Interview with Jesse Thorn, host of The Sound of Young America

Media Bistro has a nice interview with Jesse Thorn, host and producer of the tremendously good podcast/radio show The Sound of Young America.

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MEDIA 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.

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