For goodness’ sake.
What is with these people, their refusal to take responsibility for their own actions and their obsession with the government doing something to get them out of the mess they find themselves in?
Polly Toynbee, champion of the newspapers, has this to say:
“Papers around Britain are following US titles to the grave. The government needs to step in, for the sake of democracy.”
Well thanks for that, Polly, but the government stepping in to fund independent news circulation across the nation doesn’t sound like democracy to me.
Democracy: “A form of government in which power is held directly or indirectly by citizens under a free electoral system...The first principle is that all members of the society (citizens) have equal access to power and the second that all members (citizens) enjoy universally recognised freedoms and liberties.”
And I didn’t look in a print dictionary for that, I used Wikipedia.
Right, so, there we have it. Members of society have enjoyed a universally recognised freedom in choosing to spend their lunch break surfing the net rather than going into the local newsagents to buy the Guardian. They have exercised their directly held power by not buying something which they can readily obtain for free online.
For years, the print press has had ample warning of its likely future. Many of those who offered up the warnings – in the early years, members of the tech community, but more recently, many mainstream bloggers also - have, in the generous and collaborative spirit typical of their community, spoken at length about strategies newspapers could use to adapt and flourish. Newspapers could learn a lot from this approach of giving a whole bunch before they receive.
So, Polly, I detest your approach of demanding my money from me, in the name of democracy, in order to fund your dying industry because it can’t be bothered to read and digest basic news and information that has been around for more than a decade.
I don’t want to hear about how online news can’t be trusted, how it is inauthentic, subjective, unreliable, invalid and irrelevant. Have you read your own newspaper or watched the BBC propaganda machine churning out its endless diatribe for our own good? The only people you still hear saying this kind of authoritarian crap are editors and journalists who are terrified that their ship of undeserved privilege is finally sinking into an ocean of real democracy, an online ocean where people can finally pick and choose not only their sources of news, but also the manner in which they access it.
I don’t want to hear that:
“serious journalism never paid its ways... The web has yet to find a way to generate funds to pay the true price.”
"Serious journalists" are writing, blogging, twittering and commenting for free, everywhere you look. They might not make their money directly from this, but the best of them realise significant financial benefit from related gigs. Real democracy rewards their generosity, competence and innovation. The web just is. It doesn’t have to do anything. The people operating within it do.
So, I don’t want to hear this patronising drivel:
“In the end, it's up to you. If you always read this on the web, go out and buy a copy, skinflint. Use it or lose it.”
Polly, I’ve done my bit for democracy. I spend my hard-earned money on what’s important to me. A world without print news and Woolworths? I live in that already.
H/t the Devil's Kitchen
