Newspapers? A Public Good? Really?

I promise I’m going to post or write about some of these questions in more detail soon, but anything I’d want to say about the ongoing crisis in the mainstream media would be prefaced by the observation that we need to examine our preconceptions before we begin. Whatever people such as myself like to think, newspapers are not a given if they can’t turn a profit, and since journalism in its current form is a product of the economic structures that support it, changes in those structures are likely to alter the nature of journalism, and we need to bear that in mind when we lament the fading of forms such as investigative journalism. In that context this piece by Margaret Simons asking whether newspapers really are the public good we think they are is well worth a read.

Newspapers? A Public Good? Really?

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