Reddit Reddit reviews Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News

We found 2 Reddit comments about Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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2 Reddit comments about Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News:

u/RhinestoneTaco · 2 pointsr/Journalism

>did some research

If you have data on the economic and circulation-numbers state of community weekly newspapers in the U.S., please let me know. I'd love to read it.

I can only base my viewpoints on Pew's State of the News Media analysis on print news circulation, as well as generalized surveys and studies.

I have no doubt that print weeklies will survive for a while longer -- especially in some markets, like the rural midwest and in areas with a much older-than-average population base. But it's not an economically viable medium for transmitting news in the long term.

A book you should check out, when you get the chance, is David Mindich's Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News

>People still know they have to pay for my newspaper.

I'm sure that business model will last you well into the future.

>And web advertisement is worthless.

Yet somehow start-up online news sites and popular blogs have managed to make it work by developing new ways to metric ads, reach audiences for increased presence, and other ways of innovation. Interesting.

> get so tired of academics and people looking at the industry from on high saying print is dying.

Because by every available metric, print is dying. Please note here that "Print" means simply the publication of news using ink and paper. I am well aware that newspaper organizations do most of the original news production and reporting in the country. Which is why I highly support their turn to better online presences -- so they can reach the audience they want to reach, and we can all benefit from a properly informed society.

>Based on the big, national dailies you're trending an industry that includes weeklies, magazines, free papers on and on.

All of which are faltering, economicly, on the national scale.

I have nothing against your standpoint that community weeklies are important. They are where I got my start in journalism, where I did almost all of my professional work in journalism.

My problem comes at your dismissive approach toward blogging, self-reporting and entrepreneurial journalism. They are the nature of the modern market. They are how people get clips now, how people prove themselves, and how people cover a community and give voices to people in an era of failed print platforms.

It's a silly -- and frankly incorrect -- opinion to have toward the facts of a changing news audience and a changing news structure.

I'm lucky I'm the one teaching the journalists of the future.

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/IWantToLearn

Sure. Most people assume that newspapers are dying because of the Internet, but that isn't the whole picture. Even before the rise of the Internet, newspaper subscriptions were declining. Why? Well, here is another thing that has been declining in step with newspapers--memberships in groups like Shriners and other community organisations. It's not that young people are now getting their news from the Internet instead of the daily paper, it's that they aren't getting their news at all. It's not just that technology has upended the traditional business model of news; our national psyche has changed and our attitudes about things like community and social responsibility have as well.

If you go to any college that teaches journalism, there is a good chance that "mass communication" is in the title of the school as well. But this is an outdated term. There is no longer any broadcasting but rather only narrowcasting. The country is so fractured, people essential flock to their own little islands of constructed realities. In the old days--when there were only 3 broadcast stations--people had to share a common culture: people had to watch the same t.v. shows, watch the same movies, read the same newspaper. Now you can find a magazine for any particular interest, a website that reaffirms any kind of beliefs you have, watch television from a huge array of sources and at any time you want--and your day-to-day experience and interpretive lens of daily events will be completely different than the guy who leaves across the street from you.

Not only have the markets for mass media been dismantled through media fragmentation--which need to take advantage of economies of scale to be cost-efficient--but also the supply side has been degraded as well. It's now so cheap to produce information, both in terms of fixed and marginal cost, that anyone can do it. That's why you see so many pundits on cable talk shows who seem to have no qualifications other than they just have a certain opinion. And the laws of economics tells us that when supply is high and demand is low, prices drop (or in the case of labor, people exit the market).

So, that's probably a longer answer than you wanted, and I could probably go on all day about it, but I'll end with this: the problem really boils down to that our modern democratic process is a product of the enlightenment, and journalism is a profession dedicated to that process. Our modern era, the post-modern period, represents the death of the enlightenment and journalism goes with it. If you want a good book on the subject, I recommend this.

**Edit: I forgot to mention something: Obama's acceptance speech did give me a glimmer of hope when he used the word "citizenship." Hopefully that word will come back into the national consciousness, but only time will tell how things pan out.