A watchdog asleep

    America's press has had many failures in recent years. Two of the country's largest newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, have admitted they opted to ignore pleas from reporters to print the news they gathered and instead buried the reports and assumed the government was acting in our best interest. The newspapers also admit they were wrong.
    Now America's largest newspaper company, Gannett, has decided to outsource its newsgathering to average citizens. According to Wired magazine, which broke the story, Gannett has turned its newsrooms into "information centers" and will crowdsource their news, especially investigative reporting. All Gannett newspapers will operate under the new policy by May.
    According to Wired, "Crowdsourcing involves taking functions traditionally performed by employees and using the Internet to outsource them to an undefined, generally large group of people. The compensation is usually far less than what an employee might make for performing the same service. Well-known examples include Wikipedia and iStockphoto."
    While the idea may sound good, and we applaud the idea of bringing readers into the newsgathering process, turning editorial decisions over to untrained people makes no sense. Wikipedia is a great example because of the amount of wrong information that has been posted by people who thought they had their facts in place and those just wanting to make mischief. In some cases, Gannett officials themselves have been victims.
    It seems the real goal here is to cut costs. It's a move Gannett has made before. The newspaper firm is well known among journalists for bringing mediocrity to once-great newspapers by eliminating expensive, talented reporters and cutting staff and budgets. Gannett, like any other company, is about profits, not public service.
    Which would be fine except that the media holds a special place in society. It's job is to be a watchdog on government. One of a news organization's strengths is a staff of reporters who are experienced in how government works and how to get information about it. They are also regularly witnessing government operations and can spot things out of the ordinary.
    We know a courts reporter who kept a log of every case number. Because cases were logged consecutively, he could tell if a number was missing. Several times he caught court officials trying to handle public business secretly by delaying paperwork or not filing records properly. Only someone working as a watchdog every day can provide this kind of scrutiny.
    Gannett's actions may make a special interest richer, but America will be poorer because of it. Democracy is losing a powerful advocate.

Comments

[Jim]

Great Site!
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www.ScaryConservativeMedia.com

[Mark Robert Gates]

The problem is not that our press, is asleep, it is that while we were asleep at the wheel, and did not notice, the same, Machiavellian, lame duck, pseudo-Christian, right-wing, Republicans, of which, over ran our government, did so, our free presses, as well.

Now, if we can hold off those with torches, ready to burn all the presses, long enough, we can retake our free press.

Copyright 2006, Mark Robert Gates

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http://lokieponaphoenix.blogspot.com/
http://wellnessempowered.blogspot.com/

[James T. Paul]

I am really disapointed with the Democrats. The college loan interest was lowered over a period of 4 years, not immediately. There has not been a mention of stopping the funds for contractors in Iraq or changing the laws passed that can take away
rights of American citizens. Us true Liberals need a Party and the Dems don't want to be hijacked by us. I'm going back to The Green Party when I vote. I don't much care if the Dems loose
I don't see much difference between the 2 Major Partys