The Death of News

THE DEATH OF NEWS
[SOURCE: The Nation, AUTHOR: Nicholas Von Hoffman]
[Commentary] So who needs newspapers anyhow? We have the Internet. Other than the websites supported by newspapers, the Internet is devoid of reporters. The Internet operations do not pay people to go out and gather accurate information. Thus we are bumping up against a contradictory situation. Thanks to the Internet, the iPod and so forth, we have more media outlets than ever before--but fewer reporters. When the last reporter is laid off, we can subsist on rumor, speculation and gossip. These three are usually more interesting than the facts, but do you want to bet your life and livelihood on them? Well, there is always what they call citizen journalism. That means, if you see something, take a picture of it with your cellphone and call in. It's not exactly New York Times reliability, but it's open-source, and they tell us that is terrific stuff. You know about Wikipedia. So why not wiki-wacky news?
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061127/howl