WHO WILL GATHER AND DISSEMINATE THE NEWS?

Who Will Gather and Disseminate the News. Volume 100, Number 1,000

The same old story.

Today’s WaPo features their new format and two must read articles for those who are concerned with the how citizens will get the information they need to make intelligent decisions in the market place and in the voting booth.

Howard Kurtz: “Media Notes: The Same Old Story Turns Into a New One as Start-Ups Multiply” on C 1 and Leonard Downie Jr. And Michael Schudson “Finding a New Model for New Reporting” on A 19.

The journalism types want FCC to subsidize “citizen journalism.”

Citizen journalism is fine but what REALLY needed is Citizens Media. See THE ESTATES MATRIX.

And the new formats? Ways to cut the cost of putting out the paper and ways to make it look more like a cluttered web page instead of a calm presentation of what citizens need to know from a source citizens can trust.

The hype (in a new “Redesign Owner’s Manual) puts a spotlight on settlement pattern component reporting. As long as they call it “local” instead of sorting out what they are talking about by the location and the scale of the settlement pattern component they might as well dump their ink, their newsprint and their bytes in the Potomac.

EMR