Like the air that sustains life, facts that would help hard-pressed consumers are all around us. Instead of gathering and delivering such facts, however, we often leave subscribers gasping for useful information. And so their numbers dwindle.
Americans tend to consume all their income these days, and sometimes more than their income, which is shrinking. They are in a daily battle to spend and save wisely. Strong anecdotal evidence suggests that they love the kind of hard consumer reporting that would serve as an ally. Yet, as Trudy Lieberman details above, the press has moved away from such coverage.
It’s a missed opportunity, especially in the digital age, when evolving technology and the rise of social media potentially magnify the power of the consumer and also magnify the potential of consumer journalism, including making possible new ways to hear consumers’ thinking and complaints, and new ways to reach and inform audiences.
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I'm partial to the theory that the driving force behind the MSM is no longer selling subscriptions to their readers, but selling readers to their advertisers. Through that lens, this story is not surprising.
Posted by Micah Sittig on Tue 2 Sep 2008 at 02:17 AM
I agree whole heartedly. There is a significant gap between reality and what is reported as reality. A lot of effort is required if a reader wants to read accurate, reality based reporting. I find myself surfing news sites for hours trying to decipher what is real news and what is junk news. I would pay to have a service dedicated to filtering out junk news from real news. It would save me a tremendous amount of time.
Posted by Jonathan Rocha on Tue 2 Sep 2008 at 01:33 PM
Not all that needs to be talked about this way is news.
Sometimes a very old idea -- such as that the earth belongs to all of us, and its resources should be paid for, in the form of royalties -- at current values, not 1872 or 1972 or 2002 values -- to the commons.
Not news, but vitally important to TCMITS (the common man in the street), if only he was conscious of it.
Investigative reporting on all the little corruption stuff is sort of pointless when we let the earth's resources be treated as the private treasure of a few of us. Diverting us from the big corruption inherent in how we currently do things.
If we corrected this, that water would not be rising, and most of us would no longer be struggling to keep our heads above it.
Posted by Wyn Achenbaum on Wed 3 Sep 2008 at 04:54 PM