
What happens when a newspaper disappears? - pj
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14082998
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neilk
By coincidence, I just watched this lecture by David Simon on the same topic.
David Simon is the creator of the TV series _The Wire_ and a former print
journalist.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8E8xBXFLKE>

He discusses a recurring theme on _The Wire_ about the decline of a town's
main newspaper, and how this results in blatant corruption going unnoticed.
Simon doesn't think bloggers offer a true replacement. Personally I'm more
optimistic about the Internet, but his opinion is worth your time.

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mahmud
Simon's testimony before congress a few months back was easily one of the most
powerful speeches I have heard in a long time. They will chronicle it in
future editions of "Great American Speeches".

[http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/7/david_simon_creator_of_...](http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/7/david_simon_creator_of_acclaimed_hbo)

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akamaka
Nicely written article, but no deep insights here.

Basically points out that older folks will suffer most from the loss of local
newspapers, but that people can find another way to spread information if they
need to.

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ars
It's time to bring back the town crier: <http://www.londontowncrier.com/> :)

~~~
sfphotoarts
Newspaper's time has come (and gone) - its not the concept that's going away,
its just the media it appears on. There will always be news 'organizations' -
they might morph into a much more diverse and distributed form, but that's
just progress. Any sufficiently complex system evolves. Think of this as de-
urbanization. Rather than central metropolitan news organizations the news is
going rural.

There is a school of thought (that I don't disagree with) that says that a
free press is a tenet of democracy, so if that's true there will always be
free news reporting. It just wont come to us on dead trees.

