Interesting and rather frightening essay by David Simon (of Homicide and The Wire fame) describing why we need functioning newspapers to have functional policing.
Interesting and rather frightening essay by David Simon (of Homicide and The Wire fame) describing why we need functioning newspapers to have functional policing.
We need functioning news reporters, but we really don’t need functioning newspapers.
That fact is becoming increasingly clear lately…
I disagree — at this time, newspapers are the only major institution funding investigative journalism. There are new models on the horizon, but it’s far from clear whether those will take root.
More thoughts on this, but I’m saving them for another blog post….
I believe newspapers are funding investigative journalism because they are no longer relevant in pure, “informational” news (since by the time the printed page hits the newsstand, it’s already 12-24 hours old, and most people have more up to date information easily accessible).
Thing is, most newspapers’ content is still available online for free (at least on the day of publication if not for some time afterwards). I’ve never subscribed to the New York Times, but I read, on average, ~3-5 articles from it per week. That’s not an economic model that bodes well for the New York Times (newspaper), but leaves doors wide open for nytimes.com.