Life Without Newspapers

The New Yorker envisions it.

And so we are about to enter a fractured, chaotic world of news, characterized by superior community conversation but a decidedly diminished level of first-rate journalism. The transformation of newspapers from enterprises devoted to objective reporting to a cluster of communities, each engaged in its own kind of “news”––and each with its own set of “truths” upon which to base debate and discussion––will mean the loss of a single national narrative and agreed-upon set of “facts” by which to conduct our politics.

Of course, newspapers have gone through a partisanship faze before, and this is not new. But what is new, according to the New Yorker, is the current lack of expensive and extensive reporting.

....no Web site spends anything remotely like what the best newspapers do on reporting.

The article ends on a kind of schmaltzy note, as the reporter wistfully recounts a last encounter with the kind of pedigree journalism one can only find in the New York Times. He talks about all the disparate worldly topics the New York Times is able to cover because of their huge operating budget, and then quotes an author who theorizes...

It is at least partially through the “imagined community” of the daily newspaper that nations are forged.

According to the writer of the New Yorker piece, without one place to find our news, we will be lost Lost! In a sea of blogged opinions, and media regurgitations. And this is not reporting! We will no longer be part of the same "imagined community."

But were we ever part of the same media community? Haven't there always been different newspapers that catered to different people; new york times to jewish liberals, wall street journal to conservatives, seattle weekly to aging hippies, stranger to aging hipsters.

And aren't the offerings even more disparate on the web? Aren't there even more places to find world news? Also- most of the people I know don't just read one blog. They read many, and then they have to synthesize what they've learned to form an image of their worldwide community. If this isn't an intellectually and politically stimulating activity, I don't know what is.

The web is niche-based, but media has always been niche-based. Thorough reporting will come soon on the web; reporting that combines web-based accountability with the forever desire for well-researched, well-thought, well-written journalism. It just might look different than something the gray lady puts out.