Really good debate by Jerry Bowles to get going. Andrew Keen touched on some of these points at Next09 in Hamburg. I really fear for the loss of quality in depth reporting. I think there are a few models that could work but the US may need to change it's mind set around only free market only funded news.
I believe we need 3 models for a free press.
1. State funded news. Here in the UK we have the BBC one of the most respected news sources in the world. There is a debate right now that some of our tax payers license fee should go towards supporting other local, regional and national news away from the BBC. I think this could be a good thing as long as it is monitored and audited away from state control as the BBC is. This keeps the BBC impartial, non-political and non-commercial.
2. Ad funded free market press. We have both right and left leaning press here and its a good thing it challenges the BBC and each other so we have a good healthy 3 points of debate going on constantly. These guys are struggling to find new ad models but they will get there. I would be looking at a syndication model across all news websites, pay as you go model like News Corp are thinking about but across all titles. Similar to my twitter feed set up of, WSJ, FT, BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, NY Times, Fox, Aljazera, Rueters, Times and the Economist.
3. Social Media - Letting people have their say is a good thing, it builds traffic and healthy debate like this one we are having now to discuss fact, fiction and the in between. I don't see social press as being a replacement for professional journalism it's un-checked, under-funded and to subjective. All the ref of stories built from social media always lead to the mob angry or sensational tabloid headlines, swine flu (turned out to not be a pandemic) landing on hudson river (it's a miracle) but as Bowles points out indepth dangerous reporting that takes money and a crack team to report on. This un covering the truth and not making more noise is what professional journalism is about. I think social media has a role to play in the debate, traffic and adding more insight (Mubai twitters good example) to the stories but as the Telegraph here in the UK has proved with the bomb shell of MPs expenses, good solid investigation and reporting drives readership and truth.
This is a great debate I hope it will continue.
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