What is Digg?56 Comments
- BullHunter, on 01/06/2009, -4/+543 reasons why newspapers are dying:
1. Yesterdays news today. That sucks!
2. Waste of resources. Getting one days use out of a paper that people only read a small percentage of is just stupid and an insult to nature!
3. The editor. Might as well call it "The Censor" - cyrusuncc, on 01/06/2009, -1/+27I am your father
-Vader - K0MMIE, on 01/06/2009, -4/+28Ha Ha! Your medium is dying.
- Trifold, on 01/06/2009, -0/+244. Craigslist has pretty much destroyed revenue from classifieds, which are most paper's life blood.
- BrettFromTibet, on 01/06/2009, -2/+25Poor newspapers... it's a different medium... different rules.. and I like the digital world better!
- inactive, on 01/06/2009, -2/+25"at my journalism school, classes were required for writing HTML text, Basic java and flash and video editing. "
Did they also teach you how to split up long blocks of text with paragraphs? - 1807, on 01/06/2009, -1/+24As a reporter and journalist for the last year, I realize that newsprint journalism is dying. Gone are the days when a reporter was a respected individual, smoking a cigarette while hunched over a black type-writer. These days, just trying to get eight random people to answer a question like "What is the worst gift you received over the Holidays?" and then agree to give their name and have their picture taken is like pulling teeth. I have seen first hand that newspapers are really nothing more than well written commercials aimed at people over the age of 40. And honestly, I think that's sad. Just this week, I started working for a paper which recently informed me that due to financial restrictions, they would not be able to give me a raise they told me I would get three months prior. Is it going to die tomorrow? No, I think communities still read the paper and still read the content. Is it going to die in 20 years or less? I think maybe the print version might, but I think there are enough people online reading newspapers that most journalists won't be out of a job, the job will just change. Already, at my journalism school, classes were required for writing HTML text, Basic java and flash and video editing. The change is coming and most people know it. I guess I just wanted to say, people who write for newspapers know it's a dying industry. Some people are more unrealistic than others about it's demise, but I don't think that journalists, as a whole, will die off. I guess the question we need to ask our selves, is what is the difference between a blogger and a journalist? We are nothing more than common people calling up people on the phone asking for information. We don't get any special privileges that the common person doesn't have. We just happen to get paid for it.
-Luke - mediaspree, on 01/06/2009, -1/+18#1 sounds alot like digg...
- replaysMike, on 01/06/2009, -6/+18SYNOPSIS: Pic is irrelevant. Story is long and boring. You want to whine about newspapers becoming outdated? Don't whine to the ADD crowd in 5000 word essays.
- JonathonB, on 01/06/2009, -0/+12Digital toilet paper? No... it'll be 3 seashells.
- SevenXOne, on 01/06/2009, -0/+10#3 There's nothing inherently wrong with editors, as they provide an essential function of making sure that the writings of the author are fact based. My problem with democratization on information via the internet is that you must filter through 90% pure b.s to obtain an actual fact.
- kingmanic, on 01/06/2009, -0/+9"Gone are the days when a reporter was a respected individual, smoking a cigarette while hunched over a black type-writer."
Breaking: Those days never existed. Reporters have been viewed with contempt or apathy from the top and bottom of society since the invention of "News". Some naive few have and still respect reporters but generally those with power have always despised you and those with knowledge have always despaired at how you get it wrong. Reporters have always had a purpose and I admire many who suffered to serve the truth but there was never a mythic age were reporters were "respected individuals". Look back at the histories. Rumor-mills, liars, and propagandists have been the common forms of journalist. - anders5689, on 01/06/2009, -1/+9The real problem with the newspapers disappearing is that they are the source of all the "free" content that we've been reading online. For the past few years, people online have been enjoying the best of both worlds. High payed editors and investigative reporters have still been investing monumental amounts of time and money to find the right stories, uncover the right facts, and ask the right questions.
Then some blogger re-writes it, puts it on his page, and everyone reads that because it's "free."
The problem is, once the newspapers disappear, who's doing the reporting? Who's doing the investigating? Not the bloggers, that's for sure.... - newswilson, on 01/06/2009, -0/+7Well as a journalsit I can tell you that the death of the newspaper is being overstated. The death of the way most newspapers are run isn't. Newspapers will hang around for a while yet. They are a vital part of most communities. The business model will just need change and the focus needs to move away from the paper itself to the news. Most newspaper companies are too big and cover too wide an area, maybe the next model for newspapers will be similar to public TV and radio. Like the local sports section send us $40 dollars during our pledge drive to assure the community that we will be able to cover the local football game... etc. Newspapers and newspaper companies will get smaller and more focused. Don't forget newspapers make tons of money, they just cost tons of money to produce as well.
