These sorts of community efforts will be taken over by the same lefties who infest the MSM.

O’Sullivan’s Law has proven remarkably accurate in America.

I would want to see the opinions of some local bloggers with a track record before I’d trust anything recommended by the NYT.

Of course, comprehensively objective news reporting — especially by people familiar with the subject matters, or with a genuinely thorough liberal arts education or equivalent life experience — would be best.

Ben Affleck visits refugee camps in eastern Congo

Travis Accident Triggers Blink-182 Reunion…Offstage

Taylor Swift Aces Archuleta, Trumps Twilight

This reminds me, a little, of the “fact-collection” in the early days of the Royal Society. Just about anything that was a fact could qualify. Most of the facts reported might even have been true, I suppose.

What kind of organization, and what kind of polity, must be in good order for ‘facts’ to become news?

In science, facts become news only rarely, and not at anybody’s whim. One hopes, with only historical support and without proof, that in science, the efforts of things like Climate Councils or journals editors do not tell in the end, and that the news will out, not in contradiction of the facts, but in finally honoring them.

Even facts are hard enough to come by, as any decent researcher will tell you. But news is the product of the rare genius working within a field in good order: that is, within a specific ongoing inquiry in which there are many who are moral and therefore open to news.

If you want some, you know, news, about San Diego, you have to rely on the blog of the long-retired/pushed-out business editor of the local paper, not inappropriately named Scam Diego.

Hey everybody! Let’s be all “nonprofit” and “independent” and “professional”!!! Let’s be a “Voice”! Yeah, that’ll do it.

The “market for facts” and the “market for ‘news’” may not be coterminous. And one market may be a whole heckuva lot smaller than the other.

I have read with great interest over the last few years your many posts about the decline of the news industry and about the prospects for its reformation. As a strategy professor, I have had the opportunity to teach several cases and enjoin students in many discussions about the many failings of this most important industry. This spring I will be teaching a course on globalization based, in large part, on the Four I’s framework: Issues, Interests, Institutions, and Information.

The course will involve me selecting the major “issues” and the students identifying the relevant interest groups, institutions, and most importantly, the information that is required in order for the issues to be resolved. This last point is where we will spend a lot of our time- locating the sources of “original facts” (some of which are used by media organizations and turned into news) and importance of those facts for the conduct and performance of firms.

But one thing that we will surely not overlook is the encroachment by “ideological groups” into the newsgathering and reporting process. As has been well documented here and elsewhere, the news industry has lost a great deal of its independence and integrity by not doing enough original reporting and instead relying on said groups for information. This has had detrimental effects not only for the news industry itself, but also for the broader polity.

The link you provided to the “Voice of San Diego” will certainly find its way into my syllabus.

Thoughtfully
Starling