Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy by Alex S. Jones



"the nation's traditional news organizations are being transformed into tabloid news organizations..." (p. 51)

Alex S. Jones is a journalist who has just about seen it all: he has owned and managed a paper, he has written features, he won a Pulitzer Prize, he has taught journalism, he has done radio journalism and he has written several books. He knows of what he writes.

Jones is concerned about the evolution of news gathering services (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines) from expensive investigative work to nonsense tabloid stuff (this week it is Tiger Woods - thanks to serious news organizations I know more than I've ever wanted to know about his wife, his doctor, etc. - but just go out and try to get some solid info about the health care debate!)

He bemoans a number of trends, including the synergy type news that ABC, NBC & CBS do to promote new books, movies or shows. He is concerned that the "iron core" of news is being ignored and is shrinking because it is hard to produce and can be costly. By iron core he means the serious analysis news (not opinion pieces) and investigative journalism that the public can trust. He is also unhappy (but not enough, in my opinion) at advocacy "gotcha" journalism that undermines the public's faith.

He includes a nice history of journalism in America and plenty of first-hand examples from his own family's experiences. His analysis of technological trends is spot-on and ties in neatly with the analysis in the book Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson. At the end of the book he offers some interesting predictions about where news is heading.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Losing the News.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

BREAKFAST of CHAMPIONS or GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Image
Originally published in 1973. Breakfast of Champions , to me, is the second most well-known Vonnegut novel after Slaughterhouse-Five .  The plot of this story is deceptively simple and the writing style is not complicated - but this story has a lot going on. There are three main characters. One is Dwayne Hoover, a very successful owner of a Pontiac car dealership from Midland, Ohio and numerous other small businesses. He is by far the most successful man in town. He helps bankroll a fine arts festival that the town helps will make them known as a cultural center. He is also going crazy. The fine arts festival has invited Kilgore Trout, a recurring character from other Vonnegut novels, to be the star of the arts festival. Trout is a prolific, but unsuccessful author. He is published, but only by publishers of porn novels. They use his books as a way to make their books seem more legit, kind of like Playboy used "the articles" to make the magazine seem classier. Trout iis so un...
Read more

BETTY WHITE: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
Published in 2024 by Hourly History. Betty White was a staple of the American entertainment scene for literal decades. She was on multiple highly-rated TV shows, was a regular on several classic game shows, guested on dozens of TV shows, and even made one of the most popular Super Bowl commercials of all time.  This short e-book gives the outline of her nearly 70 year career. It's pretty much a "just the facts" sort of book due to the limitations of this book series. Eech history and biography published by Hourly History is designed to be read in about an hour and the sheer length of Betty White's career means that the depth of this biography is fairly limited.  Even if it is limited, I still found this biography to be enjoyable. I rate this e-book 4 stars our of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Betty White: A Life from Beginning to End .
Read more

WELCOMING the STRANGER: JUSTICE, COMPASSION, and TRUTH in the IMMIGRATION DEBATE by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang

Image
Published in 2018 by IVP. A few years ago I was determined to learn a lot about immigration in the United States. I bought Welcoming the Stranger during that time, but I put it aside because the other books I had read were, to put it simply, not good.  So, this book went into the dreaded to-be-read pile, and it might have stayed there forever except for the reelection of President Trump. His actions to fight immigration of just about any sort prompted me to pick up this book and learn a little more about the immigration system. Even though this book was written in 2018, just 7 years ago, some parts of it felt hopelessly out of date thanks to Trump's relentless push against so many norms, rules, and laws in 2025 when it comes to immigration.  The basics are there, however, so the book does have value as a primer on immigration. But, the book is more than that - it is a Christian look at this issue because the authors work for World Relief , a Christian organization that works ...
Read more

LIQUID COOL: THE CYBERPUNK DETECTIVE SERIES (Liquid Cool Book 1) by Austin Dragon

Image
Originally published in 2016. Audiobook published by Well-Tailored books in 2024. Read by Shamaan Casey Duration: 11 hours, 54 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis:  Set in a future megalopolis called Metropolis, Liquid Cool is the story of Cruz, a young hustler that wants to become a private detective. Cruz is mostly known for restoring vintage flying cars, his fedora hat, and his super attractive girlfriend that thinks he can be more than just a street hustler. Cruz really wants to be a private detective, but obtaining a license from the city's convoluted bureaucracy is shockingly expensive. When a local boy turned millionaire offers Cruz the chance to do some detective work on the side, Cruz jumps at the opportunity. He picks up a how-to book from a famous private detective and starts to teach himself how to do the job. After a few of these detective side gigs, an unknown benefactor offers Cruz an office and a secretary just like the ones that all of the film noir detectives have and h...
Read more

