“If you see something unusual, warn others…and report it.”

Walter Lippman shares in the opening lines of the 1920 publication, Liberty and the News, that an American newspaper “Public Occurrences” was shut down because it had “reflections of a very high nature.” Gee, sure sounds like a blogger at work.

Like most other folks, I’ve been wondering what model newspapers will come up with so that they can stay afloat. However, the more time that goes by, the less I’m convinced that such a thing will happen. And, the idea that newspapers will make it by charging for content isn’t going to work. After all, if we can get “good enough” information from other bloggers, won’t that spell the doom of newspapers just the same as Wikipedia did for Britannica encyclopedia? Why pay for information that is “almost” or “as good” as the commercial source? Dan Rodricks says we have to pay for that…I disagree.

Clearly, Americans still want to read news stories and provocative commentary; they recognize that they need to be informed to make smart decisions, from the houses they purchase to the politicians they support. The hunger for sports news, for information about communities, government, crime trends, education and business remains healthy and constant.

You want to be informed by credible, independent news sources.

So pay to be.

No, I want to be informed by credible, independent news sources…nowhere in that description does it say, I want to pay for it. There will be more, increasingly more, people who stand up to the challenge of serving as credible, independent news sources. I imagine it will be like the independent presses of yesteryear, small time operations that published single pages of text opining and reporting on the latest happenings in the community. But now, the Internet makes their audience…OUR audience…all the bigger, and far reaching.

Howard Owens suggests that the answer to the decline of newspapers as we know them:

The solution lies in figuring out why increasingly society is deciding it doesn’t need us and fixing that problem, not in hair-brained schemes that attempt to force journalism on the masses.

The reason society has decided it doesn’t need newspapers is that media violated its trust. And, the simple fact that news reporting is what SOMEONE ELSE does. The truth of the matter is that citizen-journalism–“When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism“–is something people are embracing to TAKE BACK the concept of a “credible, independent news sources.”

You know, I don’t believe the newspapers. I see them as people with an opinion, an agenda, and increasingly, they have been quite opaque in sharing their motivations. I have but to turn on Fox or MSNBC to see this in action…the advocacy of an agenda, a version of history that suits their punditry.

Goodbye, newspapers. Goodbye, traditional journalists who have lied to America…Howard Owens says that professional journalists didn’t get it right in response to Lippman’s call for change. Maybe, it’s time to restart and try again.

Lippman’s words ring true today:

• For in an exact sense the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in journalism.
• Americans are willing to die for their country, but not willing to think for it.
• So long as there is interposed between the ordinary citizen and the facts a news organization determining by entirely private and unexamined standards [my question: don’t transparency and openness in blogs, full disclosures address this?], no matter how lofty, what he shall know, and hence what he shall believe, no one will be able to say that the substance of democratic government is secure.
• The tension of fear produces sterility…men cease to say what they think; and when they cease to say it, they soon cease to think it.
• We are peculiarly inclined to suppress whatever impugns the security of that to which we have given our allegiance.
• Liberty is the highest and most sacred interest of life. But somewhere each of them inserts a weasel clause to the effect that “of course” the freedom granted shall not be employed too destructively. It is this clause which checks exuberance and reminds us that, in spite of appearances, we are listening to finite men pleading a special cause.

Worth reading.

..in the meantime, bring on the demise of newspapers. It’s about time America dug deep and found out whether the character that made it what it was, endures.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure