I greatly appreciate the invitation to guest blog on Volokh Conspiracy about my new book, Copyright's Paradox.
A central theme of my book is that copyright law is no less a part of national media and information policy than are the Telecommunications Act and the First Amendment. In particular copyright serves as a major battleground between digital and traditional media.
Media lawsuits against Google are a prime example. Newspapers have sued the multi-billion dollar upstart over Google News, book publishers have sued over Google Book Search, movie studios over Google’s YouTube, and adult magazines over Google Image Search. The outcomes will profoundly impact the shape of the media, how we receive and impart information, news, and opinion, and what types of speech are most salient to the public. Depending on how copyright law is configured, the new media may supplant the old or the traditional incumbents may stifle the new.
I will expand upon copyright's role in a later post. Here I want to focus on newspapers and ask whether we should care about their demise. In a recent article in The New Yorker, Eric Alterman surveys the evidence and concludes that "it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America's last genuine newspaper." As he demonstrates, a primary cause for newspapers' rapid decline in advertising, readers, market value, and, indeed, sense of mission is the Internet.
The Internet makes the daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive. Young people in particular (only 19 percent of Americans under 34 even claim to look at a daily newspaper) prefer to surf the Web and log in to social network sites for up-to-date, easily digestible news bites. Even aside from lost readership, the Internet erodes newspaper advertising revenue. Craigslist has wiped out classified advertising. Online news aggregators, like Google News, usurp much other advertising. And for newspapers, moving online is no panacea; newspaper Web sites benefit from the growth of online advertising, but not nearly enough to replace revenue losses from circulation and print ads.
Not all bemoan newspapers' decline. Many news bloggers and other self-styled online journalists trumpet their superiority over the mass media. Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post "Internet Newspaper," has been particularly relentless in attacking the mainstream news media for what Huffington characterizes as the media’s purported prolonged servile acceptance of the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq and domestic war on terror. And in his seminal book, The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler argues that peer reporting from a multitude of online speakers does better than traditional news media both at bringing information and opinion to the fore and engendering an activist, autonomous citizenry.
Peer reporting and opinion no doubt form an invaluable component of public discourse, both in and of themselves and for calling traditional news media to brook for its failings. But so-called “news blogs” are valuable primarily as media gadflies and commentators. They do not and cannot substitute for institutional news media in performing the still vital Fourth Estate function.
The blogosphere is largely parasitic on media coverage. Blogs from the Huffington Post on down engage in little original reporting and link to stories from the mainstream press far more than to other blogs. Online opinion also appears to be highly fractured and balkanized. Conservative and liberal bloggers, for example, rarely link to blogs across the political divide -– and even when they do, views from opposing camps can generally be found only by following a link; unlike newspaper op-eds and letters to the editor, they are not interspersed side by side.
Bloggers also lack the financial resources for investigative reporting and fact-checking that mass media enjoy. Even the relatively well-heeled, The Huffington Post removes erroneous blog posts only after the fact if it receives a round of reader complaints. It does not commit to reviewing posts before posting (except perhaps for the posts on its home page). There are exceptions, like the largely user-contribution-financed Talking Points Memo, but I don't see these as a scalable model to take the place of the institutional press.
I wholeheartedly (but sadly) agree with media critics that the press miserably fails to live up to its fourth estate ideal. But the judgment we must make in evaluating flawed instititions is always "As compared to what?" Even with its flaws, the institutional press has the ability to serve — and aspires to serve — fourth estate functions that individual bloggers do not and cannot.
So while bloggers make an invaluable contribution to public discourse, their contribution is different than that of the institutional press. I think we need both.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Blood Libel or Just Libel?
- Copyright and the First Amendment:
- How Copyright Burdens Speech:
- Copyright's Paradox:
- Online Journalism versus Newspapers:
- Neil Netanel, Guest-Blogging:
Certainly, this is all too true; similarly, a hot dog stand's service makes a four-star steak house's service look slow and unresponsive, too, if all you're counting is the time taken between placing your order and receiving your food. But in both cases the substance and value of what you get in return is different by an order of magnitude. (So, too, of course is the cost!) One has to remember what one is asking for—a hot dog just isn't a steak, no matter how you dress it up.
I don't see why anyone could be gullible enough to imagine that news blogs or peer blogs or any other blog is capable to replace the (ostensibly) careful, nuanced reporting that is possible when traditional media do their job effectively. As Neil put it, they simply lack the financial resources to make investigative reporting or fact-checking part of their efforts. This makes all the difference between "real", verified news and the rest of the chaff out there. So it should be obvious that the traditional news media are for the moment an irreplaceable and indispensable feature of public discourse without which all we would be left with is some (faux) readers' opinions of that latest non-fiction bestseller on Amazon.
