Great column by Frank Rich

[lilpup]

Rich bases his column on the George Clooney flick shot in part at Metro and succeeds in capturing the local [[national?) zeitgeist perfectly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13rich.html

Friedman, on the other hand, remains conceptually 100 years behind the times. What a putz.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/op...3friedman.html

[g-dub]

I don't see the argument for Friedman being "behind the times." If anything, his column is a good example of what would be a good prescription for Detroit's business resurrection, that is, start-ups and small business taking advantage of new ways to do business on the cheap. Commercial space, which is typically one of the [[if not the) bugest expenses for a business, is easily found at low cost in Detroit, so the type of business attracted to the city is usually some sort of a start-up with a small budget. For a small business on a limited budget to get a good start, they would be wise to follow the example of Friedman's friend, who cobbled together a marketing campaign for his nonprofit client by using free or inexpensive software resources, and getting the most out of his in-house talent.

In any case, the two columns are really addressing two separate topics. And, Up in the Air sounds like movie $ well-spent.

[lilpup]

I don't see the argument for Friedman being "behind the times." If anything, his column is a good example of what would be a good prescription for Detroit's business resurrection, that is, start-ups and small business taking advantage of new ways to do business on the cheap. Commercial space, which is typically one of the [[if not the) bugest expenses for a business, is easily found at low cost in Detroit, so the type of business attracted to the city is usually some sort of a start-up with a small budget. For a small business on a limited budget to get a good start, they would be wise to follow the example of Friedman's friend, who cobbled together a marketing campaign for his nonprofit client by using free or inexpensive software resources, and getting the most out of his in-house talent.

In any case, the two columns are really addressing two separate topics. And, Up in the Air sounds like movie $ well-spent.

manufacturing efficiencies, mass production, robotics - been the trend around here for a hundred years

ask anyone under 35 if they know that slide rules and steno pools weren't related to recreational activities

[BShea]

Oh, I thought Frank had finally been exiled back to the theater review desk and had maybe penned something on "Cats" or "Wicked."

I'm surprised he made it through an entire column without mentioning George Bush. Shocked, actually. Without W, Frank's cupboard is pretty bare.

[Melocoton]

Oh, I thought Frank had finally been exiled back to the theater review desk and had maybe penned something on "Cats" or "Wicked."

Uhhh...zing?

[ghettopalmetto]

Oh, I thought Frank had finally been exiled back to the theater review desk and had maybe penned something on "Cats" or "Wicked."

I'm surprised he made it through an entire column without mentioning George Bush. Shocked, actually. Without W, Frank's cupboard is pretty bare.

Any comments on, you know, the actual article? As a journalist yourself, I'm sure you'd rather have people discuss your work instead of their personal feelings about you.

[BShea]

No, I like to listen to the gossip.

I also admit I was crudely ripping off Stephen Colbert's 2007 mocking of Rich's columns, when he partially wrote a Maureen Down piece: "Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay. There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too."

But I'll take a whack at Frank's latest piece, if you like:

"It won’t be mistaken for either a Michael Moore or Ayn Rand polemic on capitalism." Or a Frank Rich polemic on movies about capitalism. This time we have a simmering undercurrent of Frank's own self-loathing angst at being part of the free-market machine that sells his columns and books. Yet he doesn't mention his own NY Times Inc. over leveraged itself with acquisitions. He does mention the subsequent layoffs. Damn your greed, Sulzberger!

I'm sorry, but more sanctimonious whining about the greed of Wall Street is like bitching that people are speeding at the Indy 500. Is this a movie review or another of Frank's moral indictments? Both, I guess. It's getting to be like his constant recycling of Bush bashing -- it feels tired, like a worn-out and unoriginal joke. And it's also shallow because Rich filters everything through his Left-leaning prism [[which is certainly his prerogative as the writer). The financial collapse is far more complex and far-reaching than the cast of characters he presents here. It ain't all Wall Street fat cat bankers and other two-dimensional Daddy Warbucks caricatures that Frank trots out as the usual bogeymen in his populism.

Obviously, I don't like Frank Rich's brand of column-ing, generally. But he certainly has an audience that does.

" ... a glossy production sprinkled with laughter and sex ..." Rich, Friedman, Krugman and every other columnist should take those words to heart when they write. We need more guffaws and more freakiness these days!

Friedman's column kinda felt like a pitch for his friend's company. And I don't think the trend of ultra-efficiency is anything new. Just my humble opinion.

