Below the Fold

Jay Mariotti and the Dead Newspapers Society

Sportswriter Jay Mariotti, who quit the Chicago Sun-Times and then told a local television station that “newspapers are dead,” raised the ire of many in the news industry including (former) colleague Roger Ebert. In a not-so-private open letter to the Sun-Times staff, Ebert called Mariotti “a rat” and, in essence, a coward for leaving the newspaper business during troubled times.

Mariotti is of course entitled to his opinion and his career choices, even if his opinion makes him look like a childish jerk. Nevertheless, he is making the same mistake and suffers from the same misperceptions that most non-journalists have about newspapers.

Newspapers aren’t dead, they are not even dying. They are, in fact, changing, which is not a bad thing.

Change doesn’t come easy, and yes, change means that some papers won’t survive. But newspapers were never about the “paper” or print – they are about storytelling, and storytellers, and ideas. What is really changing – and why all media is going through a kind of metamorphosis – is the definition of news, both in terms or what constitutes a news story as well as what are “legitimate” sources of news and forms of delivery.

My nine-year-old daughter doesn’t read a newspaper and may never, but she reads news headlines delivered via our Wii game system. I read the New York Times on my mobile phone. Contrary to the name of my blog, nothing today is “below the fold” because our media universe is one big front page that we control.

According to a recent Pew Report on changing news habits, young people are losing interest in news – 34 percent of those under 25 years old get “no news” in a typical day, up from 25 percent 10 years ago. But Poynter’s Amy Gahran challenges the findings, noting that the study perhaps didn’t investigate “social” avenues to news and information or the impact of search engines or mobile technology.

News, like most all other forms of communication today, is both accidental and on-demand. We often get news online when we aren’t looking for it, and we also get news when and how we want it (we also seem to get only the news we want to hear, but that’s another issue for another day.)

So let’s not confuse the changes news is going through with its impact. News still matters, even if the news itself is not always recognizable based on long-held perceptions.

And the Chicago Sun-Times? I predict it will still be around in some form ten years from now. And Jay Mariotti, the latest member of the Dead Newspapers Society, will still be talking – after all, if you ever read his stuff, you would know that talking is the only thing he’s good at.

 

Tim Russert: Citizen Journalist

“Feels like the country’s biggest game is about to be played without the referee.” – Elizabeth Wilner, posted on the “Missing Russert” Facebook group.

 

AS MODERN JOURNALISM LAY near death, with its entertainment-driven news, pomp and punditry, Tim Russert was its life support. Now, with Russert gone, we can only wonder how long journalism can go on.

Russert’s ability to hold an entire profession together was never fully noticed or appreciated. But as reporters, broadcasters, colleagues and competitors flooded the airwaves in the hours after Russert’s death from a heart attack, the void left by Buffalo’s favorite son was painfully obvious.

There was Keith Olbermann, the antithesis of objective journalism, talking to his partner in polemics Chris Matthews about Russert’s objectivity and dedication to his craft.

There was Wolf Blitzer and Larry King from CNN, saying all the right things but looking lost, as if without Russert the nation would have to turn its lonely eyes to them for its political coverage – the thought of which scared them to death.

Certainly Russert can never be replaced, but there’s no one left in television news that is even in the same league. It was as if Paul McCartney had died, and the only people left to deliver the eulogies were Miley Cyrus and Right Said Fred.

Olbermann’s tribute was beautiful and heartfelt to be sure, but the real proof of Russert’s impact will come when Olbermann tapes his next edition of “Countdown.” Will he, as Russert did, learn everything he can about his guests’ positions and then take the other side? Will he use his obvious intellect to inform us or just keep us pissed off?

And will Matthews, on his next “Hardball,” let his guests finish a complete sentence? Will he, as Russert did, force politicians to go beyond their well-practiced sound bites?

Will anyone – can anyone – remember Russert through their actions and not their words? Or with Russert’s passing has the plug been pulled on journalism, on objectivity and discourse forever.

I want to say yes to the latter. I want to just give up on a profession that, save for a few serious journalists, gave up on itself a long time ago.

But that wouldn’t befit Tim. This was a Bills fan after all – he was a man who always believed in the next play, the next game, the next season.

Russert was the true definition of a citizen journalist. His questions were ours, and he never forgot for whom he worked. His authenticity, unlike that of so many of his contemporaries, was unimpeachable.

Journalism changed and Russert survived. The question now is whether journalism will survive without the likes of Tim Russert.

We Are the Firemen

In May 1993 – the exact date and time escape me – my inner world, the one where thoughts are born, developed and processed, lost its ability to be silent. I since have lived with constant noise, the result of a tumor that, in an ironic nod to God’s comic grace, left me deaf in one ear yet covered in a perpetual blanket of ringing static.

Sometimes it’s not too bad, other times it’s so loud it sounds like there’s a KISS concert in my cranium. But it is always there, never fully abated, never completely quiet. It will never be quiet, and it has been so long I have forgotten what quiet is, what silence sounds like, what kinds of thoughts stillness brings. How much smarter, how less painful the headaches and seizures, how more aware of my environment would I be if only I could hear more – and then, like most people, dial down the volume and hear nothing but thinking.

Rather than go insane, I did the next best thing – I went into marketing. Turns out my decision was less pathos than it was prescience, as I watch my former trade of journalism in some cases melt away, in others morph into a new kind of socially-driven journalism enabled (if not always ennobled) by modern technology.

THE DESCENT OF PRINT alone is not a problem for our society. But the descent of thought is. And this death of reasonable thinking and discourse has given rise to a ringing in all our ears, a cacophony of “social media” for its own sake rather than the sake of the consumer.

Don’t get me wrong (though I guarantee someone will) – I love technology and Web 2.0. I believe in the power of conversation and the promise of connecting people to each other with authentic communications. But in this new silicon rush we far too often discount what’s gone before, throwing judgment into the intellectual pyre like so many worn newspapers.

In other words, in our well-meant effort to broaden and share our knowledge, are we also destroying the very knowledge and reasoned discussion we so boldly claim to seek?

Because we can connect with people like ourselves, we do. And then we act as if other opinions don't exist -- or if they do, then don't matter. We do this within our social networks, the pseudo social media intelligentsia do it at conferences and on their blogs, and the news media does it by giving us news tuned to whatever ideological frequency we desire.

We jump to conclusions and applaud hyperbole until the slightest chance of digesting an idea is gone. That idea is destroyed forever, lost in the echo chamber of self-important consultants and rash Twitter feeds.

Never before in human history has so much information been available so readily to so many. Yet although we are creating and writing more, we are saying less.

IN FAHRENHEIT 451, RAY BRADBURY’S seminal novel about censorship and intellectual intolerance, a “fireman” was someone who burned books. Well, we don’t burn books per se, but we burn discourse. We don't destroy newspapers, but our actions are killing them off just the same. We are the firemen.

So this is my warning and my plea: don’t get caught up in the social media panacea. Instead, experiment and decide what works for you and your company. Focus on the customer first and the technology second. It’s okay to take small steps, to do what’s best for your business, to embrace new tools at your own pace even if it goes against the “purists” who argue that there’s only one way to move forward.

And above all, take time to think, to plan, to discuss and learn. Embrace the unknown and reject those who insist they know it all. Find some silence and make decisions without being surrounded by so much noise.

I would give anything for just a few seconds of mental peace and quiet. Don’t squander yours.

Journalism's Next 100 Years

I got a call from the University of Missouri Journalism School, my alma mater, reminding me of the 100th anniversary celebration this year. Founded in 1908, Missouri was the world’s first journalism school and is still regarded as one of the best.

Yet while overall it was a great first hundred years for American journalism, it’s the next 100 I worry about. Or in the prescient phrase uttered by ABC News anchorman Charles Gibson at Pennsylvania’s recent Democratic presidential debate, “the crowd is turning” on how professionals report the news.

History is the art of hindsight, so writing about an event before the ink dries and the digital bits settle is at best unfair. Nevertheless, you don’t need Galileo’s vision to see that the Pennsylvania debate marked another in series of dark turning points for the news business.

The financial pain we’ve known for while – as this year’s State of the News Media study revealed, advertising revenue is still going down, as are pre-tax earnings, profit margins and stock values. Even online newspaper advertising, while up 20 percent in 2007, is growing slower than online advertising as a whole, and is 10 percent lower than last year.

Newspaper owners answered with widespread staff layoffs, leading to less local reporting and therefore fewer readers which – you guessed it – resulted in less revenue. It’s also meant narrower reporting, with issues like Iraq and the presidential elections representing the majority of coverage. And it’s meant an unhealthy attraction to transient stories that are the equivalent of chewing gum, the media smacking its lips long after the gum has lost its taste.

All this came to a head in Pennsylvania. What should have been a debate about the future of the country became a Fox-style reality show about flag lapel pins. And the people responded, with boos in the audience and thousands of comments on ABC’s web site. The media itself became the story – a story prompted by ordinary people now with extraordinary access to the once powerful press.

Last year’s YouTube debates will be remembered for authentic questions about real-life issues from a mosaic of American culture. The ABC debate will be remembered as the day modern journalism died in a cacophony of tabloid-style interrogations, punctuated by the nervous laughter of a once proud newsman, gasping to stay afloat in a sea of discontent.

ABC should have known better. It should have known that news in the next 100 years will be more “service” that product, something that people will look to for intellectual guidance. News is a conversation, or as the BBC’s Richard Sambrook has said, a partnership – and in this sense, ABC failed its partners miserably.

Consider this: When asked about his debate performance, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos said, “The questions we asked…are being debated around the political world every day.” A commenter on ABC’s web site said, “"Some of us actually live in the real world and care much more about real issues like food and gas prices.”

This is where we need to start the next 100 years of American journalism – in the real world. The crowd is turning, indeed.

                           

I got a call from the University of Missouri Journalism School, my alma mater, reminding me of the 100th anniversary celebration this year. Founded in 1908, Missouri was the world’s first journalism school and is still regarded as one of the best.

Yet while overall it was a great first hundred years for American journalism, it’s the next 100 I worry about. Or in the prescient phrase uttered by ABC News anchorman Charles Gibson at Pennsylvania’s recent Democratic presidential debate, “the crowd is turning” on how professionals report the news.

History is the art of hindsight, so writing about an event before the ink dries and the digital bits settle is at best unfair. Nevertheless, you don’t need Galileo’s vision to see that the Pennsylvania debate marked another in series of dark turning points for the news business.

The financial pain we’ve known for while – as this year’s State of the News Media study revealed, advertising revenue is still going down, as are pre-tax earnings, profit margins and stock values. Even online newspaper advertising, while up 20 percent in 2007, is growing slower than online advertising as a whole, and is 10 percent lower than last year.

Newspaper owners answered with widespread staff layoffs, leading to less local reporting and therefore fewer readers which – you guessed it – resulted in less revenue. It’s also meant narrower reporting, with issues like Iraq and the presidential elections representing the majority of coverage. And it’s meant an unhealthy attraction to transient stories that are the equivalent of chewing gum, the media smacking its lips long after the gum has lost its taste.

All this came to a head in Pennsylvania. What should have been a debate about the future of the country became a Fox-style reality show about flag lapel pins. And the people responded, with boos in the audience and thousands of comments on ABC’s web site. The media itself became the story – a story prompted by ordinary people now with extraordinary access to the once powerful press.

Last year’s YouTube debates will be remembered for authentic questions about real-life issues from a mosaic of American culture. The ABC debate will be remembered as the day modern journalism died in a cacophony of tabloid-style interrogations, punctuated by the nervous laughter of a once proud newsman, gasping to stay afloat in a sea of discontent.

ABC should have known better. It should have known that news in the next 100 years will be more “service” that product, something that people will look to for intellectual guidance. News is a conversation, or as the BBC’s Richard Sambrook has said, a partnership – and in this sense, ABC failed its partners miserably.

Consider this: When asked about his debate performance, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos said, “The questions we asked…are being debated around the political world every day.” A commenter on ABC’s web site said, “"Some of us actually live in the real world and care much more about real issues like food and gas prices.”

This is where we need to start the next 100 years of American journalism – in the real world. The crowd is turning, indeed.

                           

Making Newspapers Matter: The Tragic Value of Content

“Hey Gary: After a year of unanswered emails to the editor of the Portland, Maine, Press Herald pleading for better local reporting and editing...I started a blog a month ago…” T.C. Munjoy, Pressing the Herald (http://pressingtheherald.blogspot.com/)

ONE MORE BLOG IN THE WORLD is not the end of traditional journalism. Even the target of Mr. Munjoy’s citizen reporting, the Press Herald of Portland, Maine, will unlikely feel any pain, at least in the short term. But what Mr. Munjoy and countless others have done by starting blogs for the purpose of either enhancing or supplanting local news is nothing less than apocalyptic.

Consider this one simple fact: Mr. Munjoy distributes his product on a platform he uses for free. If he ever decides to charge a fee, it will be for his blog’s content, not its distribution.

And herein lays the Achilles Heel of newspapers: their costs are all in the distribution, not the content. In fact, contrary to what newspaper executives may want you to believe, newspapers have never charged for their content – which is why the newspaper industry is, and for the foreseeable future will be, in serious trouble.

