Missing Analysis: Real Information In An Age Of Spun Sugar Bread And Circuses

Half-eaten spun sugar via jiazi.

CJR writes on the changing journalism field in an age of internet, information overload, and bottom lines on profit versus reporter employment.  

But fiddling with the numbers to juice the bottom line gets you only so far. (Ask the Sulzbergers.)  As Jay Rosen opined in August, it isn’t just getting things into print — it’s having useful, informed and thorough things to say.

Christiane Amanpour is an optimist.  At least about the intelligence of the American public:

A serious, occasionally fierce defender of the place of international reporting in an American television news diet, Ms. Amanpour has over the years, often while accepting honors for her work, made public, pointed barbs at her own bosses, when she thought entertainment fluff threatened to overwhelm more substantive topics….

"The American people," she said, "spoke loudly. The majority of the American people in the run-up to this election said they believe that the next president, one of his most important priorities should be restoring America’s position in the world. That to me says it all: That means that there is an openness, that there is a desire, a hunger to know about the world, and to know about where America is and fits into the world."

I hope she’s right.  That we’ve grown up enough to realize we cannot dictate other’s lives.  And that yeehaw policies only cost us more in the end.

Americans are sick of being scammed by snake oil self-servers aspiring to higher office. What they want is someone with integrity serving the people’s interests instead of lining their crony’s pockets. What they’d like from the Fourth Estate is less ginned up spun sugar bread and circuses (and falafels) and much less rampant idiocy.

In case media moguls haven’t noticed, the rest of us are in a world of hurt at the moment. We could use some honesty, some grit, and some back-to-basics reporting right now. 

The journalists who really do the work — like Charlie Savage on presidential signing statements, or McClatchy’s work running up to Iraq, or Wired’s background work on the FISA mess?  That’s great stuff.  And great work sells.  (We saw that with our own Libby trial coverage – if you report it as thoroughly as you can, they will come.  In droves.)

In the battle of bean counters versus well-done news?  News wins hands down.  

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