[Lowell]

Regrettably Friedman is stating the obvious. Mobility of information and capital, the trademark of information age business, is undermining every institution everywhere, including Friedman and, most alarmingly, the employment base of the American middle class. Business has the choice to use anyone anywhere, instantly and then just as quickly dump them for something better somewhere else.

Both he and Rich are hearing the guillotines in the background as print journalism is falling to crowd sourcing, the blogosphere and Craig's List. Really, who needs a bunch of 'overpaid pundits' like them publishing their articles for free [Did you pay to read them? I didn't.] when more money can be made by assembling crowd-sourced content, like that cut rate movie? Sure the quality is not the same, but business is about making money first. If quality doesn't pay, then it gets dumped. Capitalism 101. Welcome to the brave new world.

[BShea]

I don't think print is as dead as people think.

Newspapers, with a few notable exceptions, still make money, and a lot of it.

Newspaper companies that over leveraged themselves do not. Other unique circumstances, such as with the Freep/News, also are money-losing situations, but most newspapers remain in the black. Of course, the black is a far thinner margin than it used to be, but the old days' margins were pretty fat!

People will still be willing to pay for unique printed journalism that they can't get elsewhere. The experts will always get paid. You can't crowd-source good journalism, just like the mob can't provide you with medical care.

The market is changing, but there is still a market for the printed word. And as more and more people move to the shallow world of online instant "news" it will drive up the price of the legitimate/niche news that isn't available elsewhere. The information haves will realize that paying for professional news/analysis gives them an up on the mass consumers of the low-end free stuff.

[Lowell]

I think quality niche journalism will survive, like Crain's and other specialty magazines - if they are adroit. Freebies like Metro Times have likewise found a niche. Public radio has it figured out too. The big dailies however... not likely.

Printing on pulp and hauling around heavy loads of obsolete news with no interactive capacity and their goldmine of classified ads run dry spells the end for all but a very few. Next to no one I know under 25 looks at them, let along buys them.

I am not happy about that and will miss them, but in many ways they are gone already. You say some are in the black, but everyone knows that the traditional model newspaper is a thing of the past.

And good journalism will be crowd-sourced because, well, there are an increasing number of former journalist who are joining [actually being thrown out into] the crowd. We only have to look at the empty Freep building to see that contraction. New models of electronic journalism will soon figure out methods of squeezing quality out of all that talent who won't require a big salary, office space or an expense account.

The information age message is the same to journalist as it is to the auto worker or any of us. You aren't needed. Or Clemenceau put it in the midst of World War I, "The graveyards are full of indispensable people."

[BShea]

Trust me, local print papers will survive. Online has failed miserably at replacing hyperlocal. Advertisers still want to reach those eyes, and they want to do it in a respected vehicle. When there are dozens and dozens of local sites for one city, with the unprofessional mobs of Camille Desmoulins running them, there's a problem.

Online will sort itself out, and the hybrid print-digital newspaper will become the norm.

To think the mob can replace professional reporters is completely wrongheaded. It can't. The mob loses patience, especially when it's little more than a hobby to most, and almost all of it is little more than opinions, rants and forums. Those things have value, but they're not the same as news. And you can no sooner replace reporters with the so-called citizen journalists than you can replace your doctor with 'em.

There is value with people because able to add eye-witness information to what is reported by professional reporters, sure. But just like America discovered during our Revolution, the local militia is no substitute for a professional army. Citizen journalists, like milita, are nothing more than a tool to help the pros.

[BShea]

And there is no way in hell "crowd-sourced" journalism, even done by out-of-work reporters, could replicate what is done by full-time professionals.

Could the mob have pulled off the Watergate coverage? The Kilpatrick coverage?

No. That was done by professionals being paid a good wage and benefits by a news organization that generated profits. Such stories require the work of connected insiders, professionals who devote all their time to reporting and the legwork that goes into it ... such as developing sources.

Yes, the mob can add to it, but it can't do it on its own. And free local web sites with a couple of mom-pop banner ads isn't going to interest anyone into doing such reporting work for them.

Very little good comes from mobs. They have to be kept in check.

[lilpup]

And there is no way in hell "crowd-sourced" journalism, even done by out-of-work reporters, could replicate what is done by full-time professionals.

Could the mob have pulled off the Watergate coverage? The Kilpatrick coverage?

No. That was done by professionals being paid a good wage and benefits by a news organization that generated profits. Such stories require the work of connected insiders, professionals who devote all their time to reporting and the legwork that goes into it ... such as developing sources.

Yes, the mob can add to it, but it can't do it on its own. And free local web sites with a couple of mom-pop banner ads isn't going to interest anyone into doing such reporting work for them.

