The Terminal Man

a relative of mine (we'll call her "a sister") just sent this article from Slate out to some of the people in my family. some on the list are people who like to gripe about crap that they will never change (me), and some other people who actually have valid opinions because they work in the media (everyone else she sent it to).

i gotta say, i agreed with a lot of what Chrichton said. i feel much the same way about major media news outlets: there is a lot of fluff involved. (i do like the knock he took directly at Slate by saying that one of his biggest problems was seeing ads in the middle of stories.)

the idea of reporting facts from sources has become a bit of a lost art. i always felt like the NY Times was worse about that than The Washington Post, but maybe that's just bias. i suppose that they have to crank out content so fast that it does just become "content" after awhile, and not solely information. and also, making sure a reader doesn't lose interest is making sure they are "entertained" while they are getting their information. so, the story has to flow a little bit. consequently, you have to cut a little slack for newspapers sliding down a slope that readers demanded. i mean, think about it. you can read a good smattering of the ap feed online, but it isn't much fun.

one of my biggest problems is the "man on the street" quotes and interviews. in terms of quotes in a newspaper story, they should be peppered pretty parsimoniously (please). and the vapid interviews on TV are pretty much what had me swear off TV news altogether. i honestly don't care at all what the man on the street thinks about the election, or the housing market fallout, or inflation. the man on the street is an idiot. that's why he's on the street and not at work.

but what Crichton is VASTLY over-estimating is the amount of people who want to find THEIR news. i think it's been shown through the unbelievable success of social networking sites that people want to find their groups, not themselves. so, i don't think it is the death of newspapers in the face of personal content. it is the death of general news outlets in the face of content specific, or more tightly organized news sources. outlets like the Times and the Post are becoming like the Roman Empire: so awesome in scope that you don't have the ability to govern nor to pay for it any more. it's unsustainable.

so will single source news outlets go the way of Rome? maybe. but Rome wasn't really wiped out. it was just deregulated and rebranded.