Alan Patrick has a rather dismal take on mainstream news media’s loss of audience to bloggers. I am considerably more optimistic: I think Alan both over-estimates the quality of newspapers and TV news, and under-estimates the quality available from blogs.

Big media no longer cares about quality, rarely bothers with fact checking, and does not do all that much real investigative journalism. The media category on this blog has lots of examples of mistakes and shoddy reporting. For a more in-depth account of how little investigative reporting goes on (and how poor it is) read Flat Earth News (US link)

On the other hand consider how good some of the content on blogs is. I read a number of blogs by academic economists: they better than the likes of the Economist. In fact part of the future of big media seems to be acting as selective blog hosts: Willem Buiter’s move to the FT is a good example. I assume they can monetise content better as well (the FT and the like command very high ad rates).

The bare facts of what has happened can now be obtained directly from the organisations that have the most reporters on the ground: such as Reuters. The BBC deserves a mention here as it is both major broadcaster, and has a lot of people on the ground (though fewer than it used to). Free content from the internet really shines here.

I would rather read opinion pieces, analysis, “human interest” stories etc. from bloggers than from the media. People have a greater chance to speak for themselves (without being edited to say what sounds better), and there is a lot available from real experts.

As for investigative reporting, it is one thing that newspapers and broadcasters could do a lot better. I just wish they actually bothered to do a significant amount of it.

The root problem is that the things that bigger organisations (apart from news wires) can do better than bloggers are slow and expensive, and are no longer regarded as commercially viable.