50 Years of Truth vs. Opinion, Facts, Truthiness
By Tim Berry
Something happened to truth in the last 50 years or so. Where once we had the ideal of objective truth based on evidence, we now have contentious argumentative truth, based on opinion and belief. And I miss the old kind. Let’s look at two divided nations, ours in 1968, and ours in 2016, and how they... Read More »
Do We Want Our News Crowdsourced?
By Tim Berry
Whether we want our news crowdsourced, or not, I don’t think we have a choice. The steady onslaught of rapid information via the new technologies – digital, social media, et. al. – is happening. In the background, traditional news media get less attention (readers, viewers, web traffic) and that means less money to pay for... Read More »
Good News for Local Journalism — I Hope
By Tim Berry
This week what my local (Eugene, Oregon) newspaper is doing with an iPad app makes me feel better about the future of journalism in the new online age. I’ve got a newspaper habit. I begin my day with the local paper. While I make my coffee and gather a breakfast, a browse the headlines, and... Read More »
Is Print Journalism Dead?
By Tim Berry
Is print journalism dead? I got the question overnight in email from a student working on a research paper. He’d seen this post on this blog about that. He asked me to answer these three questions. So these are his questions with my answers. 1.) What are the factors that have led to falling sales? Start... Read More »
Is Objective Journalism Doomed?
By Tim Berry
Do you ever wonder what happened to objective journalism? I have a thought about that. Until the web changed everything, we got our news from a very few sources: There was a newspaper or two in every city. There were three major networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, offering television and radio news. There were a few... Read More »
Who Should Decide What News Matters?
By Tim Berry
Back in the old days editors decided what was news. Not advertisers and not readers. There was this concept called “news values.” Full-time professionals laid out the front page. They tried to highlight important political, economic, and social trends, coverage deemed important, rather than celebrities, fashions, nudity, and violence. This was a long time ago.... Read More »
Journalism, TechCrunch, Stolen Information
By Tim Berry
This — the TechCrunch publishes stolen information flap last week — is why I worry about the gradual disappearance of Journalism as newspapers and traditional advertising disappear. You may or may not have read about it. Somebody stole documents from Twitter’s computer and sent them to TechCrunch. They stole more than 300 memos, presentations, projections,... Read More »
Is Journalism Dead, Dying, or Just Faking It?
By Tim Berry
I feel like I’m watching Journalism fall apart; watching with interest, horror, and dismay … but just watching, like watching a fire from far away, powerless. Like you do, I read about the newspapers folding, falling like trees in a rotting forest. Even the New York Times is in trouble. Many of the newspapers I... Read More »
Does the News Business Die Along with Newspapers?
By Tim Berry
In the olden days, when I was a grad student in Journalism, for instance, or a night editor for UPI, the business model of the news business was fairly clear: News organizations sold advertisements. They needed news to get readers to be able to sell the ads. News needed credibility to get the readers. So... Read More »
True Story: ‘A Reason Why Not’ Isn’t Good Enough
By Tim Berry
I can't say I liked my first boss. But I learned a lot from him. Some of it worth sharing. He was bureau manager of United Press International in Mexico City in 1971. He was about 45 years old, just... Read More »
By 
