following up on my comment on Brauer’s post

A few people have continued the discussion on Brauer’s post about relevancy, and here’s a few additional points. Here’s my response to the reaction from The Greatest Things:

One of the things that I was also trying to get across was that newspapers used to be the starting point in the information chain. That’s simply not the case anymore, particularly because of inefficiency, but also because their end product isn’t as valuable as it once was.

What would be really interesting to track would be to take two to five local stories, and see where the majority of the information originated. I’d be willing to bet that the stories wouldn’t begin with newspapers.

Originally posted as a comment by taylor on The Greatest Things using Disqus.

(btw, being able to reblog comments from other tumblrs is awesome.)

Also, over email, DeRusha and I had the following exchange:

Jason says, “I agree there are better ways of delivering news, and I think the “paper” will transition to that. But isn’t that years down the road?  The decision-makers of our society (business leaders, politicans) are still in the old media world.  To influence change, you have to hit those people.  Until they’re ready to transition to TPM and the like, then the paper still matters.”

I responded, “It’s really closer than people think; very few people see the parallels between music distribution and news distribution, but just look at all the new ways music is getting around, and how the industry players are forced to change (selling mp3s for .65 that can be sent around to everyone and sponsoring youtube would’ve been unthinkable, today it’s common place), and that’s sort of change is happening with the media.  Another thing is that there are very few examples to point to right now that work, like TPM.  Everyone’s focused more on the HuffPost and Powerline instead of Juan Cole.”

Jason replied, “Agreed.  But turning over power to the people doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get Quality news. Look at the top hits on news sites: people gravitate to schlock, crime, gossip.  Look at the top 10 songs on iTunes.  I think we’re moving to a model where the news orgs online all have a significant political bent.  It’s like going back to the 1800s.  I’m not sure that’s a bad thing (It’s like journalism in Europe) but it’s a major, major change.  I’m also optimistic based on how many young people are still in journalism programs. I’d think that the 70k+ jobs are disappearing would discourage them, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting.”