Response to "How to Save the News"
- Submitted by: alaska
- Views: 558
- Category: English
- Date Submitted: 12/01/2010 06:03 AM
- Pages: 3
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After reading “How To Save The News,” by James Fallows, I have mixed feelings and reactions. I can agree with certain points made within the article, and I disagree with others. I think the general public can attest to the fact that the “survival of high-quality journalism is essential to the functioning of modern democracy.” The decline of the news industry has brought about a new issue to focus future journalism and business towards. The question brought about in this article is in what direction is the news industry headed? Since no one can predict this shift, the solution to this problem is difficult to devise.
Historically, newspapers made a large majority of their revenue with classified ads. Many of these ads have made the move to the internet, where the cost of placing an ad is usually not an issue. The volume of people reached with one ad increases as well. Advertising dollars come into play for the reason that these ads create a target audience and space for these advertisers. These ads were bulked into one entity with all other parts of the paper. Online ads are an option, but they aren’t as valuable as their printed counterparts, due to the volume of consumers being exposed.
The disintegration of the newspaper into separate entities based on topic is known as “unbundling.” Google is known as the most powerful unbundling agent of all. The fact that Google is putting so much effort, time, and money into solving this issue makes me think that they have a financial motivator. It’s something that Google doesn’t deny, however it should raise suspicion. If Google is so concerned with having interesting content for their search engines to
link to that (Google) would actually produce the aforementioned content, then who’s to say that the information will remain unbiased?
I agree with the notion that news information has become quite “faddish,” meaning that very few stories get the majority of coverage. Certain stories are glamorized, whereas...
Historically, newspapers made a large majority of their revenue with classified ads. Many of these ads have made the move to the internet, where the cost of placing an ad is usually not an issue. The volume of people reached with one ad increases as well. Advertising dollars come into play for the reason that these ads create a target audience and space for these advertisers. These ads were bulked into one entity with all other parts of the paper. Online ads are an option, but they aren’t as valuable as their printed counterparts, due to the volume of consumers being exposed.
The disintegration of the newspaper into separate entities based on topic is known as “unbundling.” Google is known as the most powerful unbundling agent of all. The fact that Google is putting so much effort, time, and money into solving this issue makes me think that they have a financial motivator. It’s something that Google doesn’t deny, however it should raise suspicion. If Google is so concerned with having interesting content for their search engines to
link to that (Google) would actually produce the aforementioned content, then who’s to say that the information will remain unbiased?
I agree with the notion that news information has become quite “faddish,” meaning that very few stories get the majority of coverage. Certain stories are glamorized, whereas...