After a recent entry in the neverending debate on the death of journalism and how to save newspapers, Metafilter user fightorflight took a page from an old antispam email forward (which in turn might well be based off of sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein’s solution to fan mail) and developed this standard response letter. A shortened version:

Check as many as apply:

Your [idea] advocates a

	( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) crowd-sourced

approach to saving journalism. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws owing to the avaraciousness of modern publishers.)

	( ) It does not provide an income stream to the working
	    journalist
	( ) Nobody will spend eight hours sitting in a dull council
	    meeting to do it
	( ) Users of the web will not put up with it
	( ) Print readers will not put up with it
	( ) Good journalists will not put up with it

[...]

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

	( ) The existence and popularity of the BBC
	( ) The massive tedium of investigative journalism
	( ) Editorial departments small enough to be profitable are too
	    small to do real reporting
	( ) Reluctance of governments and corporations to be held to
	    account by two guys with a blog
	( ) The tiny amounts of money to be made from online ads for
	    small sites

[...]

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

	( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none
	    have ever been shown practical
	( ) Society depends on journalists producing news that few
	    readers are actually all that interested in, quite
	    honestly
	( ) Having a free online "printing press" doesn't turn you
	    into a journalist any more than your laser printer did
	( ) Citizen journalists are almost as good as citizen dentists
	( ) You are Jeff Jarvis

[...]

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

	( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
	( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person
	    for suggesting it.
	( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and
	    burn your house down!

- posted by fightorflight on Metafilter

Read on »

Newspaper Death Watch by Paul Gillin

I’ve been a subscriber to Magazine Death Pool for a while, but somehow Newspaper Death Watch escaped my view. The site, created by long-time technology journalist Paul Gillin, chronicles the usually bad news about newspapers, and has been doing so since 2007. And while the title of the blog might convey a certain glee or satisfaction with the downfall of newspapers, Gillin’s intent is quite the opposite. From Newspaper Death Watch’s about page:

If the tongue-in-cheek title of this blog implies that I take some satisfaction in this collapse, that’s not my intent. Sometimes you just luck into a domain name that works. I’m a newspaper junkie from way back. I got into journalism in large part because of the crusading work of The Washington Post and The New York Times during the Nixon administration, and I have always had the greatest respect for the institution of the newspaper. Sadly, the economic foundation of these media scions is badly broken.”