Reply With QuoteThat guy gets it.
Newspapers last bastion against political corruption, says creator of The Wire
In exclusive interview with the Guardian, writer David Simon expresses fears for newspapers' future and accuses media owners of contempt
Oliver Burkeman in Baltimore
guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 March 2009 13.58 GMT
Fictional corrupt politicians are a mainstay of The Wire, David Simon's celebrated television series about life on the Baltimore streets. But the show's creator says he fears a real-life explosion of rampant corruption in American political life if the newspaper industry, in which he worked for more than a decade, is allowed to collapse.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the award-winning writer and producer launches a tirade against newspaper owners who, he says, showed "contempt for their product" and are now reaping the whirlwind. But he rejects the idea that newspapers should seek ways to embrace the new world of free information, arguing that they must urgently start charging money for content distributed online.
"Oh, to be a state or local official in America over the next 10 to 15 years, before somebody figures out the business model," says Simon, a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun. "To gambol freely across the wastelands of an American city, as a local politician! It's got to be one of the great dreams in the history of American corruption."
The only hope, Simon insists, is for major news outlets to find a way to collaboratively impose charges for reading online, and to demand fees from aggregators such as Google News, which profit from their journalism. "If you don't have a product that you're charging for, you don't have a product," he says. "If you think that free is going to produce something that's as much of a cost centre as good journalism – because it costs money to do good journalism – you're out of your mind."
The number of readers willing to pay a small fee each month might never rival the heyday of newspaper circulation, but it would attract enough "people who care what's going on in the world" to fund crucial reporting, he maintains. "And once they do that, and go to Google and Yahoo and every other search engine and say: 'No, ain't no free.'" He scoffs at the notion that amateur "citizen journalism", or new online-only outlets, might take the place of newspaper reporters: "The internet does froth and commentary very well, but you don't meet many internet reporters down at the courthouse."
Critics of the paid model for online news argue that it has been tried and rejected – notably at the New York Times, which abandoned its TimesSelect service in 2007 – and that those instances in which it has proved successful, including the Wall Street Journal, are exceptional cases.
They say media outlets must find ways to embrace and profit from the exposure offered by aggregators such as Google News, and that walling off their material will hasten their irrelevance. Anti-trust laws also present severe legal obstacles to collaboration between news organisations.
Jeff Jarvis, a new media consultant who writes a column for the Guardian, said: "The traditionalists are trying to transplant elements of the old business model into a new business reality ... when you put your content behind a wall, you lose more than you gain. You lose a lot of readers and the advertising revenue associated with them, you lose the ability to be discovered by new readers, you lose out to free competitors, of whom there'll be an unlimited supply, and you lose influence, because you're taken out of the conversation."
Having completed five seasons of The Wire and Generation Kill, a mini-series about the Iraq war, Simon is currently shooting a pilot for Treme, his proposed new series about musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans. It will feature at least two veterans of his earlier work: Clarke Peters, who played Lester Freamon in The Wire, and Wendell Pierce, who played Bunk Moreland. If commissioned by HBO, Simon promises, Treme will remain true to the philosophy he pungently encapsulates in the phrase "Fuck the average viewer". His shows, he explains, reject the conventional TV wisdom that everything must be explained upfront, instead demanding intense concentration from viewers, who must grapple with an unfamiliar world.
Rather than writing for a general audience, he says: "I want to write for the guy living the event."
On Monday, BBC2 will start giving The Wire its first airing on British terrestrial television, screening all five seasons in a late-night slot five nights a week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009...ire-newspapers
That guy gets it.
Agreed.
Though I'll add journalism has, on a whole, been on a long slide since the late 80's-- either that or public indifference has been on an up tick.
I think the audience is largely to blame for that. We want our news immediately and in easily digestible formats, so that's what the 24-hour news networks and USA Today gives us. No one wants to read long, investigative pieces of journalism about things that happened months ago. We want 30-second news bites about what's happening right now.Originally Posted by Patch
I can't imagine every paying for online news. Why should I, when someone has has reported about the same event, but is offering the story for free? I really hope the newspapers can find some way to adapt to all this though.
But it's staggering how little information is actually in a typical broadcast news bit or a 30-second soundbite.
That was a fantastic piece.
I'm really looking forward to the new show too now.
And this is the perfect example of the problem I was talking about in post #4. People treat news as just information, but there's more to journalism that just spouting out who, what, where, and when.
I'd be more than happy to pay for legitimate digital version of news as opposed to feasting on blogs.
I would just want to business model to reflect the flexibility that the print version has. If you want me to pay per "issue" OR offer a subscription, that's good. If you want to force me into a subscription, I'm instantly hesitant.
I also think you have to have a balance between the free and paid. Like things like sports scores, etc? Don't waste your time TRYING to make the argument that the subscription is worth that. Facts like that are just information.
But real reporting? News articles, features, etc. That needs to be rewarded and receive proper due.
My local newspaper, which has been around for 150 years, just announced they are only going to publish 3 days a week.
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