Good journalism’s demand ‘problem’

Columbia Journalism ReviewThe Columbia Journ­al­ism Review takes on a famil­iar tropethe scarcity of atten­tion — and riffs on it in rela­tion to journalism.

Attention—our most pre­cious resource—is in increas­ingly short sup­ply. To win the war for our atten­tion, news organ­iz­a­tions must make them­selves indis­pens­able by pro­du­cing journ­al­ism that helps make sense of the flood of inform­a­tion that inund­ates us all.

Atten­tion, with respect to Her­bert Simon, is not scarce. It is a constant.

It’s just man­aged in ways that read­ers of the Columbia Journ­al­ism Review may find dis­ap­point­ing. Con­tinue read­ing

Contemplating the ‘crisis’

In case Brit­ish read­ers were won­der­ing what journ­al­istic resources they could rely on to keep abreast of the cur­rent situ­ation in the fin­an­cial mar­kets, here’s my advice. You don’t need to! There really is no point in fol­low­ing events you have no pos­sib­il­ity of debat­ing, influ­en­cing or chan­ging (see DownsAn Eco­nomic The­ory of Demo­cracy).

How­ever, if you do feel the need to waste your time in profit­less con­tem­pla­tion then you might enjoy FiNTAG.