"Paper" newsroom had excellent coverage election night
by Norwood Nov 13, 2016
The future of news isn't dim – it's extremely bright and on an excel spreadsheet. Coverage and news will become metadata for us to digest.
An organization lambasted for its liberal bend – appeared on my newsfeed via conservatives more so than any other news service. This tells me there is value in the institution. The advancements the New York Times has made matter.
They've become a sophisticated machine able to adapt and are fairly agile. The election night coverage came with an embedded algorithm to predict the statistical likelihood of a presidential victory which is what I wanted to see. There's no sway in that reporting. It's the future of journalism and news as a whole.
Pundits will always be around to analyze and argue facts and figures compared to the people's gut feelings. But, there is and will be real value in taking information out there and mapping out for others. It's the best way to receive your information. It's the hardest to debunk. It's the easiest to accept. Some sort of revolution is also coming to journalism. It's not as though journalism will die like some have suggested.
Instead, it will evolve, adapt and improve. A new standard will be created in the aftermath. First thing to go – day time pundits who play entertainment roles more than arbiters for information for their audiences.
These are cloaked late night talk shows masquerading as news. Not every host has paid their dues to the industry and they owe much. Many of these people rarely pen books or op-eds. Instead, they're on screen and they talk. But, it's become obvious that it's more than that – they foster the bubbles and echo chambers people live in because it drives business.
Journalism is business and it's big business, too. It's not as though the primary network anchors aren't paid well. They aren't living a pious lifestyle rooted in stoicism and observers of the human condition. They're motivated people like anyone else. Like everyone, they have their own motives and operating systems that drive them.
What about an hour of television that looks at trends, stats and puts up charts. Then, attempts to find the root cause or condition driving the numbers if they're opinions. If they're more objective – then disregard the opinion and investigate the objective reasons. It's a fact many lost their jobs in Flint because the factories were shut down. That fact and the perceived connection Mitt Romney had to that crushed him. Then, he went on to say there are moochers. Those people who lost their job are now in that category and he set them aside as unworthy. He might as well have ran an elite yankee, or did he? Our party system makes reality confusing and obfuscates the facts. The future of news can cut through all of that.
There are more people in the world than ever. There are more things going on and global interconnected events than any one man can fully comprehend. A kind of effort to visualize the facts of our current reality is necessary to strategize the future, solve our problems, and stay on top. A lot of things do not go our way.
Maybe, we need to start viewing every failure as an opportunity to get it right. Each change as a chance to get in on something new at the ground floor. The New York Times is sure to adapt – like any business should. So should we.
So, please, stop crying and stop celebrating – there is no doubt something to do. Nothing has changed and it won't unless people become involved and begin to solve problems not just for themselves when and where they can, but within their communities or whoever's lives they touch.
Featured image courtesy of TheWrap.
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