Very little good comes from mobs. They have to be kept in check.

As if this argument hasn't been used in virtually every other field or union with employees under attack by the profit mongers.

[professorscott]

In the current Bill/Lowell debate - and I have great respect for both writers - I have to lean quite a bit toward Bill's side. People caught up in the "blogosphere" are underestimating what exactly "journalism" as a profession is.

I read Detroit Yes frequently, to get a pulse on the thinking of the local blogerati, and to join in when I feel I have knowledge or value to add, or when I feel like pouring gasoline on a fire. A journalist I am not. If I want to know what is actually happening around Detroit, I read several local papers [[Freep, News, Macomb Daily, Metro Times, Crain's). Sometimes I read the print editions and sometimes I read online, and I actually prefer print. I don't subscribe to all of them because my local library does, and I spend a good deal of time there.

Younger people [[your kindly old Prof is just about eligible for AARP and so is speaking of others here) get information from a variety of sources. It's fair to say most 22 year olds don't subscribe to the Free Press, but neither did you when you were 22. Yet the young people I encounter [[in my biz that's a decent size crowd) are keeping up with local current events somehow, whether it's from channel 4 or the freep.com web site or whatever. In any case, sources where people are paid to produce information.

The essential problem with crowd journalism is that it is a sourceless pipe in and of itself. The actual information which blogs endlessly disseminate, skew and opine about comes from outside the blogosphere. Crowd journalism has created, so far as I can tell, very little information that didn't come from outside. I don't see anyone from Huffington at the local city council meeting or photographing the drug bust, I see the Freep and Crain's and channel 4 and WWJ doing that. And in the future, if there is to be any notion of "news" at all, we will have to continue to pay people to create and publish it.

Now, the print vs. online argument is entirely different, but since a very great many people still don't have access to computers or the internet [[and don't know how to use either one), I hope print survives over the long term somehow. But in any case, fifty years from now, we will still be reading news written by professionals, even if we are getting it from them very indirectly.

All this, as always, is just in the Prof's VHO.

[lilpup]

In the current Bill/Lowell debate - and I have great respect for both writers - I have to lean quite a bit toward Bill's side. People caught up in the "blogosphere" are underestimating what exactly "journalism" as a profession is.

I read Detroit Yes frequently, to get a pulse on the thinking of the local blogerati, and to join in when I feel I have knowledge or value to add, or when I feel like pouring gasoline on a fire. A journalist I am not. If I want to know what is actually happening around Detroit, I read several local papers [[Freep, News, Macomb Daily, Metro Times, Crain's). Sometimes I read the print editions and sometimes I read online, and I actually prefer print. I don't subscribe to all of them because my local library does, and I spend a good deal of time there.

Younger people [[your kindly old Prof is just about eligible for AARP and so is speaking of others here) get information from a variety of sources. It's fair to say most 22 year olds don't subscribe to the Free Press, but neither did you when you were 22. Yet the young people I encounter [[in my biz that's a decent size crowd) are keeping up with local current events somehow, whether it's from channel 4 or the freep.com web site or whatever. In any case, sources where people are paid to produce information.

The essential problem with crowd journalism is that it is a sourceless pipe in and of itself. The actual information which blogs endlessly disseminate, skew and opine about comes from outside the blogosphere. Crowd journalism has created, so far as I can tell, very little information that didn't come from outside. I don't see anyone from Huffington at the local city council meeting or photographing the drug bust, I see the Freep and Crain's and channel 4 and WWJ doing that. And in the future, if there is to be any notion of "news" at all, we will have to continue to pay people to create and publish it.

Now, the print vs. online argument is entirely different, but since a very great many people still don't have access to computers or the internet [[and don't know how to use either one), I hope print survives over the long term somehow. But in any case, fifty years from now, we will still be reading news written by professionals, even if we are getting it from them very indirectly.

All this, as always, is just in the Prof's VHO.

None of that matters in the era of bottom line results. Bloggers may just be the Chinese manufacturers of the journalistic world. Everyone is expendable nowadays.

[BShea]

None of that matters in the era of bottom line results. Bloggers may just be the Chinese manufacturers of the journalistic world. Everyone is expendable nowadays.

Except that the Chinese manufacturers/bloggers need raw materials -- other people's work.

Forums like DetroitYes because it oftens points out stuff -- observations of breaking news -- that are great for reporters. I've turned stuff from here into stories, or passed things along to others that because stories. I know other news sites do, too. Forums and blogs can be a tool for journalists, but I don't seem them replacing traditional news-gathering entities. They remain primarily places for people to bring news to others attention, to debate, rant, etc.

