Comments on: The Internet: Not a parasite on journalism

By: jan hennop

jan hennop — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:46:20 +0000

I have sympathy with David Simon’s sincere and heartfelt testimony.
I do also think that he’s speaking for thousands of print journalists out there, articulating the pain and betrayal that many of them feel with the companies and the papers they spent their lives serving.
However, I disagree with David’s contention when it comes to the Internet (although towards the end of the testimony, he conceded that there is no other way to go).
Yes, the Internet did change our world. New media does for some part ride on the back of print. But that doesn’t mean that high-end journalism cannot be committed online.
Yes, online news is freely available – but don’t underestimate readers’ intelligence.
If you have a brand that people trust, whether in print or online – and your online content is top quality, there should be no reason why people wouldn’t want to read you…Or for that matter, pay to read it. Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

By: Homer Bigart

Homer Bigart — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:51:26 +0000

Mindy,

You are still fighting straw men not Simon. You need to actually go back and read his full testimony on the committee website.

He’s not arguing that the internet is not the delivery system of the future or that printing the paper and delivering it to doorsteps is not anachronistic. In fact, HE SAYS BOTH THOSE THINGS IN THOSE EXACT WORDS. He knows that online is the future; but he’s arguing for the profession, and that means PAYING AND TRAINING PEOPLE, AND CREATING AN EDITING BASE TO ENSURE QUALITY.

Are you interested in arguing against Simon, or against some blogger’s half-baked version of what he wants Simon to be?

As to what killed newspapers, Simon’s testimony spends as much time critiquing their performance as that of new media. And his critique is a lot more pointed about why beat reporting is dying than “the expansion of metro papers into farther and farther suburbs,” which has exactly nothing to do with the trend, editorially or economically.

Read the actual testimony, then maybe comment. That might be a good discipline going forward.

By: Mindy McAdams

Mindy McAdams — Sun, 10 May 2009 13:04:55 +0000

I agree that journalism is not a hobby, and to see it done well, we need full-time reporters, editors, etc., who are paid to do the work, day in and day out. But to say that cannot be done online, or in a format other than the 400-year-old newspaper model (well, the current model is younger than that) is naive.

What I know about the news business is that everyone comes into it green as a new sprout, with or without a journalism degree, and there’s precious little training in most newsrooms (especially in the last few years). The beat model has been undermined for a long time by the expansion of metro papers to farther and farther suburbs.

By: Homer Bigart

Homer Bigart — Sun, 10 May 2009 04:22:26 +0000

Simon, an amateur?

What bullshit. And you bought that ridiculous analogy.

Simon left journalism after writing a book on homicide detectives, then apprenticed under Tom Fontana on the show Homicide writing from 1992 to 1999 and working as first a staffwriter, then a story editor and finally as a junior producer on that show from 1995 to 1999. Then he did a miniseries for HBO on the Corner, his second book, in 2000. Then finally, after years in this business learning at the right hand of some of the best professionals out there, he created The Wire. Amateur? Richmond is goofy; just look up Simon’s careful and long climb on IMDb listings.

The analogy doesn’t hold, especially since Simon isn’t saying that journalists have to be journalism majors or graduates or such. Only that they be PAID AND TRAINED FULLTIME REPORTERS. He’s arguing that journalism is not a hobby but a profession that requires fulltime commitment. And if you’ev ever covered a beat as a reporter — spent years learning a police department or school system to do the job — you’d get it. Richmond set up a straw man, and you’re in awe that he knocked it down. Congrats.