failed in terms of quality reporting. It argues that this being the case, that we need government involved because the media is a public good and like other public goods cannot be allowed to disappear due to market place irresponsibility. They make the case that the media are fundamental to the continuation of democracy. They do not argue that government should step in and take over news organizations, but the authors suggest several indirect government subsidies including subscription subsidies, postal reforms, youth media and investment in public broadcasting.
The troubled state of the newspaper, even such flagship papers as the New York Times, The Boston, Globe, and Washington Post among others is troubling indeed. For librarians, the question is in part how we can possibly assure that our users can remain current with news if the daily disappears. What alternatives to the usual papers do we have? Without the complex and large bureaus that once covered the globe, how will our nation know what is taking place across the world? We certainly need more information than that which is available from government sources. I cannot help but think that this is a concern of the ALA, an intellectual freedom issue that should be addressed creatively from that point of view. Another concern is certainly about the form of the paper. Of course, most papers are now available online and many young people especially prefer to read the paper in this format. Finally, the loss of the local newspaper would require that librarians do everything in their power to find replacement sources for the news to make available to the public.
13Shafer, Jack. "Hello, Steve Brill, Get Me Rewrite" Slate April 17, 2009. <
Shafer argues that the micropayment idea developed by Steve Brill is unworkable on a number of counts. First it is highly unlikely that the enough news organizations that presently publish for free online are likely to go back to a pay per view way of doing business. Furthermore, in the unlikely event that they did, Shafer suggests that a rival business would be able to repackage their work without breaking any copyright laws and earn all the advertising revenue on a free site. Finally, Shafer argues that the free news model has a tradition in radio and television. We are accustomed to this.
This model of news distribution proposed by Shafer is what we have today. But it does not address the failure of our newspapers nor what should be done to save them. This concerns me. I don't believe that libraries can do this themselves, but libraries do have an obligation to engage in this debate.
14Sirota, David. "All the news that's fit to be birdcage liner" Salon March 28, 2009 <
Sirota argues that while the internet and dwindling advertising hurt newspapers, what really did papers were their own policies: namely, using cheap national news instead of creating local news and at the national level writing of national figures in a sensationalist rather than news worthy way. Thus we are not losing much local reporting according to Sirota at all.
This is all well and good. But we still need local news. How does a librarian
collect it? Where do we find it? How do we nourish its manufacture?
15Stephey, M.J. "The State of the Media: Not Good" Time March 16, 2009. <
Stepney summarizes the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism in four points: 1.) The major problem is the failure of advertisement to continue to pay for journalism; the micropayment option has already been tried and has failed; the non-profit idea looks too small; perhaps the internet should adopt a cable model; 2.) Media coverage of presidential campaign was worse, controlled by candidates, not by reporting. 3.) Citizens acting as journalists cannot replace reporters; 4.) The industry is shrinking, has shrunk by 20%. This is bad news.
This Pew report makes clear where the real difficulty lies in terms of funding. And yet, it does seem as if the quality of news has been disintegrating longer than the funding crisis has existed.
16Swensen, David and Michael Schmidt. "News You Can Endow" The New York Times January 28, 2009. <
Swensen argues that we must endow newspapers to save them because their business model is no longer workable and because they are fundamental to democracy. "If Jefferson was right that a well-informed citizenry is the foundation of our democracy, then newspapers must be saved."
While I agree with Swensen that endowments are a beginning, I don't know if they are enough. And I am not sure what librarians should be doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment