Journalism should be primarily concerned with 1.

It’s been hi-jacked by 2 and 3.

There are some areas in which the daily newspaper will never be challenged by the Internet; without daily print newspapers we would have to find something else to wrap fish, put in the bottom of paper trash bags, and spread on the kitchen countertop to soak up grease spatters while cooking. On the other hand, with the new-fangled inks the newspapers aren’t much good for polishing lamp chimneys or windows any more, and we got used to that.

What’s terribly interesting, to those of us who continually trod and watch these shifting media sands, is that both blogs are commanded by old-school newsmen… seasoned, serious beat reporters who were likely dragged kicking and screaming to the blogging/online arena.

Once they “got it” though they obviously decided to own their social media-driven space. Both are avid Twitterites, for example; and they carefully, personally monitor the vibrant, real-time conversations taking place at any given moment on their blogs.

In other words, they are behaving just as Froomkin says a contemporary journalist should… they ‘seek the truth, hold the powerful accountable, expose the B.S., explain how things really work, introduce people to each other, and tell compelling stories.’

If I was headed out to buy ad space on AJC.com, or recommending where a client should, I know exactly where I’d insist on the ad placement – on the online real estate being carefully cultivated by adaptable and reliable journalists such as Bradley and Galloway.

I read so much hand wringing about why the newspapers are going out of business and whose fault it is. What seems to never be addressed is what a shoddy product the papers put out.

The Washington Post and the New York Times, two supposedly liberal papers, both lead the drumbeat to the war in Iraq. They both cheerled Bush into the White House and they both did everything they could to tear down the Clinton presidency. All of this was done not only through dishonest editorial perspectives but lazy and dishonest reporting.

You couldn’t pay me to subscribe to any of the major papers in the country today. The newspapers are putting themselves out of business. They are neither reliable or relevant.

One of the greatest successes of the conservative moment of the past 30-odd years has been its ability to paint the mainstream press as “liberal” and to cast any reporting that did not include its point of view as “unbalanced” and not “objective.” Rather than defend the nature of reporting as exposing truth, many publishers and editors found it easier and safer to commit the journalistic malpractice of he-said/she-said reporting.

While that attack was effective at the conscious level, subconsciously the attack on “liberal media” has had a more pernicious effect long term, affecting more than just perceived objectivity but credibility itself. Now doubt can be cast on the truthfulness of any reporting, not just reporting that leaves out a conservative point of view. Over time, the reputations of newspapers and other news media have been sullied to where we are today, with a poisoned atmosphere that assumes nefarious biases from every dark corner of every newsroom. (Not to say that newspapers haven’t abetted in sullying themselves; see Judith Miller and Jayson Blair for starters.)

Dan is right, the road back for newspapers lies in pursuit of the truth, making residents feel the paper is an advocate for them.

Maybe a more spare, less prosaic writing style is needed. It would lay bare the facts that form the truth of the reporting, while being more easily “consumed” from any kind of gizmo.

You seem to be saying that if reporters add more personal opinion to their writing (which is what I think you “voice”) and do so more overtly, that the articles will have a greater appeal to a broader audience. You also seem to suggest that, if individual articles can be made more appealing, that this will significantly help to resolve newspaper problems.

If that is indeed what you meant, I strongly disagree on both points.

While attempting to conceal a bias under a false appearance of neutrality does hurt the articles’ quality, making a reporter’s bias explicit would seem to me to make things even worse. Obviously biased news articles (whether overt or not) appeal mainly to a (usually smallish) segment comprised of “like-minded” people, (As an aside, I firmly believe that a skilled and ethical reporter be capable of setting aside their personal biases to write a truly neutral article.)

I would go further and argue that even significantly improving the quality of a site’s news articles (better writing, editing, more depth and breadth, more credible authors), would likely expand costs much more significantly than it would increase traffic.

What I think is being lost in much of the discussion on newspapers, is the simple fact that a “news” consumer, per se, is seeking “news,” not discrete news articles. A “news” customer is seeking collective information about important events occurring in an area of interest to him/her. Sure, they want to be able to “drill down” and read specific news articles for details, but that doesn’t make the news articles any more equivalent to the “news” than a bunch of bricks are equivalent to the house they belong to.

Online “news” consumers get their “news” in various ways, besides entering a newspaper site’s “front door.” They can get “news” via news aggregators (ala, Google News), blogs (which have their own ideas on what’s important), and rss feed readers (where many of the feeds come from the newspaper sites themselves). When these “news” consumers click on an article link, all they (usually) want are the details in the linked article.

Online search consumers are generally not looking for “news” per se, but for specific information. When these “search” consumers click on an article link, they also want the details offered in the article (rather than some broader “news” context).

IMHO, a core problem for the newspaper sites is that, by the time a “back door” visitor has arrived at their site, the “news” context originally created by the newspaper, has been stripped away (along with all the ad impressions and reference to other articles in the “news”). At this point, loading up the individual articles with “news-related” links would probably be a waste (and more clutter). Such links would probably have little appeal to such visitors (given what they’ve already seen and why they clicked in the first place).

But hooking into the interest of the “back door” visitor is absolutely crucial if the newspaper is to continue to function as a purveyor of “news.”

I see your broader point, of course. But let’s remember that the biggest threat to newspapers is still idiocy in the CFO’s office, not timidity in the newsroom.