The State of Local News

The State of Local News | Local News Initiative (knilab.com)

 

Here's the thread on X.
https://x.com/mmcphate/status/1725296008475693427?s=20

 

That is an absolutely ugly website. What a hideous font selection. Thank the Lord for Firefox reader view!

For what it's worth, they are off in the counties I'm aware of re: number of news outlets.

 

Knilab sounds suspiciously like Knilands.

 

Seconded, both on the font and the method of determining "local news." It undercounts a lot of news gathering that might not show up outside of traditional large market print and TV. It may not be NATIONAL NEWS! but it's definitely stuff that people around here care about.

All of the counties around here still have weeklies (the biggest one prints three times a week).
The print websites are hit and miss. One updates multiple times a day with every car crash and fire. The other hasn't changed its front since the Obama admistration.
But we also have the little AM daytimers in every county seat which make most of their money off of their farm reports, police blotters, obituaries and high school sports coverage. And swap shop!
Plus, some of the cable companies still offer local programming, even if you don't count the rotating page of ads for restaurants, insurance agents, realtors, roofers and gutter guard salesmen.

And it's not if there's a cone of silence over us (Sorry about that, Chief) where we can't get Atlanta TV or All Things Considered on Georgia Public Broadcasting.

People who want to find out what's going on can do that. People who don't care can do that, too.

I get the idea that traditional media outlets, particularly ink and paper, are being eliminated. But with the Internet, there's more news than I could ever consume. It's evolving. Maybe not in a good way but it's happening, none the less.

 

The local weekly in my neck of Cape Cod is doing reasonably well, possibly because it retains a lot of local advertising in an area dominated by small businesses without many other options to target their market.

 

Of course, the aspect that bothers me the most is that a lot of this news is being disseminated without it passing through multiple hands -- directly from the reporter's fingers to cyberspace. That will always beg for inaccuracies and sloppy writing.

 

And plagiarism. And lack of attribution. And playing loose and fast with the facts.

I'm not sure I realized it at the time, but the Internet/home computer/smartphone is the Great Equalizer. Before technology reached a tipping point, you needed an expensive printing press or a federal radio/television license to be a media mogul. Which meant a handful of people controlled the message but usually played within the rules of what we consider "acceptable journalism."

Now it's the Wild, Wild West. With a blog, podcast or YouTube-TikTok-WhatsApp, anybody from 8 to 80 -- with no education or experience in journalism -- can be a social influencer. The rules don't apply equally.

When everybody can be a content producer, then it cheapens the value for people who actually are trained to do it. So much so that anything more than free has become unacceptable. The New York Times and the guy posting from his parents' basement occupy the same size storefront in cyberspace.

 

Google’s algorithm heavily favors “trusted” news sources, but that’s a mere drop in the bucket.

In response to the post subject: It’s totally in the shitter.

 

People have been banned for less. But not much more.

 

Related New York Times column:

Opinion | A Powerful Tool for Fighting Corruption Is Going Extinct

 

That can't be right.

I was told citizen journalism and the free market would solve all these problems.