By Katharine Mieszkowski The federal government is preparing to conduct a broad inquiry into the state of news and reporting in this country, according to the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.
Currently, antitrust laws prevent a company from buying up a city's local newspaper, local TV station and local cable news provider, and then setting high advertising rates, but in an interview with The Wrap Jon Leibowitz, the FTC's chairman, hinted that may change. "We are strong believers in the antitrust laws and in opposing exemptions from the antitrust laws, but when you think about other values, and you think about the First Amendment, this might be one of those rare industries where you must think about ways to ensure the vibrancy of news."
I suppose this is good news, if you happen to be one of those newspaper executives suffering from the delusion that it's antitrust laws that have kept you from making money online.
Leibowitz also told The Wrap that the FTC's examination of the roots of the sorry state of the news biz will be "much, much broader" than merely considering changing antitrust laws. In May, the FTC announced that it would do a study rather comically titled: "Can News Survive the Internet Age?" But plans for a September workshop on this issue have morphed into plans for a series of sessions in December instead.
"We are going to have economists and journalists and bloggers and people from different parts of the news media, and we are going to think through [what is occurring] and what the future will look like ... and whether the future -- which might be a handful of newspapers and [TV] networks that don't have nearly as much reach as they once did and 5 million bloggers -- is a good thing for American democray," Leibowitz said. "We are going to invite a lot of smart people on different sides of this issue to educate us. This is a really important public policy issue, and we think we can add, as we have in a lot of other areas, an objective voice that can point industry or lawmakers in the right direction."
One hint that the future of journalism -- and American democracy -- may not be in that much peril: This news about the FTC's inquiry into the future of news comes from a start-up Web site that covers the entertainment biz called The Wrap, not from a newspaper or TV station.
At any rate, it sounds like it's a good time for bloggers to make themselves heard in this federal inquiry. So, who would you like the feds to listen to?
I nominate Danah Boyd, social media researcher at Microsoft Research New England and blogger; Scott Rosenberg, Salon co-founder and author of "Say Everything," a history of blogging; Jay Rosen, New York University J-school prof and blogger; and Jeff Jarvis, City University of New York J-school prof and blogger.
And if my country calls, hell, I'll be glad to give the Federal Trade Commission a piece of my mind, too. The fate of American democracy may hang in the balance, ladies and gentlemen.
Make your nominations for who Uncle Sam should consult about the future of news in the comments on this post, and don't be bashful about recommending yourself as an authority.
mandalp1
Richard Davis
Chris Rywalt
Blue Roses
whitenoise
Anupum Mehrotra
Salon.com
Comments
Traditional newspapers today are political party PR broadsheets beholden to the large corporate conglomerations that own them. The vacuum left by their abandoning the fourth estate is being filled by bloggers and online news start-ups and therefore I suspect this will be more on how do we crush these bloggers and online news start-ups through the manipulation of copyright laws so we get everyone back in line with the state run media.
Yeah, Orwell has nothing on me this morning but I'm just getting fed up with the whole process. : P
end the second paragraph like this:
...with the state run media rather than anything worthwhile about FOJ.
Here's the wire story making the rounds now. You might even read about it in your local print paper:
hedline:
It's Bindle vs Kindle in War of Reading Devices
(IP) New York -- August 7 -- As the war of words heats up between Mr Paper and Mrs. Kindle, a savvy new technology company in Taiwan has come up with a new reading device to rival the ubiqitous Kindle (TM) from Amazon's Jeff Bezos. It's called the Bindle (TM).
What's a Bindle, you ask? "It's a book printed on paper, bound with a spine and supported by both a front cover and a back cover, and it's usually activated by turning the pages manually," says Bindle spokesvehicle Dan E. Bloom, a Hsinchu Science Park tech consultant. "It's a throwback to the old days before Kindles hijacked the traditional reading experience and turned it into a completely foreign experience."
Bloom, a 1971 Tufts graduate, who says he doesn't even own a computer and considers himself a devoted Luddite, says he believes that the Bindle will"liberate the book as a book and bring the reading experience of the last 500 years back in sync with what the Good Lord intended."
"I am worried that humans might forget how to read on paper if the Kindle really catches on and turns an entire generation into kindling text screeners," says Bloom.
With millions of Bindles already in circulation coast to coast, and at a much lower cost than the $399.99 Kindle device, Bloom -- who is no relation to Harold Bloom at Yale, although they share the same love of books and the same worries over how e-books might spell the death of civilization -- says he submitted the defintion of a Bindle to the editors at the Google-based UrbanDictionary.com where it was accepted and published online.
So welcome to the brave new world of the Bindle, America. Kindles now have something real to be very very afraid of.
[Additional reporting by Ashlee Vance, Vindu Goel, Brad Stone, John Markoff, Jennifer 8. Lee and Eric Taub, although you'd never know it unless you read between the lines.]
http://www.macleans.ca/andrewpotter
He's also on the editorial staff at the Ottawa Citizen, the daily paper in the nation's capital.
Oh, and he's a Ph.D. philosopher with plenty of background in ethics & political theory.
You could stir up a shit-storm and send Glennzilla, too.
However, I also think that Dan Gillmor has a number of important ideas on the transitions that media is undergoing:
http://dangillmor.com/
And, it's probably too much to ask, but it would be pretty great if the powers that be had some real-time, online reportage of the inquiry's findings.
It would show, you know, that they understand the role of the internet and breaking news in this study of the internet and breaking news.