I agree with your main point, that we will continue to need the institional press. Bloggers do rely very heavily on them for the information we comment on, but because we provide only links and some fair-use excerpt quoting, there's no mechanism or legal need for bloggers (most of whom make little to no money from blogging) to pay for the very small individual value each link to an MSM story has. I could see something like a blogger's version of the AP starting up, something that bloggers could subscribe to (paying for it either in ad placements or by a fee which varies by traffic amount), in return for which the blogger AND HIS READERS would be able to click through and read the entire story.
But at the same time, I have to dispute the idea that the blogosphere has little original reporting. Michael Totten does tremendous original war reporting, as does Michael Yon. There is no particular reason why independent reporters/bloggers can't or won't arise to cover the White House, the Supreme Court, and other areas where high-profile original news is made.
The problem is not national and international news so much as it is local news. There is unlikely to be sufficient readership for local issue stories to generate enough revenue to employ several full-time reporter/bloggers. Fortunately, from my understanding, the problem with newspapers today is mostly the "national" and "international" papers; locally-oriented papers have not suffered nearly as much.
Like its counterparts in the recording industry, I think the MSM has suffered from its initial reaction to the internet. While most papers have now embraced the internet to at least some extent (just as many music publishers have made songs available via iTunes and Amazon), their initial reaction was largely hostile and combative. Rather than embrace the new media and seek ways to capitalize upon it in the very beginning, they dug in their heels and fought against it.
If the AP had become consumer-oriented earlier, IT could have the dominant news-aggregator site today. There was no serious competitor when Google introduced its service. But the AP, like its newspaper subscribers, mostly provided proprietary, closed-access systems. They've had their lunch taken by the new upstarts who were more nimble and quicker to take advantage of new trends.
I agree with your main point, that we will continue to need the institional press. Bloggers do rely very heavily on them for the information we comment on, but because we provide only links and some fair-use excerpt quoting, there's no mechanism or legal need for bloggers (most of whom make little to no money from blogging) to pay for the very small individual value each link to an MSM story has. I could see something like a blogger's version of the AP starting up, something that bloggers could subscribe to (paying for it either in ad placements or by a fee which varies by traffic amount), in return for which the blogger AND HIS READERS would be able to click through and read the entire story.
But at the same time, I have to dispute the idea that the blogosphere has little original reporting. Michael Totten does tremendous original war reporting, as does Michael Yon. There is no particular reason why independent reporters/bloggers can't or won't arise to cover the White House, the Supreme Court, and other areas where high-profile original news is made.
The problem is not national and international news so much as it is local news. There is unlikely to be sufficient readership for local issue stories to generate enough revenue to employ several full-time reporter/bloggers. Fortunately, from my understanding, the problem with newspapers today is mostly the "national" and "international" papers; locally-oriented papers have not suffered nearly as much.
First thing that's worthwhile is to disaggregate. At the very least, treat the MSM as local, regional, and national.
The second thing to do is to reclaim a little of Adam Smith's discussion on division of labor to appreciate that some specialization can be to your advantage. Journalism, well done, acts as a surrogate for you.
New input:
The journalism that is wasting away is at the national level and, I venture, it is not because the Internet offers free access to news, but because the Internet has exposed the inherent reporting/editing bias [like, I don't know, the New York Times?] that heretofore was hidden from us.
As I explain to visitors, all we have to sell is trust. Violate that once and it is lost forever.
As a local newspaper publisher, I am 100% comfortable using either dead trees or bits streamed on the internet. I am a surrogate for the reader, and so long as I serve the reader, improving one's mental map of reality, I add value.
All I have to do is flick my eye a fraction of an inch and I have scanned a dozen headlines. Another flick and I have drilled down to the detail with information that travels at the speed of light. Get bored and I am off to the next serendipidous morsel. Nope. No "Daily Me." I get more than I ever knew I wanted.
Given the way the mainstream media practically rolled over and barked for the Bush Administration, I'd say that newspapers, with a few notable exceptions, were not performing the "still vital Fourth Estate function." Instead, it took blogs to out Administration shill Jeff Gannon. It has taken blogs like Brad Blog to out the national voting scandals. It has taken blogs like Talking Points memo to do investigative reporting on the the ongoing NSA legal wrangling.
I'd say your article is off to a bad start if you don't recognize all the ways the newspapers failed us in the run up to the war and in fact checking the statements of the Bush Administration. The comedy news program The Daily Show does more fact checking than the newspapers do on the Bush Administration.
A thorough fisking of Scote and the NY Times seems in order, but I haven't the time or the inclination. I suppose Scote believes, as the NY Times writes, "The two men were involved in efforts to reform the city’s education system."
That looks like a lapdog way of overlooking 20 years of Reverend Wright and underplaying Weather Underground's Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that Obama headed.
