RADIO/PRESS/TV NEWS SHRINKS WITH ECONOMY - HOW 'BOUT INTERNET NEWS?

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Fri, 12/12/2008 - 10:02.

LilaTovCocktail posts here bringing to our attention that not only the Plain Dirty Dealer, but other of our established news organizations - in this case NPR radio - are cutting back their reporting.

NPR's budget relies in part on income from its philanthropic endowment - which NPR had invested in the stock market - to provide annual funding for the NPR programs. That endowment has tanked...

On the other hand, the Dirty Dealer relies on funding coming in the front door from current advertising - and that income stream has withered up as money has gotten tighter and tighter.

Roldo, on Realneo, has reported on the cut backs on local TV and by the Dirty Dealer

What these trends produce is a reduction in news coverage precisely at the time when analysis of our global economic collapse and national political transition is arguably most important.

QUESTION: Is NOW a tipping point time during which the internet’s evolution will accelerate because the net is the most cost effective, most widely distributed system to collect and disseminate news? I suggest that it is.

We are all “witnesses” to the shrinking commercial reportage. So we have a heightened responsibility looming…because a vibrant and healthy society requires news and criticism.

Bill Callahan, Susan Miller, Roldo Bartimole, George Nemeth, Thomas Mulready, Ed Morrison, Jill Zimon, Gloria Ferris, Mary Beth Matthews, Norm
Roulet, Bill MacDermott, and all the other committed local reporters in NEO – you won’t be getting any richer soon, but you will be shouldering a larger responsibility to provide accurate, honest information and analysis to the community.

Your efforts are appreciated, and your continued efforts will, I believe, lead to an entirely new, dynamic, model of journalism.

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The people take care of what really matters

We have taken a while to get off the ground but a powerful team of talented people are certainly using the Internet to better report what is happening in NEO and the world than "the reporters", using whatever media thet like. We are the news, our neighborhoods are the news, and we report on all that. I don't need to know from "professionals" about my community - especially since none of the professionals live in my community, or know my community.

Considering the educational and professional backgrounds of REALNEO members put the entire PD staff to shame, I wonder why anyone looks to that crew for insight.

So, my conclusion is the PD is toast... local TV and radio news is toast... NPR news is toast... but better users of better technologies with higher social consciousness, like we of the REAL COOP, will provide news coverage that serves a higher purpose and value than was ever possible under the dictatorship of a few absentee billionaire publishers.

Disrupt IT