I don’t need newspapers. I do need the people-formerly-known-as-newspaper-writers. I need an online news source that gathers only the truth from rumors on blogs and provides an honest and accurate explanation of local news. I need someone to explain the what if we do and what if we don’t of proposed political amendments. More than anything else, I need to be able to *trust the professional media source.
I don’t need newspaper blogs that dangle raw meat in front of angry people because any hit is a good hit. Leave the carnival of crazy to blogs and have the dignity to be above it if you are a professional media source. I don’t need every news article link spamming me on Twitter. Twitter is a conversation and that means you are listening and interacting. If you have zero followers or only post links to your own site, you are missing out on what makes Twitter special. I have a feed reader to show me new articles as they are published. If you are doing real investigative journalism, e-mail the updates to subscribers.
I need to be able to access all my information via computers and cell phones. It’s portable, immediate and constantly updated. I don’t need a pile of newsprint. My dogs are already housebroken.
As long as news is gathered by human “beans” I think its always going to be biased and require the reader to do some critical thinking, research and analysis of it to determine their own truth. I’m getting so use to blogs and the commentary things on CNN.com that maybe I never trust the objectivity of anyone writing anything, lol.
A News-Sentinel woman was at AC Moore today hocking subscriptions. I told her I already get just the sunday paper and she tried to convince me to get it daily for just x more cents a week. I said, “no I have trouble reading the one I get, I just really get it for the coupons and craft store ads with coupons” and I guess she didn’t know what to say.
There is a part of me that is sad for the fall of newspapers. Like I want to see little street urchins selling papers and hear people say “my dad’s a newspaper man” and “STOP THE PRESSES.”
But I seem to always want to live in a past that seemed so much more romantic than it probably was.
I think it is ridiculous not to expect a reporter to say “this is my opinion” regardless of their choice to explain or not explain their opinion. It is not the same thing as a media site that just says “dogs rule and cats drool” over and over again. That is the kind of stuff I expect from unpaid bloggers, not professionals.
I feel very sad for the newspaper salespeople and think it is easy to romanticize the past. I still think you look like you should be sitting around sipping wine with Byron, Shelley and their crowd. It is up to us to find the poetry in the lives that we live now.