folo

(Thanks to Paul Quinn for this link.)

Shall we rename it TIMEly Magazine? By coincidence, just as the blogging/journalism question bubbles and seethes here on folo, at TIME, James Poniewozak notes that Tim Russert died

just as journalists are feeling besieged. Their bosses are slashing staffs, their advertisers are drifting away, and their prerogatives are being challenged by bloggers and YouTubers: a diffuse army of the uncredentialed, uninhibited and–most terrifyingly–unpaid. In Russert, the press lost its most authoritative mass-market journalist, just as it is losing its authority and its mass market.

It’s too simple to say that the new media are killing off the old media. Interest in political news is sky-high, and new and old media each need the other to supply material and drive attention. What’s happening instead is a kind of melding of roles. Old and new media are still symbiotic, but it’s getting hard to tell who’s the rhino and who’s the tickbird. …

Yep. And even without knowing NMC of folo, Poniewozak can pinpoint how that happened:

[O]ne reason [news blogs] have an audience is the perception that Establishment journalism has gotten better at serving its powerful sources than its public. Fiascoes like the Iraq-WMD reporting gave many the impression that the old rules mainly protect consultant-cosseted public officials who need protection least.

In other ways, the boundary between new and old media has become porous. Hillary Clinton’s controversial reference to Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination came in an interview with a newspaper, but it was made news not by the traveling press but by viewers watching the live webcast. The distinctions have become more academic: if 3 million people read Drudge and 65,000 read the New Republic, which is mainstream? And the campaigns have noticed. When the Obama camp sought to debunk online rumors (e.g., that he was not a U.S. citizen by birth), it started its own website and sent Obama’s birth certificate to dailykos.com. The campaign is too savvy to believe that people take the press as the sole arbiter of truth anymore.

“[A]s the power to set the news agenda moves from insiders to outsiders,” Poniewozak muses, “maybe we’ll also stop arbitrarily dividing ‘real’ from ‘amateur’ journalists and simply distinguish good reporting from bad, informed opinion from hot air, information from stenography. Maybe we’ll remember this election as the one when we stopped talking about ‘the old media’ and ‘the new media’ and, simply, met the press.”

That’s not only to-be-hoped but entirely plausible. But I have to tell you, all this accompanies a jolt that we here in Volusia County, Florida, are struggling to absorb. The Daytona Beach News-Journal, for decades a family-owned paper (though in recent years, barely-minority owned by Cox Enterprises too), was run into the ground by its founder’s grandson.

Tippen Davidson, who recently died, adored classical music and theater. And because his lawyer told him he could, he bled the paper white to support the arts, finally building a dazzling new cultural center in downtown Daytona Beach as a monument to his love for them. As much as we locals enjoy(ed) the News-Journal Center, every-other-summer visits from the London Symphony Orchestra, and Seaside Music Theater, Tippen’s daughter and son couldn’t continue the illusion. On Monday, the grief-stricken News-Journal ran this

NOTICE TO READERS

The News-Journal Corporation is being prepared for sale. These preparations are occurring during a major downturn in the nation’s newspaper business, a downturn felt in our local market.

As part of the sale process, Cox Enterprises and News-Journal Corporation hired a sales broker and a consultant. They recommended major changes to make the company more attractive to potential buyers and to strengthen the economic position of the company during the economic downturn.

The News-Journal today announced it was laying off 99 employees as part of a plan to reduce costs and prepare the company to be sold.

In addition, the Sunday News-Journal Ideas section will be discontinued, with editorial pages moving to the front section of the paper.

Bureau offices in Palm Coast, New Smyrna Beach and DeLand will be closed.

“We regret that we are required to make these changes,” said News-Journal publisher Georgia Kaney. “They in no way diminish our dedication to quality journalism or our commitments to our readers, advertisers and the communities we serve.”

Georgia’s married to the lawyer who let Tippen ruin the paper, by the way. I can’t speak for its skeleton staff’s dedication or even whether they’ll get over the shock, but I can say — as I pull for McClatchy and dread Gannett — that we’re desperately going to miss what we’re losing. Ain’t no blog can replace it.

UPDATE: Email from a friend who worked for the News-Journal before retiring from the Palm Beach Post: “Today’s IED in the imploding newspaper world comes from the PB Post — cutting 300 staffers. Waiting for details from the bunker.” Awful.