At Big Think, the writers as a good question: Are newspapers civic institutions? If so what are the implications? Or are they just algorithms? Dominic Basulto raises good questions in his post, with plenty of links to other studies and writers.

More than 200 newspapers have folded or suspended their print editions since 2007, Basulto writes. “ As a result, the typical argument calls for supporting newspapers historically have been based on the idea of newspapers as a sort of civic institution that we, as a society, must preserve in the name of ideals (always capitalized) like Truth. But what if, instead, we begin to think of newspapers in perhaps a more mundane manner—as algorithms for solving problems?”

Are tablet applications making it easier for newspapers to pay for content? Are consumers becoming accustomed to paying for applications? “If you think about this for a second, this is a profound change that the appification of media makes possible. Online or in the physical world, your product is worth zero. Add a mobile layer to it, and it’s suddenly worth something,” writes Basulto. Is it true? If so, is it enough to preserve journalism as we’ve known it?

This piece from CBS Sunday Morning sounds familiar to me. Over the years, I’ve worked at some of the same type of niche magazines highlighted here. Magazines are indeed alive and well. I think my favorite magazine highlighted here by Conor Knighton is Manure Manager, which, as Conor says, “is quite literally full of crap.”

Robert Boyton remains bullish on journalism. In 2005 he published The New New Journalism, which argued that the American long-form journalism was thriving. Pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook, pre-Recession. Was his argument premature? No. There is still room for thriving nonfiction. Part of his optimism is based on the belief that people in industrial societies “still expect better things in their lives,” which includes all forms of journalism. Boyton also believes that the current economic conditions merely force journalists to add different forms of writing and reporting to the repertoire rather than abandon what has been done before.

"Every fall, when I greet the new group of NYU students, the first thing I do is welcome them to the house of journalism. It is a big house, I explain, with many differently shaped and designed rooms. The rooms have names like “blog post,” “feature,” “essay,” “foreign report” and “book,” and seems to add a room or two every year. In order to have a long and enjoyable career, I continue, they must find one room they truly love, and decorate and design it so that it reflects their very best attributes. In addition, they need to find a few other rooms where they feel comfortable, since one can’t live in a single room forever. Each of the rooms has a different function, and must be maintained in a way that makes sense for it.”

Expanding on the metaphor a bit, Boyton believes that publishers and newspapers themselves, not just journalists, must adapt to this new climate. “I’d compare the current thinking about business models for journalism to the real estate developer who builds nothing but malls. What we need, the thinking goes, is as many large, easily designed, open spaces as possible, the better to lead masses of people through. Contemporary journalism has broken down the walls, and wants everyone to sit in the same room (usually the busiest, loudest room in the house). A collection of idiosyncratic houses, each containing different sized rooms is too confusing and cluttered, the thinking goes. No, the trick is to “go big” and throw enormous parties to which everyone is invited. How else can a website attract millions of “hits”?”

Do you believe him? His argument is obviously more complicated and nuanced than what I have summarized here. I’d encourage you to read his entire article.

I think Sven Birkerts has it about right: “Writing can’t be planned for or predicted, and when it happens, when the surge begins, it brings a satisfaction like nothing else. There are finer sensualities, sure, and basic emotions that give joy or connection when released, but as far as giving me a sustained sense that this is who I am, this is what I do, a full-fathom immersion in writing is the ultimate verification. Alone at my attic desk, catching the flow of words, when the flow is there to be caught — or generating it when it is there to be generated — I break with my more tentative self, claim some more necessary seeming “I.” The change has everything to do with finding words and their sequence. The joy prolongs itself for a short time after I stop — a resonance, a psychic afterglow — then it tapers away, the other life resumes. But I am already thinking toward the next occasion.

“The memory of the best of the best writing moments haunts, most grievously when the desire is there but the impulse is absent, or when the impulse flickers and sputters but doesn’t catch, when the words — which I believe are right there, as if on the other side of the sheerest membrane — will not come. The good runs are not a fortifying memory but a reproach. My younger self — it is always, necessarily, the younger self — mocks me. It’s not just writing at stake, but everything. The worth I felt when I worked, when I was young — even if that was only yesterday — is gone. This is now and henceforth the way of things; this is the new reality.”

Read his entire essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Many media analysts say newspapers are dead or dying. To anyone who follows the media, those claims aren’t new. But now the Newspaper Association of America hopes to reverse the trend, by emphasizing that newspapers in all their online, mobile app and print incarnations make us smarter. And smart is sexy.

The New York Times’ Tanzina Vega recently wrote about the new advertising campaign: ““Smart is the new sexy” reads the tagline for the campaign, which was created by the Martin Agency, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. “Be able to find Iran on a map,” says one ad that shows an illustration of a woman reading a print newspaper at a table. “Know what the city council is up to behind closed doors,” it continues. “There’s no question that newspapers are undergoing a significant transformation, and we wanted to underline some of that,” said Caroline Little, chief executive of the N.A.A. “It’s a campaign for what newspapers represent, whether they are in print, online or mobile.”

“What they represent, Ms. Little said, are the ideals of an informed citizenry and democracy. The campaign also comes at a time when newspaper newsrooms have faced devastating financial and staff cuts. A weak print advertising market and smaller profit on digital advertising have exacerbated the trend. Some newspapers, like The New York Times, are experimenting with pay models while others are finding alternative revenue streams through things like daily deal Web sites.”

Since 1985, the Pew Research Center has tracked the public opinion about the national news media. Its most recent data is quite alarming: Opinions now equal or surpass all-time highs on nine of 12 core measures. A bright spot: As bad as it is for news organizations, they are still more trusted than other many other organizations including the government and business. So I gotta ask: Are news organizations that bad, or do we just hate what the news is reporting? You can find a summary of the recent report here. the New York Times recently reported on the Pew report as well.

