2) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)?
3) Shirky talks about the 'unbundling of content'. This means people are reading newspapers in a different way. How does he suggest audiences are consuming news stories in the digital age?
4) Shirky also talks about the power of shareable media. How does he suggest the child abuse scandal with the Catholic Church may have been different if the internet had been widespread in 1992?
5) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls?
6) What is a 'social good'? In what way is journalism a 'social good'?
7) Shirky says newspapers are in terminal decline. How does he suggest we can replace the important role in society newspapers play? What is the short-term danger to this solution that he describes?
8) Look at the first question and answer regarding institutional power. Give us your own opinion: how important is it that major media brands such as the New York Times or the Guardian continue to stay in business and provide news?
1) ClayShirky argues that accountability journalism is important because it is what keeps the dishonesty of people at bay. Accountability journalism helps to bring out the true stories He talks of the movie "spotlight" which centers around editor Marty Baron of The Boston Globe assigning a team of journalists to investigate allegations against John Geoghan, an unfrocked priest accused of molesting more than 80 boys. In the talk is mentioned that without professional journalism/journalists we would never have found out about this case.
2) Relationships between newspapers and advertisers isn't great because previously advertisers have had to pay over the odds for spaces to advertise, but this is because there wasn't a well known enough place other than newspapers to advertise in the past. Previously, the internet was not used in the same way that it is now so it wasn't a good platform to advertise on with the goal to be getting maximum interest and coverage across a variety of different people. Clay goes on to say of how advertisers were not only overcharged but also undeserved not even getting the chance to say "don't report on my industry". The example talked about is Ford ad's and being advertised in the New York Times during the rollover stories.
3) We are now viewing newspapers ONLINE!!! The difference between the consumption of newspapers before and now is that we only read and actually remember what we want to, as for before when we would read everything that was in the newspaper. Citizen journalism has taken off and its consumers rather than producers that are bundling together the content. Before content was printed for everybody whereas now we choose what we want to read and therefore it is specific to our needs.
4) If the internet was more widespread in 1992, the scandal involving the catholic church definitely would not have been able to be hidden. Before, in a interview for a newspaper people would say things and they would be reported based on how the journalist interpreted it. However, if the internet was widespread in 1992, people could share the real story more easily and the sharing would just keep going until those involved or anybody else for that matter would not have been able to control it.
5) Shirky argues against paywalls because he feels that they a restriction, we all need accountability journalism but why would we pay for it when so much of the content that is behind a paywall is republished and reused on a number of different free sites. For example, if someone is subscribed to The Economist nothing stops them sharing a story they have found on social media which would then get reposted and reused by other media organisations.
6) A social good is a good or service that benefits the largest number of people in the largest possible way that it can. Journalism can be seen as a social good through the publication of stories such as the catholic church scandal because they would otherwise have been covered up completely or made not to look as bad as they were.
7) Shirky says "We need a class of institutions or models, whether they’re endowments or crowdsourced or what have you — we need a model that produces five percent of accountability journalism. And we need to get that right 17 times in a row. That’s the issue before us. There will not be anything that replaces newspapers, because if you could write the list of stuff you needed and organizational characteristics and it looked like newspapers, newspapers would be able to fill that role, right?".
8) I think that it is extremely important that newspapers such as The Guardian and New York Times stay in business. This is because they are the newspapers that hold the institutional power to hold people to account that have done wrong, without them stories would have been covered up and those people would have got away with it.
EXAMPLE - Q8
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