{"id":38404,"date":"2018-09-28T06:43:52","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T11:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38404"},"modified":"2018-09-28T06:43:52","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T11:43:52","slug":"we-need-more-not-less-separation-of-state-and-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38404","title":{"rendered":"We Need More, Not Less, Separation of State and Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Need More, Not Less, Separation of State and Journalism<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

\u201cNewspapers are dying,\u201d writes Rob Kall, Editor-in-Chief of progressive (but refreshingly open-minded) opinion site OpEdNews, in a (recently updated) 2010 op-ed. \u201cLet them. There may have been people who wanted to rescue the buggy whip industry. But they were misguided. It was transportation they really cared about. We need to initiate dynamic, bottom-up approaches to support the ailing field of Journalism, not newspapers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kall\u2019s analysis is as trenchant now as when he first addressed himself to the decline of the newspapers that previous generations knew, and to what looks like a \u201cmarket failure\u201d on the part of today\u2019s Internet-based news culture. Any mistakes in translating that analysis here are mine, by the way. Here we go:<\/p>\n

The rise of free content and ease of entry into the field has us getting more \u201cjournalism\u201d \u2026 but less real information. Opinion writers (like me) are a dime a dozen. Amateur stringers and glorified copy editors cover five-point-lede \u201chard news\u201d on the cheap. But the shock troops of news, full-time investigative journalists, have to learn the ropes and they have to be paid. That\u2019s not happening. The result: Many important things get missed and many things that aren\u2019t missed get only insufficient, inaccurate \u2014 or worst, sponsor viewpoint biased \u2014 coverage.<\/p>\n

Kall\u2019s proposed solution: \u201cIf the US government invests directly in journalists, so their writings and reports can be freely used by any media organization or site, that investment will yield big results.\u201d He suggests a $3.5 billion program, translating to 50,000 investigative journalists receiving salaries of $60,000 per year with benefits.<\/p>\n

My response to Kall: \u201cIf the US government invests directly in journalists, we\u2019ll get the journalism the US government wants us to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kall\u2019s response to me: \u201cThat\u2019s a knee-jerk, anti-government reaction. If the funding is structured so journalists can be independent \u2026 it doesn\u2019t have to be that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We Need More, Not Less, Separation of State and Journalism \u201cNewspapers are dying,\u201d writes Rob Kall, Editor-in-Chief of progressive (but refreshingly open-minded) opinion site OpEdNews, in a (recently updated) 2010 op-ed. \u201cLet them. There may have been people who wanted to rescue the buggy whip industry. But they were misguided. It was transportation they really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5493,379,462,512,570,21966,11716],"class_list":["post-38404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-government","tag-journalism","tag-media","tag-news","tag-rob-kall","tag-thomas-knapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38405,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38404\/revisions\/38405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}