- I1969, on 01/06/2009, -0/+7Don't blame editors. Blame the publishers who haven't paid enough attention to bringing in online ad dollars, especially from local companies who form the bulk of local print advertising.
- JAGUART, on 01/06/2009, -0/+6I want to read a postmortem article on how "Big Telcoms tried to strong arm The Web and Failed". Because God knows they keep trying.
- ericdano, on 01/06/2009, -1/+7Knight Ridder is the WORST company ever. They bought one of the local, long established papers around here in 2002, and now the paper is 60% ads. On Tuesday the paper is 80% ads.....as they have this insert thing that comes with the paper.
- esus4, on 01/06/2009, -1/+7I love being able to get the news online in an instant but dread the thought of all the trained journalists that are the source of the articles losing their jobs. The articles will still be online but will be written by (shudder) bloggers etc.
- ScienceDoc, on 01/06/2009, -0/+5As pointed out previously, did the newspaper folks cry for the slide rule makers? Did they cry for the drayage companies?
Newspapers proved weak in the neocon era and very weak on the Iraq War and terrorism paranoia. When provided with an option, people walked. - theutopian, on 01/06/2009, -0/+5My family and friends kept asking me why I didn't try to get a job at a newspaper when I graduated and couldn't find a job (I was an English Major). I had to keep telling them: Newspapers are NOT a growth industry.
I work at a dot-com now. - vectorjohn, on 01/06/2009, -0/+5Nobody said NEWS was dying. News most certainly is alive and well. There still needs to be people getting stories and writing them. And reputation counts still too (a CNN, NYT, or even Wired article pull more weight than Huffington Post, for eg). Just news *papers* are dying. And they were a big revenue source. Someone is going to have to find a way to make up for the revenue that came from news papers (ads and paper cost).
And the difference between a blogger and a journalist is that a journalist should be able to write better news articles and should be better at knowing what is good or bad news to write about. Bloggers just write whatever they feel like. - kflott, on 01/06/2009, -0/+4My former employer was a newspaper, and even as an employee I never read the paper because of #1... who wants to hear about old news! They tried to make up for it with constant updates on their website but the site was IMHO cluttered and designed more for the advertisers than for the readers.
- SkippyDoorknob, on 01/06/2009, -2/+6The original version from the 80's with David Hasselhoff was much better especially when they...
what?
Ridder? Not Rider? Are you sure?
oh.....
well then.... never mind - newswilson, on 01/06/2009, -0/+4That's just it bloggers won't write everything you currently get in your daily hometown newspaper. Even if they do will they try to be objective? You may say, "Well the guy who blogs our town council meetings does a good job." What you may not know is that he probably has one or a group of issue he cares a lot about. Maybe he hates all taxes or wants to keep the town from rezoning some pasture land, but bloggers usually come to the party with a set perspective on issues like normal people. Journalist tend to be more objective because in most cases they are less or not involved personally in what they cover. i was never more objective than as a 23 year old reporter covering governmental meetings. All I wanted to do was report as well as i could so I could get better assignments. I had no point of view beyond the facts ad quotes and no axes to grind.
- hamobu, on 01/06/2009, -0/+4The best two paragraphs in the article are only tangentaly related to the topic, but they best describe one of the most important advantages of open source:
The extreme suckage of proprietary online services stemmed from the fact that they were "non-generative" technologies, to borrow a phrase from Jonathan Zittrain's excellent The Future of the Internet—And How To Stop It. Nongenerative technologies can't be tinkered with or otherwise improved by outsiders. The iPhone is a good example of a nongenerative device: Its software updates "actively seek out and erase" unauthorized modifications, to paraphrase Zittrain.
Generative technologies such as the PC, on the other hand, invite improvement by outsiders, making them more and more useful to users as time passes—and often more useful in ways that the original designers never would have imagined. When you connect a generative technology to a nongenerative one, you usually end up crippling the generative one. - garryw, on 01/06/2009, -1/+5I'm guessing here but.. no.
- soulonice, on 01/06/2009, -0/+4Uhhh, Knight Ridder doesn't exist anymore.
- cortjezter, on 01/06/2009, -0/+3well put!
