An intriguing analysis by RIccardo Puglisi and James Snyder, published this month in NBER (gated), finds statistical evidence for a correlation between newspapers’ endorsement patterns (R vs. D) and the papers’ news coverage of scandals involving Republican and Democratic politicians: [T]hose with a higher propensity to endorse Democratic candidates in elec tions give significantly more …
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It is frequently suggested that there are important parallels between the changing business models of the news and music industries, and that there is much we can learn from one another. I am currently brainstorming ways to get someone to pay me to perform journalism in bars.
Bruce Barcott on the loss of newspapers: It matters because papers exist in the physical world, the meatspace with the rest of us, and the fact of their existence, in print on paper, sitting on every corner of downtown Seattle, reminds us that there’s a larger conversation going on around us. She’s worried that the …
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Tom Yulsman, from the Center for Environmental Journalism in Boulder, bemoans a life without Rocky Mountain News and, potentialy, the Denver Post? If Scripps cannot find a buyer for the Rocky Mountain News — and no one thinks it will — then the paper will go belly up, leaving the Denver Post as the only …
Surowiecki in the New Yorker: The peculiar fact about the current crisis is that even as big papers have become less profitable they’ve arguably become more popular. The blogosphere, much of which piggybacks on traditional journalism’s content, has magnified the reach of newspapers, and although papers now face far more scrutiny, this is a kind …
Chris Mooney had a nice piece this week on Science Progress about the decline in science specialist journalists at major mainstream media publications. I think Chris nails the problem squarely, but I’d like to elaborate on the implication, because it applies much more broadly. Here’s Chris’s key point: Science journalism, at its best, should also …
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Saul Hansell explains the underlying economic reality that comes with the Internet’s unbundling of the previously bundled product that my various employers over the years have been tricking you into buying: [T]he bad news for anyone who actually likes reading about where they live is that no one seems to be able to develop an …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: The Economics of Local News’ »
The name of this blog means a lot to me. I am an ink-stained wretch. I have largely avoided blogging about the fate of my beloved industry, because I frankly dread the well-meaning thread of comments from ‘Net people who are happy to explain that if newspapers only would do “X”, things would improve. Please, …
Matthew Nisbet points to some new Gallup data that I believe supports an argument I have made in the past: that lack of public understanding of climate change is not a problem the news media can fix. From the Gallup report: While the percentage of Democrats who view the news about global warming as being …