Skip to content

What will happen when your local TV Station & Newspaper are Gone?

Interesting question, especially considering the almost daily announcement of newspapers ceasing publication – sometimes altogether, other times, moving online: What will happen when your local TV Station & Newspaper are Gone?
My view: We’ll find new ways of validating information, of discovering important topics, of sharing developments with others, and, hopefully, of reviving the role traditional news has largely abdicated of being a countering source of power to the other power structures of society. Instead of central news agencies serving the role of making sense of complex information landscapes, social networks will filter and serve a sensemaking, wayfinding, and coherence making role. Concerns will obviously arise – such as how to ensure that we are not only accessing information that we already agree with (echo chamber) – but challenges exist in any field. Networks, however, are more adaptive than existing centralized approaches.

This was written by gsiemens. Posted on Thursday, March 26, 2009, at 10:04 am. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

3 Comments

  1. Stephen Downes wrote:

    We don’t have a local TV station in Moncton – CBC and CTV have long since centralized all Maritime coverage in Halifax, in a completely different province!, and Global never did expand into New Brunswick.

    And our local newspaper, if it could be called that, is owned by the Irvings, the largest corporation in New Brunswick (and which owns _everything_, from the gas stations to the trucking to the pulp and paper to convenience stores) and not surprisingly is more of a propaganda sheet (constantly screaming for lower taxes) than a newspaper.

    So – I have a pretty good idea of what it will be like. At least at first, when there’s nothing online.

    And – honestly – it’s not a lot different from when there _is_ local television and newspapers. Because they too are basically owned by corporate interests. It is our commercial press that is the echo chamber, our commercial press that repeats the same thing over and over, pounding the message into us until they can be sure we’ll vote that way.

    When we get local inormation from multiple sources, then, the first thing I expect to see are fair elections. Should be interesting. I imagine, though, that they – the politicians and the media – will do everything they can to prevent that.

    Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 1:14 pm | Permalink
  2. DolorsCapdet wrote:

    Traditional media are expensive to maintain and have not adapted to the format of new mobile technologies. I believe that your future is in on-demand services.

    In the field of education, for example, some have already begun. The UOC (Open University of Catalonia) has launched a television channel, accessible for all. The contents are avalaible also from a PC or a mobile, through technology Silverligth, without the need to the adapt.

    http://www.uoc.edu/portal/english/la_universitat/sala_de_premsa/noticies/2009/noticia_061.html

    Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 5:25 pm | Permalink
  3. TonNet wrote:

    I grew up in a country where no TV box or internet was possible back then. I’ve lived first hand what it means to live without them. Let me tell you that the impact is relative.

    Still radio waves are the preference of many and as far as they exist or survive, information will flow, though to a different speed. Surely, we will find new ways to not only transmit but validate such info.

    I don’t think we will die. Let the media do the business and society will emerge stronger.

    Friday, April 3, 2009 at 7:22 am | Permalink