

Hackers wanted: Scholarships available to coders to save journalism and democracy - peter123
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/hackers-wanted-journalism-need.html

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dan_the_welder
My local paper sucks. It's a corporate revenue generator. They give us as
little real content as possible. Just enough to maintain the illusion that
they are a News Paper rather than an Advertising Sales and Delivery System.
The editor wails about how important he is to the community but he is merely
an impotent tool for Gannett, just as his predecessor was for Knight-Ridder.

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granular
You must understand though, that your paper is doing what makes money -- it's
providing what most people want: stories about cats rescued from trees, this
years fashions, and possibly commentary on local taxes going up or down. Ads
about what sale is going on this weekend, etc.

The real shocker, IMO, is that most people don't _want_ to know what's really
going on. They actively resist getting roused from their peaceful slumber.

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arcadeparade
>The real shocker, IMO, is that most people don't want to know what's really
going on. They actively resist getting roused from their peaceful slumber.

I would say the opposite is true. Chomsky touches on this subject here (and on
other articles on this website) and can explain it a lot better than I can.

<http://www.chomsky.info/books/warfare02.htm>

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endtime
The exclamation mark that disappeared from the headline really borks its
parsability. Suggest someone fixes that.

The article does make an okay case for journalism being interesting, but it
fails to convince me that "old news" is something that can or should be saved.

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polvi
Maybe that is why they want hackers, to help create the "new news".

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pj
It's funny because the media industry blames the internet, and therefore,
coders and hackers, for their downfall with not very nice language all the
time...

and now they are begging us to save them from their death...

Life is funny.

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brandnewlow
Great to see Brian worked in a shout-out for <http://repsheet.com> an open
source, dead-simple local political lookup tool.

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cellis
The title is hilarious. I read it initially as

"[Some] _Hackers_ wanted [the] Scholarships available to _coders_ to save
journalism and democracy"

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physcab
I always like to see people blending various disciplines to make a better
product. I think that's how business should be done.

