Print? Yes, it affects those who work for the paper, but it also has an enormous affect on the communities since the local paper is the closest to an ombudsman communities have to keep local government en pointe (towing the financial and judicial lines).Hard to give an objective review because I've been inside this world for so many years and so none of this was groundbreaking information. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. The bonds that connect the people to their places will loosen. While a few newspapers have been able sustain themselves—such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times—the achievement has come by positioning themselves as nation or even international newspapers, not local papers reporting local millage issues.Margaret Sullivan is our nation’s premier media critic, and this book is an essential explainer regarding the crisis in local news reporting and how it influences our struggling democracy. The threat Americans face, she argues, is not just the news that lies. What are we willing to pay for good journalism? It's that rare book about journalism that regular folks need to read...short yet vital." The threat Americans face, she argues, is not just the news that lies. I felt inspired and invigorated reading this book.
Reading this is particularly poignant in the days following Pete Hamill's death and the shuttering of the Daily News' New York City newsroom.
A long intro lays out an ambitious premise for what is ultimately a short book. Local news is dying and taking our democracy with it. When the news—hectic and loud and silly and messy and urgent and teeming with life—fades away? The absence of accountability journalism has created an atmosphere in which indicted politicians were elected, school superintendents were mismanaging districts, and police chiefs were getting mysterious payouts. There is a lot to fix in the country, and local news is no small part of it.”"Quality journalism takes time and investment to produce, and it deserves our time and investment to preserve and appreciate. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. Yet most Americans still say they trust local news.
-- Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times "Margaret Sullivan has written one of the most timely books I've ever seen, about the biggest threat to democracy that no one is talking about. Perhaps there's simply not that much more to say.The topic that is presented in this book is important and I've seen the destruction of the local journalism in my own city of Denver CO. Interesting coverage of possible new business models as well.Shorter than I expected but a good overview of the challenges in local journalism. The news industry, and the American public, is living with the consequences. Journalism is in crisis. Quick and easy read, with a cogent and compelling argument about the perils of local journalism to democracy and civic engagement.This is a solid recap of the death of newspaper journalism in America, with a some additional reporting. The decision conditioned generations’ worth of American news consumers to expect that, online, news was not something to be paid for—the product of journalists and their labor—but instead something to be taken for granted. ""An ink-bound alarm bell.
But this is something I care deeply about, and I was eager to read what Margaret Sullivan had to say.I picked this slim little volume up after seeing reference to it in my incoming news stream. While a few newspapers have been able sustain themselves—such as TWhile the death of newspapers is no longer news, the social impact of their loss has not been replaced by online news sources (bogus and reliable) or even by local TV and radio stations. It's telling that this book is coming out as a political corruption scandals are unfolding in Chicago and central OH - barely covered by the national news, but big news locally. Few papers anymore can afford multiple investigations taking weeks or months of research and vetting by fact-checkers, and few papers can now afford lawyers to handle the potential lawsuits brought by unhappy subjects of investigative journalism. Margaret Sullivan is the media columnist for The Washington Post, the former public editor of The New York Times and the former editor of The Buffalo News. Do we need 24 hour news cycles? as promised, a brief tract on the crisis of local news and some mild consideration of the solutions available to us.A good, if brief, survey of the decline of local news in the US and abroad. What format should our news be in? What format should our news be in? Sullivan dives into why and how the decline of local news has persisted this long and how papers have struggled to recover from the damage dealt by both internet platforms and the 2008 recession. July 14th 2020
So let’s start with that piece of it. The disappearance of local news is a slow-moving disaster.Many Americans now find themselves in the situation those New Yorkers did all those decades ago: The papers have stopped arriving. Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for the Washington Post and former editor of The Buffalo News, joined News reporter Mark Sommer Thursday, Sept. 27, at Larkin Square to discuss her new book, "Ghosting the News," for The Larkin Square Author Series. It will happen gradually until it happens suddenly. Digital?
Journalists have been attacked as 'enemies of the people,' body-slammed, tear-gassed and worse.
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