Online media leaves a hole

In The winter of journalism's content (no longer online), The Australian reports that online publishing, widely expected to supplant newspapers and magazines, will only go so far in replacing them and leave a gaping hole.

This worries me.

The economics of online publishing mean there isn't enough money to pay for in-depth news investigations and searching features on politics, crime and other social issues important to modern democracies.

Advertisers are bailing out of print publications. They are drawn to the web because they see it as a more cost-effective and accountable medium (that's disputable).

Niche interest stories

In particular, online advertisers like to place their messages next to niche interest stories to more closely target interested readers. For example car makers prefer to buy banner ads on pages featuring stories about driving.

Even if a publisher could find the money to produce hard news stories, advertisers wouldn't want them.

The obvious answer is to publish fewer hard news stories and more of the marketable lightweight fluff. However, traditionally those difficult, hard news stories sold printed newspapers and dragged in readers in the first place.

But this vicious economic cycle is nothing compared to what can happen in a society that no longer has a practical mechanism for scrutinising governments and out-of-control corporations.