The Big Mistake
Five cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, 50 cents…whatever the cost of your daily paper, that cost goes to pay for the means of distribution. Paper, ink, presses, gasoline, tires, vending machines and so on – all means of distribution. The same goes for advertising – the more ads you can sell, the more pages you can print, the more there is to distribute.

Obviously some of this revenue goes to pay for reporters and editors, but in a purely business sense, the content they produce merely allows the company to distribute a product. And as I said, that’s how newspapers make money, by distributing their product.

This worked fine until the Internet Age. Newspapers made the mistake of looking at the Internet as simply another means of distribution, assuming that people would come to their web sites and read the news, and more importantly read the ads that helped pay for the web servers and Net access fees.

But search trumped any vision of people reading the news only at a newspaper’s web site. Now they could read the news on Google, Yahoo, MSN or via RSS feeds straight to their computer desktops. The new media companies like Google saw value in the content, not the distribution, and traditional newspapers have been trying to catch up ever since.

Some newspapers tried to charge for content, but having not placed any value there before it was difficult to make that case now (there is, however, a legitimate argument over whether news aggregators can publish copyrighted material without permission.) Niche publications did better than mass market ones, but with the free content genie out of the bottle and more and more information available from more and more sources, content itself became commoditized.

As the public turned more selective, news turned more subjective. After all, if you want people to value content, you have to make it stand out. But in trying to save their business model, newspapers have injured journalism.

Where we are Today
Television had its role in this tragedy as well. In the Golden Age of TV news, daily broadcasts were not expected to make money. News was seen as a loss leader, its existence seen as nothing less than fulfilling a sacred public trust.

But television was also a business, and as profits rose from the entertainment side of the house, pressure mounted on the news divisions to earn some of that valuable ad revenue. So television news, because it came into people’s homes for free, looked to its content to attract viewers – to entertain them if not inform.

And this is where we are now, in print, on the airwaves and online – a journalism where placing value on news content means a world of infotainment and hyperbole, of diversion and distraction.

There is plenty of good work to be sure, but how long will it last? How long will newspapers focus efforts on the “paper” part of their monikers instead of the “news” – on supporting an obsolete distribution infrastructure rather than new business models that place value on content that is truly valuable?

We don’t have the answers yet – but like any good journalist, getting to the answers starts with asking the right questions. Let’s hope there are some good journalists left to ask them.

Good luck, Mr. Munjoy. The future of quality journalism may someday turn its lonely eyes to you.

In CNN’s Hands, YouTube Loses its Voice

As a former newspaper reporter, I never had much respect for television news. More style than substance, more sound bite than serious, TV journalism was media junk food. I preferred a good steak and still do.

There were exceptions – Walter Cronkite, Jim Lehrer and, going way back, Ed Murrow (though he served up his share of sugary snacks as well.) And in the early ‘90s, there was a decade-old network called CNN that, with its blog-like first person coverage of the Gulf War, showed that television and journalism could indeed coexist and add reason to public discourse.

But that was, as they say, then – and this, unfortunately for our country and its conscience, is now.

I accepted CNN’s financial need to compete with Fox and MSNBC by taking a side – not conservative like Fox or liberal like MSNBC, but a kind of neo populism characterized by anchor-driven “mad as hell” histrionics. I looked away when the “maddest” of the bunch, Lou Dobbs, made illegal immigration his clarion call.

Then last week, CNN went too far. The network, which hosted the Republican “YouTube Debate,” went from ranting about the election to attempting to rig it.

CNN is no longer a news organization; it is a political action committee. It has gone off the deep end not in search of ratings, but rather in an obsequious bow to Dobbs, his quest for book sales and a possible third-party Presidential bid.

Consider this: the first one-third of the debate centered on immigration, Dobbs one-trick pony, despite national polls showing that only six percent of Americans believe immigration is an important issue in the 2008 election. What are the top issues? Iraq, the economy, healthcare and energy costs. What other topics did CNN producers cull from the 5,000 YouTube submissions? They chose gun control, the Confederate flag and whether the Bible is the true word of God.

I don’t mind the YouTube format – in fact I love its raw sense of immediacy. But don’t for one minute think that the format makes the debate any more real; CNN took care of that, manipulating the event to serve its own puerile purposes.

