Has the Web Become an Extinction Level Event for Traditional, Advertising Funded Journalism?

While I wrote my breakup letter to broadcast news media a while ago, I'm still thinking about the nature of on-line news. 

For every Source like Associated Press, interest.co.nz or other site that seeks balance and attempts to write numerate, readable prose, there are many more that don't have the capacity or, worse, won't becasue it serves advocacy that's barely, if at all, disguised.

I don't like to say this, but I can no longer find it in my heart to rate most New Zealand news sites as balanced. I just can't, given the editorial bias that's become ever more evident and bitter as government funding has ebbed from a business model in which the public are rapidly both losing trust and interest. 

The journalistic class are well placed to make a lot of noise about the "special nature" of journalism and it's role to hold power to account; except, on the whole, they don't. 

Journalism is not: 

• Interviews that softball in questions to the right people,
  
• Endless vox-pops that mean nothing,
• Attempting to ignore alternate views, 
• The promulgation of expert's views as writ, when there is no clue given as to that expert's background and affiliations - so the presumption has to be that they are promoting a cause and are an 'expert' selected to agree with the editorial line.
  

What doesn't help journalism's case is that the quality of writing has deteriorated, and the lack of even the basic numeracy to question the statistics and other data shovelled out of government and organisations just makes me glum. 

The elementary copywriting mistakes on so many websites are just embarrassing, and the lack of the presence of mind to ask about something as simple as base rate occurrences, when someone in high dudgeon claims a number is 'large', is disheartening.

Even what used to be the ballast for journalistic stability provided by Radio NZ, that doesn't have to meet any commercial-pressure biassing, is looking ever-less enquiring, competent and numerate, and seems to have slid over in to advocacy. They are paying the price for that with falling trust and audience, fall and RNZ news now sits behind Newstalk ZB in the listenership stakes. 

Disconcertingly the ODT, my local paper, has a high proportion of RNZ byline stories, which makes me ponder the wisdom of associating so closely with an organisation that seems to have an agenda other than: "just the facts. ma'am, just the facts". It makes me look sideways at the ODT, which I don't like to do, but...

The old Journalistic class feels like it's withering, but shows little willingness or, bewilderingly, understanding that it needs to evolve in anything but traditional ways like cost cutting and becoming more extreme to try and garner eyeballs. Few sites are attempting to compete on quality, and the ones that are at least trying, are moving behind paywalls or imposing non-subscriber restrictions. 

The NBR and the NZ Herald come to mind, and a site I pay for, interest.co.nz, is switching off the ability to comment in March next year unless you have a paid subscription. Given the vast majority of commenters - but not readers - are free riders, treating the site as a charity, I'm curious to see how many of them actually stump up the pretty modest subscription to satisfy their ego needs.

But it's not all good news: those comments fields. What can one say? Grown up publications like Popular Science shut them down years ago becasue of the behaviour of the commenters, and apps like Shut Up help by turning off comments in browsers and the like. 

The changes in journalism are like watching a demonstration of a mix of Social Darwinism and capitalism's creative destruction: but what will evolve to replace the current situation, particularly if most of the incumbents are dinosaurs who don't understand the need to evolve, and fast?

Has the Web Become an Extinction Level Event for Traditional, Advertising Funded Journalism?