Eccentric Flower talk:200906/Stepchild of Linkage The Sequel

I know the Chomsky argument by heart, and can quote it from memory. What Chomsky and Herman never tell us is: who will fund the Real Journalism that will replace that Hated Heap of Falsehoods About American Empire that is the NYT? Every time I read the criminally clueless Jeff Jarvis - Self-Appointed He-Ra, Master of the Mediaverse - I comb his screed for an answer to that question, but answer comes there none. Ever. Show me the beef. Where's the revenue stream, the funding mechanism that's going to support the Real Journalism of the Future?

Another, thumpingly obvious question, so obvious it seems to be hidden in plain sight from those who insist we've already read the morning's news online, on a jillion blogs, by the time Old Media get around to covering it: Where in Cthulu's name do you think 99% of all blogs, including HuffPo, are getting their facts? In virtually every instance, they're linking to reported stories on some newspaper website. Unless you're talking Malkin and other frothing heads, who are linking to yak about yak about yak. What happens when the few remaining overseas bureaus and the few remaining national bureaus close? You like hyperlocal? Awesome, because that's all you're going to have. Man does not live by Little Leagues scores alone.

Look, much about mainstream corporate journalism is rotten to the core. I've slept with MANUFACTURING CONSENT under my pillow for years, and argued its righteous theology in my writing. But waving HuffPo as some sort of exemplar of the New, New Cluefulness brings out the Marxist economic determinist in me, as do Overestimated Prophets like Jarvis, none of whom can tell us who's going to pay for the news of the future. Of course we'd all love to see Scahill-style reporting calling power to account. But who's going to do that reporting in a world where all the people who used to pay, like the NYT, have gone to the boneyard?