Category Archives: democracy

Nieman Journalism Lab: Opening up journalism’s boundaries to bring change back in: How Knight and its News Challenge have evolved

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"[The Knight Foundation] has sought to innovate journalism in part by stepping away from it, by making a strategic shift from 'journalism' to 'information.' This broadening of boundaries has created crucial space for innovators — from inside and outside journalism — to set forth a reformed view of what journalism is and ought to be. ... If the 'problem' for journalism in an era of digital disruption was the need to find new or refurbished models through which journalism’s core functions and societal benefits could be achieved — to 'meet the information needs of communities,' in the foundation’s common refrain — then Knight was making a break from its past in turning away from faith in industry expertise and toward an acknowledgement that the solutions may well come from the aggregate expertise of a participatory crowd of contributors."

The Independent: Demise of news barons is just a Marxist fantasy

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Yet another very odd column from Tim Luckhurst: "Citizen journalism's most devout evangelists are wrong. Their wisdom is purely ideological. In fact, the people who now predict the end of professional journalism's reign of sovereignty have attacked edited, fact-based reporting for decades. They think it is as an ideological invention created to sell myths to the masses. ... Forget it. Professional journalism will survive because it is necessary and the market will find a way to supply it. People who claim otherwise only pretend that their mission is prediction. In fact, they are working to mould the future to match a postmodern Marxist fantasy. "

Online Journalism Blog: The impact of newspaper closures on independent local journalism and access to local information

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Alex Lockwood: "The problem for existing traditional newspapers is that it is not part of their business model to innovate ways for local people to engage directly with the democratic process. ... Other (and often better) ways to access information within local communities, including news and issues of local democracy, already exist. It was not a local newspaper that developed www.theyworkforyou.com"

Independent: Democracy can’t exist without newspapers

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Tim Luckhurst: "Devolved Scotland is a new and fragile polity in which debate takes place within a narrow consensus. Its electoral system privileges party over electorate and the ruling elite is self-selecting and jealous of its privileges. The country's broadcasters are ill equipped to fill the vacuum left by its failing newspapers."

The Observer: Tabloids must be free to offend

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Peter Preston: "The right of the public - broadly, not narrowly, defined; Joe as well as Polly Public - to have the news they want in the way they want it. And those who seek to deny that right automatically join hands with Salisbury on the first Daily Mail so long ago. They say that only sentient, refined people like us - like me, like Max Mosley - should have newspapers that match their interests."