| Journalists need experts
as badly as experts need journalists. Every day there are newspaper
pages and television newscasts to be filed, and an expert who
can deliver a jarring piece of wisdom is always welcome. Working
together, journalists and experts are the architects of conventional
wisdom.
- Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics
Newspaper critics are being bypassed by web sites where people
are allowed to become critics themselves. And nearly all these
sites are a two-way conversation. Especially in areas like Travel,
the younger generation wants to read information by people like
themselves. So a newspaper has a choice. They can say we are
the experts, or they can say 'this is interesting' ask their
readers to comment.
- Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, quoted in Mike
Butcher's A
pincer movement on the papers
The late E.F.
Schumacher believed that there are two places to find wisdom:
in nature and in religious traditions. To seek wisdom in nature
we should obviously go to those who have loved nature enough
to study it.
- Matthew
Fox, Original
Blessing
Look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another
story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story
about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before.
It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and
the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online
metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from
the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will
not only change the world, but also change the way the world
changes.
- Time
Magazine
Risk-averse newsrooms have spent several decades with their
collective heads in the ink barrel, ignoring the changing society
around them, refusing to embrace new technologies and defensively
adhering to both a rigid internal hierarchy and an inflexible
definition of 'news' that produces a stenographic form of journalism,
one that has stood still, frozen by homage to tradition, while
the world has moved on.
- Tim Porter, If
newspapers are to rise again
There are also forward-thinking reporters and editors and photographers
who envision and are working to create a journalistic future
built on new story forms, deeper community connections and more
truth-telling and watch-dogging. A dilemma facing the industry
is whether it can retain these folks long enough to make change
happen.
- Tim Porter, The
mood of the newsroom
How did it come to be that the news is reported solely by journalists?
- Rob Brezsny, Pronoia
I read the news today, oh boy.
- The Beatles
Freedom of the press is the best indicator of the freedom of
a country.
- President Manuel Zelaya, Honduras, reported in Honduras
This Week
When did we stop calling it 'the underground press?' When did
the more polite 'alternative' usurp the usage? That's one of
those little landmarks lost to history, even by we who were
making (or dancing to?) that history. I've asked others who
were there, and they can't remember either. Looking back, it
was the turning point. At some unmarked moment we all sort of
forgot that we'd been trying to bring down the American system
and dedicated ourselves to a task both more possible and more
complicated: We engaged in a commercial venture that would make
money and support us while standing for anti-commercial values
-- true children of our generation, we determined to have our
cake and, while critically discussing its contents, eat it too.
- Michael Ventura, Look
Ma, No Hands
At the Beauty and Truth Laboratory, we believe that stories
about the rot are not inherently more captivating than stories
about the splendor ... Obsessing on evil is boring. Rousing
fear is hackneyed shtick. Wallowing in despair is a bad habit.
Indulging in cynicism is akin to committing a copycat crime.
- Rob Brezsny, Pronoia
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