When journalists lose their jobs, it does not always happen in ones and twos. Sometimes people are informed by the dozens.
One irony of this new age is that even as the world has more access to information than ever before, the people best equipped to cast aside the nonsense are being jettisoned in favor of sub-par content from unknown or unqualified sources.
In the world of the Internet, there is no system in place to sort the facts from the fantasy. Consumers accept what they choose and too often allow a contributor to declare opposing views as invalid.
This is not an age of reason. Let us hope that it becomes something more meaningful than garbage in and garbage out.
Truth has value and compiling it is neither cheap nor free.
Forty-seven very talented people lost their jobs, Oct. 8. This time it was an all news station in Houston, Texas. Just weeks ago it was dozens of editors, journalists and production specialists at Gannett's flagship outlet, USA Today.
A couple of months earlier, it was Bloomberg News.
What
is a viable business model for news and information? What is the break
even? Like print, radio is struggling to figure that out.
These are very tough time for talent.
At some point, the public will begin to ask questions. Among them, who wants me to believe this and why is this true.
There have always been differences between entertainment, advertising and news. We are losing that and marketing messages are influencing what we think and accept as facts.
There is a danger there. When you throw all information into the same bucket, the result is propaganda. In an age of unlimited access, who decides what matters, and who pays them for that?
One irony of this new age is that even as the world has more access to information than ever before, the people best equipped to cast aside the nonsense are being jettisoned in favor of sub-par content from unknown or unqualified sources.
In the world of the Internet, there is no system in place to sort the facts from the fantasy. Consumers accept what they choose and too often allow a contributor to declare opposing views as invalid.
This is not an age of reason. Let us hope that it becomes something more meaningful than garbage in and garbage out.
Truth has value and compiling it is neither cheap nor free.
A couple of months earlier, it was Bloomberg News.
These are very tough time for talent.
At some point, the public will begin to ask questions. Among them, who wants me to believe this and why is this true.
There have always been differences between entertainment, advertising and news. We are losing that and marketing messages are influencing what we think and accept as facts.
There is a danger there. When you throw all information into the same bucket, the result is propaganda. In an age of unlimited access, who decides what matters, and who pays them for that?
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