The who will pay for what debate and ought we to find out

Run of the mill junk is a worthless commodity. High quality journalism is scarce and will be more so in the future, and that’s when everyone who loves great journalism will begin to pay.

Leonard Witt is convinced that people will pay for high quality journalism

Kevin Anderson has read his post and says

Increasingly I’m of the belief that the newspaper industry is relying far too much on its values in its estimates of what readers value enough to pay for. We need some solid facts and figures on what people will pay for. I might be hoping for concrete data that just doesn’t exist right now, but I think we as journalists have to move from asserting what people should pay for and do a little reporting and research to find out what people will pay for and the types of services that might be able to subsidise professional journalism.

Can we distinguish quality from white noise?

Rory O'Connor asks over at the Huffington Post

With mainstream media brands in tatters, a tsunami of information inundating us online, and "quality journalism" in decline how can we be sure that the news we see and hear is really true?

His arguments centres around the question is the average citizen

interested in and capable of decoding that which is useful, credible, "quality journalism" -- and that which is not? And even if they are, will they take the time to do so?

He also questions the role of social networks

do they merely serve to confirm our prejudices? Do they offer just the "reassuring womb of an echo chamber,"

According though to Miriam Metzger she believes that people

are already using media tools as trust filters in a sophisticated way.

Social networks are a double edged sword according to Miriam

"Technology changes the problem, making it more urgent and giving us a greater burden to verify, but it also provides new tools to grapple with credibility questions. This means the technology is opening up more possibilities for solutions -- as well as simultaneously contributing to the problem.

So the Telegraph is the home of quality journalism

Ht-Heresy Corner

Readers turn to the money supplements

Yesterday's figures from the national readership survey seem to confirm that these tough economic times have resulted in a move top grasp the output of the quality media.

The FT reports that

In the last six months of the year, which also included coverage of the US election, the National Readership Survey estimated that the readership of The Times rose 10 per cent and The Guardian 13 per cent.

As if to emphasize the crisis the report adds that for financial supplements

FT Money saw a 43 per cent rise in the year, while The Guardian’s Money supplement increased 22 per cent and the similar addition to The Times rose 8 per cent. But the Your Money supplement in The Daily Telegraph’s Saturday edition fell 10 per cent over the year. There was a similar pattern for the business sections of the Sunday papers.

How the media's fascination for celeb is undermining politics

An interesting piece in the FT this morning.

John Lloyd claims that in his opinion the media far from maintaining its role as the 4th estate is undermining it.

He argues that

the media are now everywhere undermining democracy – by proposing and boosting a “democracy” of their own, through votes for winners in talent contests, or for those who must leave a Big Brother house or island. Or through making a game of politics. This is contentious: but the proofs lie in the use by television, and the internet, of the means of democracy – voting, association in groups for common purposes, political argument – for the ends of show business.

and

The nature of the democratic systems operated by democracies both old and new, are based on two types of citizenship involvement. The first is minimal: it is the once-in-a-while vote for a representative, for a chamber either near or distant. The second is intense: it is the labour put in, by activists, to ensure that parties continue to exist, to operate and to attract support.

and Lloyd claims both are in decline


For Lloyd the evidence is everywhere

1.the rapid spreading of networks of relationships, through Facebook and MySpace, in which the currency is the revelation of the private self, not participation in the public sphere

2.the dominance of television – not new, but always growing – in national elections, and in the ever greater importance, to the political class and the politically active and aware, of the analysts and opinion-formers who judge performance

3.the explosion of websites and blogs and the creation of a world of commentary, one of whose major themes is contempt for politics and journalism which puts boundaries on the investigation of public figures’ private life

4. the enormous and still spreading popularity of the “platforms” – for game shows, reality TV and celebrity programmes, most of these containing some element of voter choice, and usually involving the continued participation of one or more of the participants in the programme

How quality news may vanish down under?

The comments of Eric Beecher,seem to be attracting a lot of attention.

Mr Beecher, a former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald,a group that this week has made 100's of cuts in its staff, uses the announcement to question whether quality journalism can survive in Australia.

He goes even further than some by saying that the government should actually step in and

politicians need to look at it now and think, if we don't do anything, then in a decade's time the idea of well-resourced, quality journalism -- with hundreds of journalists covering parliament and business and investigative journalism and the courts -- will be gone".

Of course the question needs to be asked as to whether we are anywhere near this crisis in the UK.The up to now healthy competition in the media has up to recent times generated a competitive need to investigate and monitor.However the evidence is that with cut backs and cost savings,this may not continue.Yes we have the BBC here but their coverage of quality news has and will continue to be hampered by the tussles over the license fee.

Back to Australia though and it is rather worrying to find that after the cutbacks at Fairfax,it leaves Rupert Murdoch according to Beecher as

as the sole remaining commercially owned source of serious journalism

Forget policy let's just report gossip.

Labour MP,Tom Harris is not happy with the BBC over yesterday's political coverage.

With rumours already circulating in the blogosphere about a conspiracy between the Today Programme and Frank Field,he says

The PM today makes a speech today on how we plan for the future of elderly care. A hugely important issue given the deficit that awaits any future government unless something radical is done first. And yet, just five paragraphs into the BBC’s coverage, they return to their favourite activity - gossip:

It begs the question of the media in genreal and how much coverage has been given over to the political autobiographies of ex politicans over the last few days.

The Telegraph interviewed Lord Levy,the Times has been serialising Cherie Blair's thoughts as has the Sun as well as John Prescott.

Perhaps Tom Harris has a point

Is the success of the Beeb's 10.00pm news a sign that we are getting back to a serious news agenda

Is this the beginning of the end for tabloid-style TV news? Let's hope so says Rachel Cooke in this week's new Statesman as she reviews the BBC AND ITV contributions to the news agenda at 10.00pm.

As bad as the BBC bulletin is,

the programme is presented by the sullen-looking Edwards and, thanks to the credit crunch, despite being increasingly hampered by the stretched vowels and mangled consonants of Robert "Smarty-Pants" Peston, the BBC business editor.

Rachel applauds the fact that the corporation have not gone head to head with the new and revamped News at Ten

When ITV reclaimed the 10pm slot three months ago, I worried that, in order to compete, the BBC would go the same route. We started hearing the word "exclusive" more often, and there were more pointless outside broadcasts, featuring Edwards standing white-faced and anoraked beneath an arc light

But all seems well for now

The success of the Ten O'Clock News gives me hope: that we are finally tiring of tabloid values; that the shouting match that is the multimedia age is leading us, slowly, to crave sobriety, to be grateful for considered and judicious editing.