Our Dying Newspapers...

A fascinating article by Clay Shirky. A sample:

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.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

As a society, we need journalism – but we don't need newspapers. The quality of journalism, in general, has been declining for 20 years or so. Newspapers these days, with rare exceptions, certainly aren't delivering it. So where's it going to come from?

Clay Shirky asserts that not only don't we know, we can't know – not for a while, at least. Not until the Internet revolution has settled down a bit...

The lack of quality investigative journalism opens a door of opportunity for political operatives, by reducing the risk of discovery when they're doing something nefarious. Which means that the Internet revolution and its impact on journalism may actually be bad for our near-term political circumstances.

Revolutionized journalism? Faster, please...