Print publications here are dominated by two companies, one of which is Murdoch. BUT, we also have a lively public television sector, paid for by the government to the tune of $AU1.1 billion per year. It spends around $300m per year just on news. That model works, although you can argue about its limitations.

In the UK, the BBC has recently been prevented from using its newsgathering facility to set up a vigorous web presence providing local news. The papers said it would compete with them – which it would. Since then, the local newspapers have imploded anyway, hacked up by the collapsing economy.

There are important rules in play about the moat between government broadcasters and the print business, but it is fair to say that you can’t talk about the future of news in most parts of the English speaking world without recognising the role of a government news gathering organisation based in radio and television. Which also dominate the on line environment because they build the biggest, most sophisticated websites.

Maybe it is not practical for the US government to intervene in the US journalism crisis, but you should recognise that the reasons are historical and cultural, and not a function of government per se. And I say that having come out of twelve years of reactionary government in Australia, which failed to turn the national broadcasters into toadies of politicians, at the same time as Murdoch was doing precisely that with his own rags.

In addition, teaching “media literacy” in schools is another area of government control that should be developed. Students ought to be taught the fundamentals of the web right along with the fundamentals of reading, writing, history, and arithmetic. Schools already teach typing, but expand that out to schools teaching good internet browsing skills. Students should know what RSS is, be taught how to conduct a google search, get their own email address, know how to keep an online profile, etc…

Cheers Jeff, another great post.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2009/04/09/at-the-fcc-and-in-congress-a-new-paradigm-for-changing-media/

“We’ve seen the country that invented the Internet and pioneered the personal computer drop to 15th in the world in broadband. We’ve talked about it here before, and we’ve worked together to help everyone understand the urgency of building the telecommunications infrastructure our country needs.

That urgency is one of the reasons some of us in Congress made sure there was a provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act telling the FCC that we needed a National Broadband Plan. That urgency is one of the reasons we also made sure the stimulus package created grant funding for broadband.

Those grants are a critical down payment on a national strategy to deliver broadband to rural Americans who can’t access it and to urban Americans who can’t afford it. “

Who will fill this void when investigative reporters are gone. Who will pay people to do this work? Who will do this work if they’re not being paid for it?

Jeff Jarvis’s suggestion that “All of government’s actions and information should be open, shared publicly and permanently, and searchable” is naive. Would you put the fox in charge of the henhouse? How can a government be charged with exposing its own secrets?

The end of independent investigative journalism is the beginning of the end of our democracy. We must know where the new investigative journalists will come from before we let the old system die. There’s too much at stake.

But regarding this: “I would urge you in Congress to make transparency the default of government. All of government’s actions and information should be open, shared publicly and permanently, and searchable. When that happens, we will not have fewer watchdogs on our government as newspapers die. Every citizen can become a watchdog, contributing to a new ecosystem of news.”

Anybody who’s ever tried to pry a supposed public document from a self important small-town school superintendent or police chief, knows that government efforts — mandates, even — for transparency are no substitute for dogged reporting.

Sure, open records laws and such are important. But it would be foolish to rely on a law that agencies had to post everything online. If somebody wants to hide something, they’ll hide it. That’s never going to change. And a “default” of transparency ain’t gonna replace investigative journalism.

Otherwise, sure, your right about this. The last place we want the government is in journalism.

The story explained: “Large whales that strand themselves should be killed, as any attempts to save them are probably futile and likely to cause more suffering, according to animal welfare specialists.”

And the wrap-up: “Rescuers have often struggled to save stranded whales. In 2002, a pod of pilot whales stranded themselves on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, – many were refloated, but proceeded to re-beach themselves, with fatal results.” http://bit.ly/L4lBV

This is a time of cleansing. Cultivate the innovators, but don’t artificially float the sick. Doing the latter weakens the overall herd.

This sounds like a venture capital bailout.

Many of the “entrepreneurial” ventures you’re talking about don’t create many jobs – which is exactly what we need now. Craigslist, which has destroyed the newspaper business has about 25 employees. Google has fewer employees per dollar of revenue than any big company in the world. (And it’s lobbying for more visas to bring in cheap foreign engineers.)

Google is a much better run company than any media firm. But I don’t think the government should be encouraging large compani

I don’t disagree that newspapers have done a poor job of running their businesses. But I don’t see how tax advantages for “innovation” would solve any of the underlying problems in the economy.

I don’t know about this. I have never read any way that news can make any real money on the net. So why would editors/publishers take the risk? The massive, massive risk of embracing methods that possibly make no money? I seriously doubt it’s because they are hanging onto the past, but more that these owners etc saw no real money there on the net so didn’t make the jump. You could say that they should have come up with Craigslist first, but hell you can accuse anyone of that – not just owners.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m missing something.

Interesting story, I sent the unfinished ‘beta’ draft of the “Global Journalism Manifesto” to every Democratic member of the US Senate back in 2006, so I’d be willing to bet many of them already know who I am. That was about a year before I got into Mensa and finished my interactive multimedia journalism degree from the best photojournalism school in the nation.

Suffice to say, I’ve developed many more original concepts since then, a great deal of which remains unpublished..

If you’re reading this Senator Kerry, you should consider inviting Patrick Yen to speak if you want to make real progress and hear some real solutions from a younger expert of new media.

It would be a great honor to assist you however I may Senator Kerry and the pleasure would be all mine!