KindleLinkMEDIA BISTRO: Do you believe newspapers are going to die? If so, when?
JESSE THORN: They tell me that they are, and who am I to disagree? My hope is that if and when that happens, news that isn't tied to a deadline cycle will grow. The internet makes scoops important, but once someone has the scoop, everyone else has to do analysis, which I think is kinda great.
Cable news is unwatchable to me, and many newspapers are equally lame but I enjoy listening to public radio news. I think it's because in public radio, there's no deadline culture--partly because they were incapable of breaking news in the early days, since they had so few reporters. The joke motto was "report it a day late, call it analysis," but I think it's of much greater service to the citizen to convey information in context than it is to "break" a story. For most stuff, what day you find out is much less important than what you find out.
In other words: what the fuck do I know? I'm not a real journalist. I didn't even write for the high school newspaper.