David Weinberger has a post that bears some thought. In The end of coverage, he writes:
The notion that a newspaper can “cover” the day’s events has always been a myth. Just ask Ethan about “coverage” of Africa in even the best US newspapers. In the post-paper world, we’re not going to be able to even pretend we’re achieving coverage. And even if citizen reporters around the world provide more information about more events than were dreamt of in the MSM’s philosophy it’ll be clear that we’re each reading a tiny slice based on personal and social interests. The concept of “coverage” doesn’t make sense in the post-paper world.
One of the things that dawned on me back in my (pre-blogging, largely pre-Internet) newspaper editing days was that there were many more things happening in the community than we in the newsroom could ever be aware of. The comforting idea, which may have been mere conceit, was that we were covering the “important” and “interesting” stuff.
The thought of the loss of the idea of coverage is frightening but, perhaps in the same way Dan Gillmor’s famed realization that his readers knew more than he did, there’s some freedom to be found there.
I haven’t thought this through fully yet (and I have to run off to class soon), but it the idea of the end of coverage seems to reflect something real about news and where we’re going.
TAGS: COVERAGE, NEWS, JOURNALISM
