For the Saturday-Sunday weekend of September 28-29, 2013, here are some media stories of note:
Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist, says 90 per cent of editors should be fired, that organizations like NBC and ABC should be closed, and that journalists should be returned to their roles as outsiders. The Guardian reports he considers the state of American journalism "pathetic" because of its general unwillingness to be an unpopular messenger of truth.
Earlier this week Popular Science banned online comments on its site. It argued they hurt debate and influenced public opinion in such a way as to affect how science was financed. But Alexis Sobel Fitts, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, argues that Popular Science isn't actually interpreting science properly. The research it cited to ban comments didn't conclude what the publication said it did and didn't prove the impact of comments was so serious.
The Guardian reports on the final stretch of the long run toward new forms of press regulation in Britain. It notes that an October 9 meeting of the British privy council committee on culture will evaluate an industry proposal on self-regulation or a much more formidable one that enjoys all-party backing.
The New Statesman repurposes a well-received post from George Brock, the head of the City University of London's journalism department, on why newspapers and journalism are not in the trouble some believe. He thinks people still love reading ink on paper, that the revolution is really an evolution with several precedents, that adaptation for video and mobile will be necessary, but that ultimately the craft will survive this creative destruction.
