It recently struck me while reading comments left on online forums, viewpoints on how to save journalism fall along political lines.
Take, for example, the comments here. A conservative (note the aversion to government intervention):
This is not a plan for the future of journalism, it is an epitaph for its death. Begging from Foundations and from the government are no solution. The entire Internet Explosion was about journalism, more or less, the gathering and distribution of information. We missed the boat on that one because we have an innate aversion to anything ‘business’. We should own Craigslist and Google, but we don’t. Instead we are the beggars. We have to rethink what journalism is - a holistic approach that embraces and glorifies making money and owning the business instead of being the leather patches on the sleeves schlubs. The plan should be trashed. Start again. Create an aggressive robust journalism for the web and the 21st Century. This plan is pathetic. It is all that is wrong with the journalism industry today.
Posted by MIchael Rosenblum on Mon 19 Oct 2009 at 12:49 PM
And a liberal response (note the public policy perspective):
Begging? what is with the hidden complex? Visual arts, classical music, film (including the mainstream one) - all publicly or privately co-funded and no one is ashamed of that.
All that is wrong with journalism today is that inability to accept that perhaps the high quality journalistic piece does not have the market value we once thought it had. People won’t pay as much as it takes to investigate and write a decent piece. This doesn’t mean it should be scraped, it’s as culturally important as a piece of high quality movie making (like for example Where the Wild Things Are, which accidentally grossed over 30 million USD on the opening weekend).
We should own craiglists? what for? perhaps we all should be google! yeah, lets forget what journalism really is about and sell our bottoms left and right to whoever will pay, that is so much better than begging. That, if anything is pathetic.
Posted by Ana Bierzanska on Mon 19 Oct 2009 at 01:27 PM
I would posit that liberals tend towards public policy solutions whereas conservative tend towards business model solutions. I think political leanings heavily influence the assumptions individuals make when presenting their opinions.
This framing works remarkably well. With it in mind, take a quick browse of current dialogue and you’ll find articles and authors falling naturally on the political spectrum.
It might be an interesting thought experiment to approach the future of journalism as a political issue and use diplomatic frameworks already developed to try to find a bi-partisan solution.
This would be analogous to admitting that many of the arguments currently taking place do not have solutions, only perspectives. But at least, if we admit as much, we start working on compromise instead of spending time arguing about who is “right.”