Some interesting paragraphs from the report summary:

* “The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has been tracking views of press performance since 1985, and the overall ratings remain quite negative. Fully 66% say news stories often are inaccurate, 77% think that news organizations tend to favor one side, and 80% say news organizations are often influenced by powerful people and organizations.

The widely-shared belief that news stories are inaccurate cuts to the press’s core mission: Just 25% say that in general news organizations get the facts straight while 66% say stories are often inaccurate. As recently as four years ago, 39% said news organizations mostly get the facts straight and 53% said stories are often inaccurate.”

* “Despite the growth of Internet news, it is clear that television news outlets, specifically cable news outlets, are central to people’s impressions of the news media. When asked what first comes to mind when they think of news organizations, 63% volunteer the name of a cable news outlet, with CNN and Fox News by far the most prevalent in people’s minds. Only about a third (36%) name one of the broadcast networks. Fewer than one-in-five mention local news outlets and only 5% mention a national newspaper such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or USA Today. Just 3% name a website – either web-only or linked to a traditional news organization – when asked what comes to mind when they think of news organizations.”

* “For the first time in a Pew Research Center survey, as many say that news organizations hurt democracy (42%) as protect democracy (42%). In the mid-1980s, about twice as many said that news organizations protect democracy rather than hurt democracy.

“Yet majorities have consistently expressed the view that criticism of political leaders by news organizations keeps them from doing things that should not be done. Today, 58% say this, while just 25% say that the news media’s criticism keeps political leaders from doing their jobs. Even as attitudes toward the press have grown more negative, support for the press’s watchdog role has remained stable.”

Download the full report, Views of the News Media: 1985-2011: Press Widely Criticized, But Trusted More than Other Information Sources.

Are the “two cultures” really that far apart. When C.P. Snow first made the reference between the gap between science and the humanities, he thought little about psychology, Gregory Currie writes in The Sunday Times about what reading literature claims on the mind.

“But things have been happening in cognitive psychology, and they may cause trouble for some who think the two-cultures attack has been seen off. What has been happening has no overarching theory or grand narrative to claim our allegiance, and much of its detail may not survive the next decade of theoretical reconfiguration. Still, there are hints of something radically at odds with how we ordinarily think about the mind,” Currie writes. “To the extent that literature is that ordinary picture writ large, embellished, deepened and refined, this research deserves the attention of those who produce, theorize or merely read what we uncomfortably call serious fiction.”

Should literature be required to give insight into the workings of the mind? Is this a proper function of literature? Currie writes: “If you accept this minimal commitment to the idea of learning from fiction, you ought, I reckon, to have some interest in the following questions: Is the practice of fiction one we can reasonably expect to give us the insight we hope for? Are serious fiction writers well equipped to give us that insight? Finally and most radically, is what I’m supposed to be learning consistent with or supported by the best science? These are hard questions, and my answers will be little more than provocations. But they ought to be asked by anyone who feels indebted to literature for any of their beliefs, skills or sensitivities.”

Currie brings some interesting points to his view of literature. I urge you to read the entire story. He concludes: “At most, I am urging a clarification, a recognition that when we engage seriously with great literature we do not come away with more knowledge, better abilities, clarified emotions or deeper human sympathies. We do exercise capacities that let us explore a fascinating, demanding conception of what human beings are like – probably a wrong one.”

Courtesy of James Fallows: The Net Needs the News

Here is an interesting take on the value the journalist brings to journalism. Is it storytelling? Or is the article itself--the finely crafted prose that brings the details into context--simply becoming a luxury by product?

In his blog post, Jeff Jarvis highlights a few episodes that have made him begin to question whether journalists should actually spend time assembling the details they collect in the field. He writes: “The coverage can come from a reporter and in some cases from witnesses’ cameras and quotes. The story can be written elsewhere by someone who can add value by compiling perspectives and facts from many witnesses and sources. It harkens back to the days of newspaper rewritemen (I was one).

“Carry this to the extreme — that’s my specialty — and we see witnesses everywhere, some of them reporters, some people who happen to be at a news event before reporters arrive (and now we can reach them via Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare….), some who may be participants but are sharing photos and facts via Twitter. Already on the web, we see others — bloggers — turn these distributed snippets into narratives: posts, stories, articles.”

He asks many important questions. Jarvis predicts that some specialization is likely to occur in the field--some reporters focusing more on the collection of details, while others thrive in assembling the collected material into useful narratives.

“The bigger question all this raises is when and whether we need articles. Oh, we still do. Articles can make it easy to catch up on a complex story; they make for easier reading than a string of disjointed facts; they pull together strands of a story and add perspective. Articles are wonderful. But they are no longer necessary for every event,” writes Jarvis. “Sometimes, a quick update is sufficient; other times a collection of videos can do the trick. Other times, articles are good.”

This post’s title is also the title of a book containing many essays and other works on the state of journalism by Anna Politkovskaya, a special correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta who was murdered in Moscow on October 7, 2006, for her probing works of investigative journalism. The book contains many of the pieces she was working on at the time of her assassination.

Is Journalism Worth Dying For? is reviewed at the Barnes and Noble Review by Jason Farago. He writes that Polikkovskaya’s “enduring importance derives from her refusal to capitulate despite seemingly unbearable pressure—and, even more basically, her commitment to rigorous on-the-ground reporting when journalists, even when not faced with official intimidation, spend more time with PR flacks than sources and victims.”