Welcome to the Free Press blog! We post several times a week on everything from Internet access to free speech to media mergers, so check back often to see what we’re up to.
After a few delays, a few new staff and a few solid investigative projects under its belt, the California Watch Web site launched this week.
California Watch is a project of the longstanding nonprofit journalism organization, the Center for Investigative Reporting. With new journalism projects launching every week, what’s interesting about California Watch? I mention a few specifics below, but in general, California Watch embodies a number of the key ideas that we at SaveTheNews.org think will shape the future of news in America.
Right now in Washington, D.C., policymakers are debating new rules that will shape the future of the Internet, and they need to hear from women.
We have just a week left to tell the Federal Communications Commission (or FCC, the government agency for media) that the Internet is important to women and that we support Net Neutrality.
In the latest video in The Nation’sseries on the future of journalism, Dan Rather gives what he calls a “wide shot” on the conditions facing print journalism.
Rather, managing editor and anchor of Dan Rather Reports on HDNet and the former anchor of the CBS Evening News, describes print media as an “old order” that has disappeared but not yet been replaced by a “new order.” He discusses the pros and cons of transitioning to online media.
I've complained a good bit, both here and in filings to the FCC, about the state of the wireless industry. I yearn for better and more affordable wireless services, with devices sold independent of carriers, giving consumers real, meaningful choices.
I’ve been a working actress for years. But being an artist at heart, I was increasingly dissatisfied by the number and type of roles that were available to me. So in my quest to expand my job opportunities and income potential, I turned to writing. Insert laugh here. Yeah, that in itself didn’t completely do the trick because I was still bumping up against the traditional Hollywood gatekeepers.
Investigative journalist Jane Mayer is one of the lucky ones – she still has a job. As news outlets cut back, they’ve also cut down on investigative reporting. As part of The Nation’svideo series on the future of journalism, Mayer, a reporter with The New Yorker, spoke last week about how investigative journalism has become a “luxury.”
More than a decade ago, President Clinton pledged that every person in America would soon be able to go online "to order up every movie ever produced or every symphony ever created in a minute's time."
Call me a contrarian on this one. But I don’t buy all the hype that the internet is even the primary culprit of the demise of journalism. The primary culprit is the same as it is all over the country, in every industry and in government: equity extraction.
Let me explain, in short: when executives expect unrealistic profits of 20% and higher per annum on businesses something has got to give. It’s an unnatural and unsustainable growth rate. For the first ten or so years of a small to medium size company’s life? Sure. But when you are 3M, or GE? Unrealistic and ultimately impossible.
