Jun 20 2007
Utopia meets reality
From Editors weblog: “Y BYD (’The World’) will be the first ever daily newspaper in the Welsh language. It will be launched on 3 March 2008“. Encouraging news for anyone who values the role of newspapers in defining, enriching and informing the communities they serve.
We have gained the support of elected members of all parties in the National Assembly as well as prominent figures in various fields of Welsh life - both Welsh-speakers and non-Welsh-speakers. Y Byd
The enthusiasm in Wales may at first be difficult to fathom. Welsh language TV has been broadcast for years. And yet there is clearly a feeling that somehow a Welsh language newspaper will provide an identity to the Welsh community that TV/radio/web fail to do.
The news here in Colorado is not so upbeat: “Industry Bloodbath Continues: ‘Denver Post’ Loses 21 Posts in Newsroom” E&P
Of course the key difference is that Y Byd receives funding guarantees from partisan sources whose attention strays beyond the bottom line. As advertisers desert print for the virtual world, old fashioned community-oriented journalism appears to be the only life-raft on the horizon.
Realigning newspapers around the needs of communities rather than the needs of advertisers now presents itself as both utopian dream and economic necessity.
Jim Bursch argues that some such market correction is overdue:
“The fundamental problem with journalism is that it is hitched to the ad-supported media business model, which is a third-party payer system, such a system is wrought with waste and innefficiency, and worst of all, it separates the interests of the producer from the interests of the consumer.”
I posted a follow-up comment:
The bad news for “journalism” (seems so broad as to be pointless) is that, arguably, there is a vast over-supply of it.
Are people clamoring for more “news”? No. Do people value the news they are getting? No — it is regularly demonstrated that people have no desire to pay for journalism (as it currently exists and is offered to them).
The demand that supports journalism is the demand for advertising by marketers, not the demand of people for news. And that demand either exceeds people’s demand for news, or that demand is not aligned with people’s demand for news. I suspect the former.
Professional journalists are sitting on a glut, or a bubble that is very sensitive. So sensitive that an inelegant and accidental phenomenon such as Craigslist can easily deflate it and throw an industry into a tizzy.
Expect it to continue — it’s called a market correction.