Yes, both blogging and mainstream journalism contribute to the Augean Stables dungheap. Neither blogging nor journalism will be enough to clean the stables out. It's going to take a change to education -- and a recognition that where we are headed puts civilization at risk.
Oh, and with the FCC raising the old style license fee on a regular basis.
Look, the only reason the networks ever tried to be seen as unbiased was that was the only way that they could write off the news division against the community service requirement.
And for every "conservative bias" you can back to plausible standards, I can probably make 150 go the other direction.
That's an improvement on the MSM.
What color is the sky in your world?
Instead, it took blogs to out Administration shill Jeff Gannon.
So you think that it is a legimate function of the MSM to "out" homosexuals who are not sufficently attuned to the MSM party line?
It has taken blogs like Brad Blog to out the national voting scandals.
I'm pretty sure that Democratic Party vote fraud is not news to anyone.
Today, many blogs have the kind of accountability that newspapers don't. When they update an article they publicly cross out the erroneous portion and add the new material for all to see--right on the original article and not mysteriously and secretly edited to make it seem like it was right all along.
Not out as in "gay," out as in softball throwing prostitute and "Administration Shill" who got a white house press pass that many actual journalists couldn't get.
Cable News, anyone?
So, as news source competitors, start with Cable News, then go to the other side of the business equation, and open up non community service broadcast alternatives even as you increase the broadcast license fees.
Then add competition from all across the spectrum of political and social biases. After the economics have driven the bean counters to the top of Network News services.
After the phrase "layers of fact checkers" is reduced to trying to disprove facts and claims of which we disapprove" and only those "facts" are checked.
The government created the old new media (broadcast) through the restriction of broadcast licenses and old definition of community service. Now that there are consumer alternatives, that monopoly model is in trouble.
Wow.
Strangely this statement holds true for the MSM media as well. How much orginal reporting do they do again? As far as I can tell, most "national papers and news broadcasts" regurgitate the same exact stories as each other, or simply spice up content they get from a wire report. What percentage of a general newspaper's daily articles are original reporting? And please, don't say adding a quote or two for color is original reporting, especially when they seem to be more and more frequently from unnamed sources.
Speaking of unnamed sources, the idea that the MSM has funding for fact checking is simply laughable. RatherGate, Jason Blair, and the New Republic seems to be the industry trend - not the exception.
I've seen this point made before. (Little Green Footballs' work on the Dan Rather expose is also often cited.) However, it misses a crucial point.
INVESTIGATIVE reporting is very expensive. It requires lots of time, lots of fruitless phone calls, traveling to distant locales to review documents and interview fearful subjects, freedom of information act requests (and lawyers when those are denied), etc.
In addition to the point made above about local news, this is the other area where you need the resources of major media outlets. There's no likelihood an underresourced blogger, for instance, could have uncovered Watergate or the Pentagon Papers. You needed big entities like the New York Times or the Washington Post to do it.
Indeed, investigative reporting is expensive and bloggers are not likely to be able to fund the long term, litigious kinds of projects newspapers once were famous for. On the other-hand, newspapers have been a little light on those sorts of projects even before now.
Lots of MSM purveyors mendaciously pretend that their political partisanship is news.
Fair enough and a good point.
Also a good point. But to use your example, how many other large MSM bureaus, with massive resources, have done the same in the 30 years since then?
I think your conclusion is reasonable. I just think any major story since that time has been as much from a lucky leak or disgruntled inside player than from true investigative work - and sure, these people call NYT &the Post for the most damaging reach - but that's not to say other's can't be as lucky, or that the Drudge Report won't be the destination of choice for whistle-blowers and malcontents in the near fure either.
Fair enough and a good point.
Also a good point. But to use your example, how many other large MSM bureaus, with massive resources, have done the same in the 30 years since then?
I think your conclusion is reasonable. I just think any major story since that time has been as much from a lucky leak or disgruntled inside player than from true investigative work - and sure, these people call NYT &the Post for the most damaging reach - but that's not to say other's can't be as lucky, or that the Drudge Report won't be the destination of choice for whistle-blowers and malcontents in the near future either.
But the relationship is symbiotic. American, European, and Saudi journalists contact me for my view on things they're about to write. They could manage without me, I'm sure, but they nevertheless find it useful to use me as at least a background source. My blog and opinions have some value to add.
I alway credit sources, not only the papers, but the writers. I'd sure enjoy sharing revenues, though...
But Smokey, just because the MSM puts out a fair amount of crap doesn't make actual investigative reporting any cheaper or less valuable.
I think your conclusion is reasonable. I just think any major story since that time has been as much from a lucky leak or disgruntled inside player than from true investigative work - and sure, these people call NYT &the Post for the most damaging reach - but that's not to say other's can't be as lucky, or that the Drudge Report won't be the destination of choice for whistle-blowers and malcontents in the near future either.
