Last weekend the Globe and Mail ran an article in their deliciously thick Saturday print edition on the San Francisco Chronicle’s muddy financial ground and raised many questions on the future of newspapers. People are getting their news online now. Last year, the Globe reported, more people in the US got their news online than any other media, which is a scary fact for those of us who love picking up the weekend paper and spending their Saturday afternoons with its pages spread out over the dining room table with a big cup of coffee.
I raise this questions because, during last weekend’s session, I read about how the Globe and Mail uncovered letters connecting a top official in the Afghan government to profits from the opium trade. Huge, right? This article (and its frequent repetition that it was a “Globe investigation” as if to hammer home its importance) reminded me of a big part of what journalism should be: holding governments accountable to their actions. If the Globe points a finger at somebody, people will notice. If someone blogs about it, and then if enough people read it, you still have to wonder how credible their sources are and what impact the story might have, if any, in this media-saturated internet we have. There just isn’t that same reputation for high journalistic standards and respected reporting from a blog, any blog, that doesn’t have that institution (be it Globe and Mail or otherwise) behind it as a guarantee.
The story about the Afghan government official started on the front page, then continued to a double page spread, and must have spanned the scope of several thousand words. If you read an article online, it’s usually repurposed to be shorter, simplified, and spiced up with video, photos, podcasts, etc. Sometimes a story needs several thousand words to be told properly. Not everything can be diluted to an appropriate length for the web reader’s shortened attention span. Sometimes you need that big cup of coffee, comfy chair and dining room table to really focus and absorb the whole story.
A great print publication offers a more optimistic perspective on the topic:
Read the cover story here
Quality journalism and reporting aren’t going to disappear because of the internet, but now they are competing on the same level as the huge wealth of information and misinformation online instead of on a newstand. I found a great article (online) offering suggestions for new models for newspapers to still make money from their content instead of offering it up free, which made me hopeful for the future of my Saturday afternoons.
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