The Death Of Information

One really harrowing consequence of the economic shock is what it's doing to newsgathering organizations. CNN just fired its entire science and technology team (hey, unlike MSNBC and Fox News, at least they had one to begin with). This includes the environmental unit that has produced the "Planet in Peril" specials, which at least treat the climate crisis in the context of providing information instead of as a political football. We can't just have political coverage on broadcast television and cable news - there has to be some factual basis for their stories.

In addition, multiple newspapers are likely to fail:

Newspaper and newspaper groups are likely to default on their debt and go out of business next year -- leaving "several cities" with no daily newspaper at all, Fitch Ratings says in a report on media released Wednesday.

"Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010," the Chicago-based credit ratings firm said in a report on the outlook for U.S. media and entertainment [...]

Fitch rates the debt of two newspaper companies, The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. as junk, with serious possibilities of default. It also assigns a negative outlook to both the companies and the newspaper sector, meaning their credit ratings are likely to deteriorate further.

As the Internet democratizes information, it also leaves gaping holes in investigative journalism, particularly local coverage. Having entire cities without newspapers is just demoralizing, not to mention the fact that McClatchy is an excellent outfit who frequently turns out great journalism. I don't know who's supposed to cover local stories anymore. Bloggers aren't profitable, though they do a bit of work. Newspapers are dying. Even public access cable is feeling the sting of the economic downturn, and that looks like it costs 4 bucks a day. But it's an important source of City Council and Board of Supervisors meetings, among other things.

We are beginning to live in a post-information society, where there's a lot of data but too much of it overlapping, and there are enormous gaps in what most busy people need to understand their neighborhood and the world. We can't have a functioning democracy without a vibrant fourth estate. It's terrifying to think that it's completely fading away.