David Simon -Waves of corruption and misbehavior until newspapers reestablished as guardians.

[azul]

BILL MOYERS: I read something you recently told "The Guardian," in London: "Oh, to be a state or local official in America..." without newspapers. "It's got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption."

~snip

DAVID SIMON: Yes, we were doing our job. Making the world safe for democracy. And all of a sudden, terra firma shifted, new technology. Who knew that the Internet was going to overwhelm us? I would buy that if I wasn't in journalism for the years that immediately preceded the Internet because I took the third buyout from the "Baltimore Sun." I was about reporter number 80 or 90 who left, in 1995. Long before the Internet had had its impact. I left at a time-- those buyouts happened when the "Baltimore Sun" was earning 37 percent profits.

You know, we now know this because it's in bankruptcy and the books are open. 37 percent profits. All that R&D money that was supposed to go in to make newspapers more essential, more viable, more able to explain the complexities of the world. It went to shareholders in the Tribune Company. Or the L.A. Times Mirror Company before that. And ultimately, when the Internet did hit, they had an inferior product-- that was not essential enough that they could charge online for it.

I mean, the guys who are running newspapers, over the last 20 or 30 years, have to be singular in the manner in which they destroyed their own industry. It-- it's even more profound than Detroit making Chevy Vegas and Pacers and Gremlins and believing that no self-respecting American would buy a Japanese car in 1973. That-- it's analogous up to a point, except it's not analogous in that a Nissan is a pretty good car, and a Toyota is a pretty good car. The Internet, while it's great for commentary and froth doesn't do very much first generation reporting at all. And it can't sustain that. The economic model can't sustain that kind of reporting. And to lose to that, because you didn't-- they had contempt for their own product, these people. I mean, how do-

BILL MOYERS: The publishers. The owners.

DAVID SIMON: Yes, how do you give it away for free? You know, but for 20 years, they looked upon the copy as being the stuff that went around the ads. The ads were the God. And then all of a sudden the ads were not there, and the copy, they had had contempt for. And they had-- they had actually marginalized themselves

By the time the Internet had its way, I mean, they're down to 180 now. You don't cover the City of Baltimore and a region like Central Maryland with 180 people. You don't cover it well.

And the institutional knowledge of the place disappears. And so that was-- I was being a little flippant with "The Guardian" but what I was saying was, you know, there's going to be a wave of corruption until they figure out the new model and reestablish-- the institutional memory of these places, there's going to be a wave of misbehavior.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/transcript1.html

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. That is so perfectly spot on, it almost brings tears to my eyes.

So true. So true.

[knowbody0]

2. wisdom

everything is changing.
change is chaos.
there is an order in chaos.
we are in birth stage of newness.
our pasts were so very flawed and corrupt.

[monmouth]

3. How very, very sad. Remember back in the 30s and 40s all the wonderful

movies about the newspaper business? Many of those films were motivators for young people to go into journalism for the sake of journalism. Very few journalists left these days and that's very sad.

[elleng]

4. and the rest of this excellent interview is about EDUCATION!

Check the link.

[nichomachus]

5. All the Internet did to newspapers

was deliver a merciful coup-de-grace. Newspapers had been quivering on the ground in a drawn-out death agony long before that. What killed newspapers was corporatism -- pure and simple.

When ownership became detached from management -- as in every other business -- things started to go to shit.


And for the record: newspapers aren't coming back. They are not going to be "re-established." The blogs have taken over the watchdog role.

[azul]

6. Newspapers, online and paper, need a new model, and perhaps protections.

An independent and watchful press was included by the constitution as part of this democratic experiment. It is indispensable and congress has to take some steps to protect its proper functioning. Trouble is congress doesn't want to be watched anymore.

I am behind news sources and outlets being not-for-profit or community owned to prevent any appearance of conflict of interest and to restore some credibility to news reporting. Such as Mother Jones and Pacifica Radios.

[monicamedallion]

17. The First Amendment to the Constitution expressly prohibits U.S. Congress from passing laws

that would infringe upon the freedom of the press. The law of karma applies to institutions, too being that they are made up of individuals. JFK said it so well:

Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association (27 April 1961)
The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03NewspaperPublishers04271961.htm

[girl gone mad]

7. I think he's off base about first generation reporting on the internet.

Speaking from experience, much of the housing bubble and related mortgage fraud was being covered almost exclusively on blogs, starting as far back as 2001. Newspapers essentially allowed NAR to dictate coverage of the real estate market for years. Bloggers often caught newspaper reporters spreading lies and misinformation. Bloggers uncovered fraud rings and notified the FBI. Bloggers called out Greenspan, Bernanke, Bush, David Learah, Greg Swann and the numerous other figures whose irresponsible actions brought us to the point of crisis. People who were paying attention to the blogs saw it coming years ago. Sadly, people who relied on newspapers were only told that "home prices never go down" and "it's a great time to buy". A glance at the pages long glossy RE inserts in any year old Sunday paper might indicate why that was.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. This quote is particularly shattering...

"these really are the excess people in America, we-- our economy doesn't need them"

"We don't need ten or 15 percent of our population. And certainly the ones that are undereducated, that have been ill served by the inner city school system, that have been unprepared for the technocracy of the modern economy. We pretend to need them. We pretend to educate the kids. We pretend that we're actually including them in the American ideal, but we're not. And they're not foolish. They get it."

Anyone who has worked in Social Work "gets" this, eventually.

[Hannah Bell]

16. of course "we" (= "the ownership class") needs them. They're the surplus

population, the "reserve army of the poor," useful to hold down wages, put fear into the middle classes, & a convenient scapegoat for economic problems ("it's the drug dealers-welfare mothers-entitlement mentality-uneducated kids...ruining this country!!!").

If they weren't there, "we" ("They") would have to invent them.

Truth is, only about 15% of the population is needed to produce most of the basic necessities for american society. The rest of the so-called "work" is either control functions for elites (e.g. "social" work), useless waste (e.g. the arms "industry", half the medical "industry"), or make-work (e.g. the proliferation of building to produce more & more shopping malls when the us already has more than two times the per-capita shopping space of any other country).

[Joanne98]

9. Replace them with non-profits! Change the business model. If they

work for the people again, they will sell newspapers.

[anonymous171]

10. Another member of the old media overstating the importance of newspapers.

Newspapers today are worthless. I'm glad they are going under.

[azul]

13. Not so fast. Real papers have features and advantages

that are appreciated by many people the world over. Like simplicity and unhurried reading, and a hard copy that gets to bounce around yet still stays true. Trustworthiness for the electrophobic.

[malaise]

11. Great program last night

Simon was excellent

[BlooInBloo]

12. Sounds similar, if less historical-based, to Shirky....

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/

"The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!” The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses."

[azul]

14. We don't know where we're going, but we're on our way.

Thanks for the shirky link:

"Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead."


Journalism as a career needs to remain and be better recompensed. It is the last check on this democracy already mired in corruption.

[BlooInBloo]

15. It's a wonderfully well-done article, albeit too long for DUer consumption.