- MacEnvy, on 01/06/2009, -0/+3"these days"
Ever read an old newspaper, say from 1900? Spelling and grammatical errors in the press aren't new. They weed out as many as possible, but a few (likely very tired) eyes will never catch as many typos as the thousands of readers who see it the next day. - warriorscot, on 01/06/2009, -0/+3Agreed there is nothing wrong with the theory of editors. Its when it comes to application that like so many thinks it falls flat on its ass.
- mk2ja, on 01/06/2009, -0/+3All on one page... http://www.slate.com/id/2207912/pagenum/all/#p2
- mikehill33, on 01/06/2009, -2/+5Gannett: "Let's not publish sports scores until the print edition closes."
Famous last words. - warriorscot, on 01/06/2009, -0/+3You don't know how to use the seashells?
- newswilson, on 01/06/2009, -0/+3But a great site doen't equal a good business model. You can have the greatest most useful site in the world, but if the content on it is funded by the off line edition the site isn't going to make it once the print version scales back or goes away.
- jakem1, on 01/06/2009, -0/+3The Guardian have a great website (http://www.guardian.co.uk/) and are an example of a newspaper that has made a pretty good transition to the internet.
- MtheoryX, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2Digg isn't exactly "profitable" right now either, and I'd certainly say it's a new medium.
- diggdatt, on 01/06/2009, -2/+4Journalism is pretty much dead. The media wont tell us so many things, you might as well not buy their *****. Oh well, ***** them all.
- webyatri, on 01/06/2009, -3/+5if you own any property that can be represented in 1s and 0s then you move to electronic delivery or die.
- Falldog, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2Many print news organizations failed to see the shift in technology and stuck to their old ways thinking that it would never take off. Same way radio is failing terribly. They saw the approach of mp3 players and the like, but kept up their old ways thinking nothing bad could happen to their established industry.
- ElGstr, on 01/06/2009, -1/+3Frank Zappa said, “There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a long shelf life.”
Who Is A Reporter, Given The Millions Of Bloggers?, http://reno.broowaha.com/article.php?id=3684
News With A Point Of View, http://reno.broowaha.com/article.php?id=4193
Our Right To Know, http://reno.broowaha.com/article.php?id=4213
On Becoming An Activist, http://www.broowaha.com/article.php?id=4457
There's an old Sufi expression that goes "One who thinks the same way at 50 as they did at 20 has wasted 30 years of their life". - bcclist, on 01/08/2009, -0/+2It would be so easy for Newspapers to drive web revenue but they can't figure it out for some reason. Here within lies the problem - you have a bunch of senior citizens at the top trying to figure out how to make advertising money online when all they're familiar with is selling newsprint ads. It's not rocket science - but, making money online doesn't include forced registrations, pop-ups, and obnoxiously flashing banner ads.
- gigitrix, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2#3 too, if you aren't counting "the editor" as a single person
- Heiminator, on 01/06/2009, -1/+3WHAT?you dont know what the three seashells are for?
dugg for demolition man reference :-) - gwalms, on 01/15/2009, -0/+2maby we will use them there things that shoot up water in your hole ur somethin'
- cyrusuncc, on 01/06/2009, -1/+3http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=527_1205782611& ...
- markadamsjdmba, on 01/08/2009, -0/+2Newspapers and television "news" are dying because more and more people are realizing that the "news" media cartel refuses to cover many important topics and even lies to the public. As a result, they are turning to the web to find out about the issues they are interested in. After all, who would want to waste time wading through lies and disinformation, and more importantly, who would want to pay for that BS.
For a couple of examples of how the "news" media has engaged in actions that have undoubtedly caused it to lose readers and viewers, see:
Have American Elections Really Been Stolen? Part 1 in the “Democracy” in America Series – The Proof http://www.opednews.com/articles/Have-American-Ele ... This article shows that the "news" media helped cover up election theft.
To see an example of how our “news” media has taken action to keep the public in the dark, see Welcome to the Twilight Zone Where an Increase is a Cut?!? http://dailycensored.com/2008/12/04/welcome-to-the ... This shows how the “news” media cartel helped our government representatives lie to the public in order to help get rid of public access TV in the Tampa Bay Area. Also, don’t miss the links below the video.
If any news outlet wants to survive, it better deliver the news instead of propaganda and fluff. - mkNix, on 01/06/2009, -5/+6They act as sources of information to serve the portals we choose to get them from, others get them through sites such as Digg, Google News etc etc. If they present it easily for others to aggregate them to a centralised page for a user, they are helping to invent yes in my opinion.
- inactive, on 01/06/2009, -1/+2could not agree more.
- inactive, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1tl;dr
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