CNN not only crossed the line, it went into uncharted waters. It used the electoral process, hardly free of abuse itself, to serve its hunger for relevance and ratings. CNN has gone from being an inspiration to journalism to being its enemy – a voice beyond mere bias now bent on Machiavellian power.

Hyperbole? Perhaps. CNN is, after all, just a network – just a business. As I said before, I never had much respect for television news, so maybe I should go eat my steak and shut up. Just sit back, relax and listen -- the news is on.

Facebook is the New Corporate Intranet (and Other Things I Want to Mention but Would Rather Not Discuss)

Glenn Beck is an Insensitive Prick – Beck told his national radio audience that “a handful of people who hate America are losing their homes in a forest fire today,” referring to the wildfires that started in Malibu. First of all, one of those people, Steve Dark, is a conservative who loves America and goes to church every week – or at least he did until his church burned to the ground.

So what does that mean, Glenn? Does God hate America, too? Steve and his Malibu neighbors are looking forward to your answer.

Facebook is the New Corporate Intranet – Why not? Create a Facebook Group, set it up as “Secret” – so it’s not visible to search, only invited members can participate and the group is invisible on members’ profiles – and voila, instant Intranet. Members can post, discuss and share information, even upload photos or host audio or video podcasts (and don’t forget the ability to create custom applications.) Simple to be sure, but for some companies simple is good enough. Goodbye HTML, hello FBML.

Social Media is Not Just About a Set of Tools – Will someone please tell this to Ragan and PRSA? Please, before they hurt somebody? It’s often those who profess to know the future that turn out to be the most shortsighted.

Twit This: Twitter is Good for Something – I know, hard to believe, but San Diego PBS station KPBS used the popular micro-blogging tool to keep residents in touch with the latest wildfire news via their mobile phones. If you do crisis communications, Twitter is a great way to spread the word.

I Gave it an Honest Try, and "Cavemen" is Just Not Funny – I wanted to believe, ABC, I really did. But…damn.

The Audience is Still Smarter Than Us (and Generous) – I don’t know if professional photographer Alex Miroschnichenko’s decision to brave the Santiago Fire in Orange County and distribute his images for free was simply a random act of citizen journalism, but it was a significant act of citizenship.

New Glasses Don’t Make You Any Less Bald – Hey, it was worth a shot. At least I still have time to grow a beard and dress up as Phil Gomes for Halloween (sorry, I know I shouldn’t make fun of a guy about to get married, that’s supposed to happen after the wedding.)

 

 

 

Intolerance, Not Technology, is Small Newspaper’s Greatest Threat to Survival

"He was trying to teach his two young daughters not to be afraid to buy a newspaper in America." – Peter Katz, Vietnam veteran and small business owner in Little Saigon, Orange County, Calif.

We forget – some of us – that while we lament the decline of news readership or embrace technology and prepare for new roads ahead, that the greatest threat to a free press are people, not computers.

The above example is from an incident not in the Middle East, Russiaor Asia, but in Orange County, Calif., where a small Vietnamese-language weekly paper is fighting for its life. When the above-mentioned man bought a copy from Mr. Katz’s store with his two young children, he had to be escorted back to his car because protesters confronted and berated him.

The Viet Weekly is an alternative news source in a conservative area where freedom of speech is accepted as long as you say the right things.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the weekly is the target of regular protests from demonstrators who accuse the paper of supporting Vietnam’s Communist government and publishing an editorial critical of U.S. foreign policy – in other words, opinions you can find almost every day in any newspaper in America.

Whether the arguments are valid doesn’t matter – nor do the protests, which is also a right protected by the Constitution. What does matter is the growing and disturbing inability for people to accept and respect points of view that diverge from their own.

Perhaps blogs and new media have had some effect. We can funnel our news sources down to content that we already agree with. We don’t need to be bothered with different opinions. We can use e-mail and anonymity as shields for our intolerance.

Yet that logic only goes so far. Someone who watches Fox News, for example, is not going to be swayed by watching CNN or reading the New York Times. People have always surrounded themselves with opinions that make them comfortable; the only difference is now they have a lot more choices.

No, this is about just one thing: Fear.

Why else would the Little Saigon protesters be pressuring local business owners to stop carrying the newspaper? Why are they phoning paper’s landlord telling him to “evict the Communists?” Why are they confronting fathers and kids for the sheer act of buying a newspaper in a free country?

Speaking up and speaking your mind are fine, even honorable – but forcing your beliefs onto others is, well, something Communists would do.