Actually, we have a nice recent example in the story about the 66 immigration detainees who died in American custody. That was broken through a whole bunch of shoe-leather reporting by the Washington Post. And that's just one example.
Jack's London, regarding this:There's a huge world of hurt contained in your (boldfaced) hedge words, isn't there? From Walter Duranty's pro-Soviet nonsense, to Uncle Walter's wrong-headed Tet Offensive story, and many others both before and since--your ideal has to have been honored in the breach as much as it was actually followed, and it was almost impossible for the poor viewers to tell which was the case. Now, at least some of the time, we have a fighting chance.
Are we being told we need to shut up and take it?
Although I agree that Watergate needed some investigative reporters who dug deeply to uncover, it's been over 30 years since that, and no notable examples of such investigative journalism since then. The Pentagon Papers were revealed when one man made copies of the documents and distributed them. Today, assuming that publicizing classified documents was a good idea, that could be done either by posting them on-line, or scanning them to discs and mailing them to bloggers to post. There was no investigative journalism involved.
The dishonesty of the Gang of 88, corruption of Nifong and the whole smelly attempt to rail-road the Duke Lacrosse players was primarily publicized by bloggers, and only later the MSM picked up the story.
I am frequently disappointed to see basic fact errors in MSM reports. If the traditional Fourth Estate wants some privileged position, then it needs to perform competently -- and far too often it does not.
As to bloggers, it is true that there are many hacks and zealots out there. There are also some, who usually confine themselves to a narrow subject of personal interest and expertise, who do a much better job of covering and analysis of a fairly narrow subject. The problem is finding them, and taking the time to cross-check their assertions of fact and analysis, to ensure that their blogs are trustworthy. These bloggers are especially valuable in areas of science, medicine and engineering, subjects in which the MSM's reporting and analysis is horrible. However, since several important -- and potentially very costly -- issues are science, engineering or medical at their core (e.g., "climate change", health care), understanding the facts and analysis, rather than relying on the hype and scare-mongering sensationalism passed off by the MSM, is essential to developing effective policies.
And, while I appreciate independent reporters like Totten and Yon, who, unlike the MSM's Green Zone Divas, have actually tried to cover Iraq the traditional way, their reports and conclusions were foreshadowed by milbloggers deployed and serving in units where the action is occurring. (Further, Iraq provides many examples of my point above about the MSM's failure to get basic facts right -- recently the MSM reported that the fighting in Basara showed that the "surge" had not worked -- failing to note that Basara had been a British controlled area and was never part of the surge. Further, while the MSM somewhat gleefully reported that about 1,000 Iraqi security forces deserted or refused to fight, it ignored that over 13,000 performed their mission in Basara adequately to quite well. Since then the MSM has essentially ignored the Iraqi security forces' follow-on operations that have secured Basara. In other words, the MSM's "reporting" has been wrong on its assertions of material facts, its analysis has been crap, and, by ignoring later developments that contradicted its prior reports and conclusions, the MSM has been materially misleading.).
So, while I believe in the value of investigative reporting by traditional media, I see very little evidence that, in fact, the MSM does that today. And, while bloggers range quality from below zero to excellent, the biggest problem is identifying blogs that are worth reading.
That's a 'business model,' I suppose, but when I'm washed up, what are they going to steal?
What I do is not being done by anybody else. Multiply me by 300,000 and you have the problem.
Bloggers can be interesting (though most aren't), but it's delusional to think that blogging is an alternative or substitute for news (and feature) reporting.
... The media has made their bed by embracing bias and slant. Why should I care for your work product when you guys are so blatant about trying to diddle me ?
...My 'favorites list' is my newspaper, my 5 o'clock news. No Perky Katy and her sneers, no Frank Rich. I skip the NY Times articles, they aren't trustworthy. Ditto with Ann Coulter.
..The internet is almost devoid of the stuff I really dislike; the obscessing over the latest blond murder victim or young mother who disappeared. Most of the MSM lards their product with cutesy stories of dogs and children. Trash. I don't go to sites that do that. Phony conflict stories you guys write up, they don't make it to the sites on my favorites list.
...Your won't-you-fellas-be-sorry-when-we're-gone angle is phooey. If there is a need, it will be filled. Long before the internet I was throwing away 4/5 of the newspaper, unread. The Media was ripe for a fall. Dishonest, artificial, manufactured conflict, just plain boring. Quit making buggywhips, we don't need 'em anymore.
The NYTimes doesn't know that, because the staff didn't learn it in journalism school. But, the J-school profs didn't learn it in high school or college.
You criticize the canary in the cage for dying when it is the mine that is filled with poison gas.
Come see me when what I just wrote makes sense to you.