THE WORLD ACCORDING to STAR WARS (audiobook) by Cass R. Sunstein

Image
Published in May of 2016 by HarperAudio. Read by Kaleo Griffith Duration: 5 hours, 44 minutes Unabridged Besides being a Law Professor at Harvard and a former member of the Obama Administration, Cass R. Sunstein is a massive fan of all things Star Wars.  The World According to Star Wars is a wide-ranging and mostly interesting discussion using Star Wars as a way to explain aspects of the American and world political scene, economics and family dynamics.  He starts with a little history of how Star Wars came to be, including George Lucas's struggles in writing the screenplay, the way the actors all thought they were acting in an interesting movie that was certain to be a big flop and the reluctance by the studios to really push the movie. But, despite the odds, Star Wars became a massive phenomenon - the series is the all-time leader in multiple categories and the hits just keep on coming. Sunstein explores why it became a big hit, looking at the timing of its release...
Read more

PERSUADER (Jack Reacher #7 ) by Lee Child

Image
Originally published in 2003. Note: Lee Child wrote his books out of chronological order. In chronological order, this would be book #10. This book starts out with a very different sort of introduction. I don't want to spoil it so I will skip ahead a bit. Reacher is out to get a man who he thought he killed years before. He has some sort of business arrangement with a family with underworld connections in Maine that lives in a castle-like mansion on the coast. Reacher works his way inside the organization and waits for his opportunity. Also, he is on the lookout for a missing DEA agent who is thought to have been kidnapped by the organization and is being held somewhere. Reacher is not sure who he can trust as he tries to figure out what is really going on... This story is more complicated than most Reacher stories. The action is ridiculous, as always - but that's one of the reasons you read a Jack Reacher book. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.co...
Read more

America: A Jake Grafton Novel (Jake Grafton #9) by Stephen Coonts

Image
Solid, but not an exceptional thriller Originally published in 2001. The strength of a Stephen Coonts novel is that he provides a thriller like Tom Clancy but not all of the techno-speak. Instead, he provides just enough to give the reader a taste but not enough to overwhelm. The weakness of Stephen Coonts is that Jake Grafton, likable as he is, makes Star Trek's Captain Kirk look like an underachiever. Grafton is everywhere in this book (like all of them). Who needs specialists, like Navy SEALs or  an expert for a rocket launch? Instead, Jake Grafton is your man. Need someone to finagle a Russian spy? He's your man. How about someone to go on a raid, find a spy, fake an attack, go undercover to capture an international super-criminal? He's your man. And then, he gets to beat up the bad guy and pretty much save the world all by himself (his faithful sidekick Toad Tarkington joins in, too!) - again. Stephen Coonts Beyond that, America is a perfectly readable and ...
Read more

THE PRICE YOU PAY (Peter Ash #8) (audiobook) by Nick Petrie

Image
Published in 2024 by Penguin Audio. Read by Stephen Mendel. Duration: 13 hours, 18 minutes, Unabridged. Almost every book of this series follows this model: 1) Peter Ash, a retired Marine, travels the backroads of America in an effort to deal with his PTSD from his service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peter is more than competent in a fight and he is much smarter than the average wandering do-gooder. Despite these advantages, he eventually runs into a person that needs so much help that even Peter can't take care of it.  2) At that point he calls his friend and business partner Lewis for backup.  Lewis is also a former soldier, but his post-Army life is much more checkered. The details have always been been kept shrouded in mystery, but everyone knows that it was a criminal enterprise.  3) Lewis shows up with a whole lot of guns and his special talents for mayhem and destruction. Peter and Lewis save the day going forth and kicking butt. ***** It's a formula, but I like the f...
Read more

46 Pages by Scott Liell

Image
An important piece of the story of the American Revolution Thomas Paine (1737-1809) Published in 2003 by Running Press Sad to say, this history teacher had never read Thomas Paine's famed pamphlet Common Sense until three days ago. I came across a stand-alone printing of the book and was prepared to buy it when I found 46 Pages . The entire text of Common Sense (originally just 46 pages long, thus the title) is added as an appendix at the end of the book. I read the original text first and then proceeded to the first part of the book which consists of a short and pleasant combination of a biography of Paine, a history of Common Sense and little snippets of what several founders thought of the pamphlet at its author. This is a solid addition to any American history buff's collection.  I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: 46 Pages . Reviewed on August 5, 2008.
Read more

READY PLAYER ONE (audiobook) by Ernest Cline

Image
Published in 2011 by Random House Audio. Read by Wil Wheaton. Duration: 15 hours, 46 minutes Unabridged Ready Player One is a dystopian novel set in 2044 America. Things are not going well - there is an energy crisis, mega-corporations run everything and most of the country lives in poverty. Cities aren't particularly safe and the countryside between the cities resembles Mad Max more than Green Acres. The only relief comes in the form of The OASIS - a free virtual world that allows its users to avoid their depressing real lives and be part of something bright, shiny and new. You can become who you want to be and people of relatively modest means in the real world can become someone quite important online. The book revolves around Wade Watts and his online persona Parzival. He, along with millions of others, is in the midst of an online treasure hunt for clues to a fortune. He is a "gunter", which is a contraction of "egg hunter", as in the Easter Eggs -hid...
Read more