Bloggers in general aren't going to replace reporters because they're not going to put in the work to gather the news, nor generally be considered outlets for news to be leaked to. True, there are pro bloggers who do do the work [[usually ex-journos), but that is most often a money-losing proposition.

And I don't think the market will pay to consume shoddy, sourceless "news" manufactured by Chinese sweatshop-style blogs. It's simple market economics. Reducing journalism to underpants bloggers who have nothing to supply them with new/raw information simply opens up the opportunity for someone else to deliver top-notch journalism that costs money to produce.

[lilpup]

What's filling the voids in places where the papers have shut down? How many places have little to nothing local and have to pull what news they do get from the nationals [[who don't even know they exists more or less cover their happenings)?

[professorscott]

What we are lacking is the knowledge as to what kind of economic model for in-depth journalism will prevail in the long term. We lack the knowledge because we are in the midlife stage of a paradigm shift.

This has occurred before, over and over, and the outcome is always essentially the same. Let me give you a few examples:

1. Automobiles. In 1875 people rode horses and trains, and autos did not exist. By the era roughly 1905-1915 there were an astonishing variety of self-propelled vehicles out there, running on steam, gasoline, electricity, you name it. This effort was led by hundreds of companies financed by tens of thousands of investors. By the 1920s, in the US, there were only a very few manufacturers producing cars that functioned more or less interchangeably - that is, if you knew how to drive a Ford, you could pretty much work out how to drive a Chrysler. The "small number of companies all producing gasoline-powered cars and selling them through dealer franchises" proved sustainable for many decades, but in 1905, you could not have seen it coming.

2. Personal computers. In the late 1970s through the early 1980s computers were available from many companies with several very different operating systems and no clear reason why anybody would ever buy one. By the mid to late 1980s, the "very few companies selling PCs with a Microsoft operating system of some kind, and Apple selling a small but significant number with its own op sys" model became the norm and has been sustainable to the present day.

3. Web sites as a way to make money. In the 1990s everybody thought you could make a killing by building a web site. Remember "webvan"? Almost everybody who invested in web sites in any way from 1993 to 1999 lost his shirt, unless you were the one lucky enough to have randomly chosen Amazon. Nowadays, the web sites that make money are divided into specific market niches where the internet [[which is really just another way to communicate) provides some sort of structural advantage.

So journalism is changing because of changing technology, but there will always be a need for information, and nobody is really producing new information for the public benefit except paid journalists; at least, let's say 95% of the useful information being put out there originates from someone who gets paid to put it out. But we can no more see the endgame than the person who paid for shares of Webvan stock in 1996. We know there will still be journalists; we don't know how they will deliver their product to us, nor what kinds of organizations will be involved.

It will make for a fascinating story after the fact

[BShea]

Some still seem to think a volunteer digital rabble will deliver the news in a sort of 24/7 Wikipedia thing ... like a communist/socialist/marxist ... whatever -ist ... utopia of information. I dread that ever happening. Someone always rises to control information for their own ends, and not just profit but political/ideological/religious agenda.

This is why we have a federal republic and not a democracy. Mob rule or mob news, it's a bad idea.

[lilpup]

Some still seem to think a volunteer digital rabble will deliver the news in a sort of 24/7 Wikipedia thing ... like a communist/socialist/marxist ... whatever -ist ... utopia of information. I dread that ever happening. Someone always rises to control information for their own ends, and not just profit but political/ideological/religious agenda.

This is why we have a federal republic and not a democracy. Mob rule or mob news, it's a bad idea.

Some moght argue that that's already happening with the vast consolidation of corporate media, especially in the one corner marked for Rupert M.

[BShea]

Some moght argue that that's already happening with the vast consolidation of corporate media, especially in the one corner marked for Rupert M.

I can't speak for TV and radio, but having worked in corporate media, I can tell you the worry about control coming down from some oligarch in newspapers is overblown, at least at the local level.

It's always been true of Charles Foster Kane-style owners at the big flagship papers, I suppose, but that's because America deludes itself that there's no bias in media, like is stated overtly by publications in the rest of the world.

But at the local level, other than corporate-mandated blood-letting to bolster stock prices, it's such as battle to just get basic news out that any ideological mandates are wasted.

TV and radio talking heads, columnists for national magazines and newspapers, that is perhaps a different story, and one I can't really comment on. I avoid that stuff when I can.