Sunday 6 December 2015

 

The New Journalism

By now it's part  of the furniture. Community newspapers are "free". And the dailies that still charge for access to their dwindling hard copy subscriptions are in a state of fatal decline. Hard to believe that at one time many actually had to pay for access to quality writing. Sounds like a good deal for readers. Such a good deal that nobody complains, it seems. 

But there's a cost for all this free journalism. And the cost it's not just the journalism that's being sold. It's you, dear reader. Now Toronto is only the most prominent of local examples of journalism which, as its quotient of consumerist advertising has increased its journalistic edge has been blunted to the point of near amputation. Take a look at any mainstream journal in our still new millennium and you will be hard pressed to find, as used to be said about TV, the content between the ads. Universal  advertising is the price we pay for "free" content. 

But of course the real price is more than the tedium of more ad negotiation. It's far more significant. All content in whatever form we witness it is selling something. And inevitably for every seller there must be us, in the role of "buyers."   
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