[chaps]

What? This is a stupendously bleak vision of journalism. Are you saying that there should be no new journalism because there's no benefit? If you're sourcing your news from national news, try looking for investigative journalism at the local level.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I'm saying that there's lots of new journalism. I would concede that the specific format of nonpartisan local newspapers is less popular than it used to be, but this has not in my experience made it any harder to determine what's going on in my local area, and I don't know of any evidence that others are finding it harder either.

[chaps]

Ah sorry, I think I misread what you meant in your original post. Yeah, I have the same problem. A lot of these issues would go away if journalist orgs worked together to a larger degree (sharing FOIA docs, etc), but the competition and risk of sharing info leads to naturally strange ethics systems.

[krageon]

Either it's impacting your social web and you already know about it or it fundamentally doesn't matter. "News" being necessary is something people that benefit from it being necessary like to tell you, but it doesn't actually improve anything in anyone's life.

[chaps]

Heh, nah. I'm a journalist and I've seen its effects directly on local government. For example, there was a police accountability committee that needed the local city hall to create a process for allowing people to apply. They completely forgot about it, though. The act of me researching and calling political offices put a real fire under their assess to get the process moving again. Accountability works.

That has nothing to do with "social webs".