Mastodawn

🦩 Plastic Garden Fauna 🦩8h ago

Matthew Sheffield

A sad day for more than 120 #AssociatedPress employees as the organization announced that it is having to close down its newspaper-focused business, which represents only 10% of its revenue and is shrinking. More buyouts are expected.

The general public does not seem to value information quality, and at this point only governments will be able to sustain quality #journalism. https://apnews.com/article/news-industry-buyouts-ap-newspapers-dd790effc6a385514b3323560161ea4f

AP says it will offer buyouts, part of pivot from newspaper-focused history

The Associated Press says it will offer buyouts to an unspecified number of its U.S.-based journalists as part of an acceleration away from the focus on newspapers and their print journalism that sustained the company for more than 1½ centuries. The news organization is becoming more focused on visual journalism and developing new revenue sources, particularly through companies investing in artificial intelligence. That's to cope with the economic collapse of many legacy news outlets. Once the lion’s share of AP’s revenue, big newspaper companies now account for 10% of its income. Julie Pace, AP's executive editor, says that “we’re not a newspaper company and we haven’t been for quite some time.

AP News

Chancerubbage 13h ago

@mattsheffield @Barbramon1

I suppose this means the only trustable bylines in newspapers will come from Reuters.

The rest is low quality propaganda the owners farm out to their papers.

Colin Haynes 12h ago

Do you know, with the track record of governments around the world, I'm not entirely sure that they can sustain the quality of facts for us all.

Matthew Sheffield 12h ago

@ColinHaynes What's your alternative, I'm curious.

Colin Haynes 12h ago

@mattsheffield tricky one isn't it. We (UK) used to have newspapers of record but that has fallen by the wayside.

I'm ok with Wikipedia and facts, but that's not news and isn't setup to move as fast as papers/TV.

BBC Verify does a pretty good job at fact checking right now (and I'm happy that it isn't government run).

I'm not sure however that the UK or US governments have been or should be trusted to tell me what are facts. It's inherent in politics that this can't work I don't think.

Matthew Sheffield 11h ago

@ColinHaynes The BBC is a government owned agency. It's funded by taxes.

I'm calling for separate agencies that cannot be interfered with by politicians.

Colin Haynes 11h ago

@mattsheffield well the system of checks and balances seems to have failed in the US so I'm not sure that's possible.

And it's a matter for debate how independent the BBC is from the UK government. It's also funded by households paying a licence fee, not taxes.

Matthew Sheffield 11h ago

Ultimately, there is going to have to be a Reverse Marshall Plan. American politicians failed to preserve information quality. This is why everything bad happened here ultimately.

Regarding the BBC, a license in every other application is money paid to perform a paid service or sell a product. The BBC fee provides no commercial privileges to payers, so it is not a license. It is a tax.

Colin Haynes 5h ago

@mattsheffield but not everyone has to pay the licence. Even if they have a television.

Not a tax.

Colin Haynes 3h ago

@mattsheffield anyway. I've distracted myself.

I'm not sure how a reverse Marshall Plan would be funded without taxation?

My view of the US right now is that it doesn't matter a damn how many checks and balances are written down, if a government wants to ignore them, it will and therefore the US system is incapable of producing anything independent from government interference.

In the UK, the BBC is not by any stretch perfect, least of all the News & Current Affairs but it's the best we have.

Panta Rhei 10h ago

@mattsheffield so is DW from Germany, but their articles don't read ”influenced“ to me and they often report on current events in a way one doesn't find on private owned newspapers.

Meaning, just because it's funded by taxes does not necessarily mean it's a mouthpiece of the government.

@mattsheffield @ColinHaynes for most people it’s “grok is this real” *requests community note*

Colin Haynes 3h ago

@Cravo @mattsheffield

Agreed. And therefore it depends on which community they ask what answer they get.

It's true (to me) to say that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. That seems to have slipped away.

I remember when the internet started and how it was full of hope that the sum total of human knowledge would be available to all, and that different peoples and cultures would be able to talk in a way that was never possible before.

We wasted that. I'm sad.

@mattsheffield 😟

Climate Jenny 2.1 11h ago

@mattsheffield Bad news for all the newspapers who have fired their reporters and just run AP wire stories.

Nicks World 11h ago

@ClimateJenny @mattsheffield Does this mean physical newspapers? I hope I'll still be able to read the associated press through my online medium.

Matthew Sheffield 11h ago

@NicksWorld @ClimateJenny It probably would depend. They might be closing the text news stories.

Nicks World 11h ago

@mattsheffield @ClimateJenny I hope not. I love getting the news easily and the associated press is what I trust because they stick to the facts.

@mattsheffield
"The news organization is becoming more focused on visual journalism and developing new revenue sources, particularly through companies investing in artificial intelligence..."

@ditol @mattsheffield ,🤮