For about 7 or 8 years now I have been wondering how regular newspapers actually survives. To me this is a complete mystery. In Sweden, at least partly, this can be explained with the large governmental support to several of those dinosaurs. But still, I mean you can get all the news coverage you like in any language quicker, better and more in-depth than anything you can buy at the store. Consequently I also wonder who is stupid enough buying a newspaper? The last time I bought a newspaper I was sitting at Heathrow airport feeling bored with a couple of pints so I bought financial times just to feel the weight of the paper in my hands. Reading this paper that, in comparison with Swedish newspapers, is pure gold and often has excellent pieces of journalism; I started to wonder about a couple of news articles and turned on my laptop and updated in pretty much real time I could already see were some journalist had missed something or how a certain news story already had developed far beyond that in the paper addition.
If you have nothing to do, turn on your twitter and follow BBC, Fox news or whatever and you can find the very latest news hours, maybe even days before they reach your local media. You can also find good bloggers online. Bloggers comes by the tens of thousands and it is hard to find those gems, but if you do you will have better, funnier and more investigating journalists at your fingertips than all the newspapers combined. To me it is very strange that any of the old news desks doesn’t just deploy journalists here and there and then more or less turn off the lights at most/all offices and fire all the excess personal. Maybe it can be the news variation of Piratebay? But that’s right, those things need to be under control so the old dinosaurs with their inapt thinking and governmental contributions can live on. Darn, didn't think of that. And since email, phone calls and every other piece of material that passes boarders are being monitored and saved by government’s surveillance this with sources and direct links aren’t really the way to go anyways. Maybe long wave radio? Or how about sending post by throwing a bottle in the ocean?
Lately the old media have proven themselves again trying to scare up an entire world for an almost completely harmless virus. With a couple of clicks and some logical thinking anyone wanting to know the truth about this swine thingy could, but journalists they still need their fix, making the story, not finding it or digging for it. Countless are the tales about how the old media have tried to scare us into believing in the boogeyman, often enough politicians picks up the tread and impose a new law or two just to be on the safe side. Pick up a paper, any of them, any time of the week and they are filled with things that can kill you and/or make you fat. War, starvation and economic crisis is reported as the news comes in from other papers, but some famous rock-star they have several journalists on digging thru trash and finding distant relatives. Of course we as readers have a big fault in this, we keep buying those rags. Again, I need to ask, why? If you have a computer and internet you will never need a TV, a radio or ever buy a newspaper again. You can find everything you want direct, share it with others and make it into something new and send it all around the globe in the same time it takes for journalists to even read the news.
Now why do you think governments dislike this and why do you think journalists thrown upon the blogosphere? The old media should be dead already, but unlike dinosaurs they have governments to protect them and their own self-perseverance is much more important than thinking outside the box. My generation was the last one really reading and listening to the old media, hopefully Internet will make them all go bankrupt at the same time as we save the free world and stop governments from restricting our freedom and our future. Now that it something journalists should be writing about.
More how journalists work here
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