Seamus McCauley responds to Ryan Sholin and tells it like it is:
Maybe the elephant in the room is a reluctance to even think of newspapers (or journalism or whatever you want to call it) in business terms. Because if we did, we wouldn’t start with the premise “since we’re definitely going to keep making journalism, how can we pay for it?”
We’d already be thinking “is there enough of a market for journalism to keep doing it?”
And nobody wants the answer to that question, because we kind of know already what it probably is.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
“Of journalism and elephants” is what I nearly called my post. Damn!
I prefer yours!
How about “Shooting an elephant” ?
Ryan – nice Orwell reference (though Orwell is more Lloyd’s bag really).
the situation in the US is very different to the UK.
In the UK the major dailies compete with one another aggressively, and actually produce a significant number of the stories they distribute.
In the US most newspapers are regional monopolies. They produce very little of the news they distribute. (de facto) Press releases and wire services dominate.
“News is something someone wants suppressed. Everything else is just advertising”. (Alf Harmsworth) By this definition I have seen weeks go by where the regional papers here in Colorado produce no news at all.