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There Are Only Two Cities in America


New York, and Washington. At least if you're in the news media. (Other cities exist in other worlds - San Francisco in the tech world; for example, or LA in the entertainment world).

Time's new move to close its bureaus, emphasizes this:

Time magazine is closing its Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles bureaus, though it will keep three "laptop" correspondents in L.A. People is closing its Washington, Miami, Chicago and Austin bureaus, and plans to maintain regional coverage using seven newly created reporting positions, spokeswoman Sandi Shurgin said. . .

. . . Those who remain at Time Inc. will work at a news-gathering operation very different from the one Luce created at Time magazine in 1922, in which correspondents across the country sent feeds to writers in New York in a kind of caste system. Even though the magazine did not print writers' bylines until 1980, writers occupied the top tier. Below were reporters, whose work on the articles was acknowledged, if at all, in credit lines at the end. Below them were stringers deployed around the country, all funneling facts to the writers in New York.

Now, Time magazine is largely scrapping the system and hiring high-profile stylistic writers, such as Michael Kinsley, William Kristol and former Washington Post reporter and author David Von Drehle.

American discourse continues to flee, not just to the coasts, but to very concentrated areas on the coasts. When those in other areas complain about the coasts, this is the root of what they're complaining about.

Moreover, in the journalism (loosely defined) business, news rooms continue to hollow and be centralized into a few locations. The rungs beneath the top are being thinned out and the few marquee writers are continuing to get not only more of the attention and work, but more of the money as well - top paid columnists and writers get paid much better than the remaining journalistic slobs who work the front lines, and they get paid for what often amounts to little more than what a good blogger does for free, and in many cases does better, for free.

When there were more than 5 media conglomerates controlling over 80%% of the media in the US, there were also a lot more reporters, columnists and byliners. Even if a paper or radio station used syndicated personalities they also tended to keep some in house; to feel that they needed to develop a unique brand.

The result has been a reduction in the amount of local coverage of all sorts (the FCC has measured this); massive staff reductions; a narrowing of the discourse; and, I think, a fairly clear development of an even greater echo-chamber effect within the corporate media than existed in the past (which was by no means a golden era.)

The solution is simple - the media conglomerates need to be broken up. There will be, almost immediately, more diversity in voices, more local news coverage, and more room for alternate views to be expressed and hopefully break through what has become a New York/Washington echo chamber dominated by, at most, a few hundred writers, journalists, editors and owners.


Ian Welsh January 22, 2007 - 3:35am
Ian Welsh's diary | printer friendly version | digg

Xlink:

Hinchey's bill to break up media conglomerates and reinstate the Fairness Doctrine :)

Hinchey... posed a challenge to members of Congress to pass media reform, asking, “Will we be strong enough to bear this responsibility?”

Escher Sketch January 22, 2007 - 4:23am
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Let them cut staff and close operations

owners are committing suicide by concentrating the number of journalists who report the news.

Quite a few journalists have left their conventional news outlets to the new world of weblogs

I have read several essays by Jay Rosen who believes the future is not in conventional reporting. Good journalists, like anyone else, who are good at their craft when it has been reduced to very few owners, become so frustrated that they seek avenues that are new. I.e. people go into business for themselves when the job market presents little opportunity. Ownership is now held by such a small number of hands, that they are causing their own demise. Interestingly, Jay speaks about going open source. That seems to be the trend Internet technology is going. The network of the future forsees people and computers linked together to form one giant flow of information. Computers will be networked, utilizing each other's storage devices. That will be a worldwide phenomena so I have read.

Jay believes change has come from the audience it once served. Concentrated ownership has had the effect of opening the market up to unconventional sources. (Seeing more opinions than what editors feel should be published, gives readers more information.) The future of journalism has taken a fork in the road that wasn't known to be there. I'm just thrilled that I was here to see the beginning of the change.

Who would have imagined the day that education of the masses made these upstarts so well versed that they would reject not having a voice of their own. L0L

canuck January 22, 2007 - 6:24am
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weblogs are good

but fact-checking is essential, and someone who spends their whole day reporting needs to get paid for it:-)


"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"

nymole January 22, 2007 - 12:34pm
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Ironically, for PBS there is only one:Washington

and only one subject: politics -

and one action- what President Bush does or does not do -

so it drives me nuts not just ideologically but as a NY-er.

The downside of all this &internet addiction & cellphones in the street etc is:

we do not know our neighbors and are afraid of them. Then we wonder why we feel isolated.


"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"

nymole January 22, 2007 - 12:26pm
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The fall of the mainstream

The fall of the mainstream press in print is for two main reasons. 1) The internet revolution (and thanks to all at Agonist for doing your part:) and 2) People are getting so sick of all that corporate flavor.

Nominay January 24, 2007 - 3:37am
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Nothing New Here!

That Washington and New York dominate the media outlets shouldn't surprise anyone. It's been this way for years. Thirty years ago I had the chance to work in both Washington and New York within a few years of each stint and the whiff of being at the center of the empire existed in both places. Only the tang in the air differed a little from the one city when compared to the other. Much like one would experience when moving from an exotic island specializing in cinnamon to another committed to nutmeg.

What the big corporate media outlets have done is cull the herd in a short period of time, enabling all of the little beasties to come out of hiding to eat the young of the corporate behemoths. The corporate dinosaurs got rid of all of the mid-size media outlets which served to keep the tiny operations in check. Just like the real dinosaurs, they'll likely rue the day they decided to overconcentrate. I'm sure it looked like a good idea at the time. As in the finance industry, technology is allowing disintermediation of the sources directly to the consumers for news media.

VizierVic February 4, 2007 - 6:19pm
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