Newspapers Parting with Experience – and With Journalism

“We are all caught in the greatest upheaval our industry and the institution of journalism has ever faced.” – Robert Rosenthal, managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, upon tendering his resignation.

The above quote may sound histrionic, and in some ways it is. Journalists are fanatical about exercising restraint in all things, unless one of those “things” happens to be their own futures – or in this case, the future of their profession.

Yet the cacophony emanating from America’s newsrooms is not that of so many Chicken Littles fearing a blue sky, but rather seasoned, Pulitzer Prize winning reporters and editors cursing storm clouds. Drenched, angry and tired, the best and brightest pack their bags, fire off final e-mails of protest and resignation, and walk out into a world as unfamiliar as it is uncertain.

They will find the streets crowded. Recent developments in the decades-long death spiral of newspaper journalism include:

• Dozens of Los Angeles Times reporters filed their final stories this week, including Pulitzer winner Bob Sipchen and longtime satirist Roy Rivenburg, apparently proving that the Times’ new owners have neither sense nor a sense of humor.

• The S.F. Chronicle announced it will reduce its editorial staff by 25 percent.

• The San Jose Mercury News, which suffered layoffs last year, may be headed for another round.

The reasons, of course, are complicated and numerous, though the most convenient come back to the dreaded Internet and America’s short-attention span for any news not including the words “Hilton” or “DUI.” But those strawmen don’t hold up very well in a world where demand for news is greater than ever, and distribution is far faster, easier and less expensive than pulping, printing and tossing outdated content onto driveways.

If today’s newspaper executives truly believed the Internet was the future, then instead of laying off Pulitzer Prize winners they would be moving their best reporters to focus on the Web. They would be investing more in the newsroom and in hyper-local reporting, giving local readers content they can’t find in a Google search.

No, media companies are not prescient, pragmatic or patient. They are scared. The steady streams of layoffs prove it.

Is it Pollyanna to think that putting more money into reporting, not less, can revive journalism in the Internet Age? Perhaps – but it’s no worse than burning the trees to save the forest, which is what is happening today.

Giving up on newspapers is one thing – and for certain the newspaper business must change. But the owners of the L.A. Times, S.F. Chronicle and others are doing more than giving up on newspapers. By letting go of experienced journalists, they are giving up on journalism itself.

Outsourcing Local News: The Joke is On Us

"A lot of the routine stuff we do can be done by really talented people in another time zone at much lower wages." – James Macpherson, editor and publisher, Pasadenanow.com

So it goes in American journalism today that we no longer need people in America to cover local news. At least that’s the case in Pasadena, Calif., where an online newspaper has hired “reporters” in India to cover city government and politics.

James Macpherson, editor and publisher of pasadenanow.com, said in recent newspaper interviews that yes, while it sounds odd, reporting on Pasadena City Council meetings can be done from anywhere, as the sessions are broadcast live online. And access to cheap Indian labor and high-speed digital connections makes it all the more economical.

"I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications," Macpherson said. "Whether you're at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you're still just a phone call or e-mail away from the interview."

At this point I was going to write a funny fake conversation between a Pasadena council member and a reporter from India – a lighthearted blog post, a quick laugh in the sometimes all too serious blogosphere.

But after you get past the reality that this story is not the basis of a Saturday Night Live sketch, the idea of outsourced local journalism has some merit. Maybe Macpherson has discovered the cure for what ails cash-hungry newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, which doesn’t cover local news half as much as it used to when it had more shoes on L.A. streets.

Now the Times can cover City Hall with its bureaus in Mumbai and Beijing. Just go online, send some e-mails, use Instant Messenger and make some cheap Internet phone calls via Skype and voila, the L.A. Times is a local newspaper once again.

Let’s face it: Real reporting is a hard, thankless, drab existence. It requires “people” skills, the ability to discern nuance and distill facts from those for whom truth is often a matter of opinion. It takes intuition and intellect. And most of all, it demands a connection to community and love for storytelling that takes a whole lot of time and emotional energy.

Thankfully, there are journalists like Macpherson brave enough to say “the hell with it.” People don’t care about what’s really going on in their communities, right? They just want to know enough to appear smart.

And isn’t news just a product now anyway? So if someone can make a product cheaper overseas why not outsource its production?

The world is flat. “Community” is a market target. Global is the new local.

And if you believe all I've said here to be true, if you’ve read this far and still aren’t soaking wet from the dripping sarcasm, if you honestly think that local news does not need to be reported by local people no matter medium or method is used, the I have some new for you.

American journalism is dead.

No joke.