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Me on public radio’s Kojo Nnamdi show with NYT’s Derek Willis and Pew’s Amy Mitchell talking about online transparency and the future of local news.
Jerry Brito
Impulsively redesigning since 1999.
Jerry Brito is a policy wonk and web developer in Washington, DC.
the newspapers category
Tomorrow I'll be on the Kojo Nnamdi Show at noon discussing transparency tools and reporting 
On Monday I’ll be on the Kojo Nnamdi Show at noon on WAMU to discuss how transparency tools like StimulusWatch.org affect the future of reporting and local media. I’ll be on with Amy Mitchell of the Center for Excellence in Journalism, and Derek Willis, who teaches computer-assisted reporting at GW and a member of the NY Time’s web team.
Here are some of the things I’ve been reading to prepare:
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable by Clay Shirky - Newspapers will die because the economics of the business model no longer make sense. However, there’s no reason to believe that journalism will die with them. To ask what will replace newspapers is the height of impatience.
Old Growth Media And The Future Of News by Steven Berlin Johnson - There’s no reason to think local and investigative reporting will die along with newspapers. Tech and political journalism online are the canaries in the coal mine of in-depth reporting on line. In fact, the economics of the web means we can expect to see more and better local coverage.
How Niche Bloggers Fill Gaps Left by Local Newspapers, Alt-Weeklies by Simon Owens - Profiles of great online-only local coverage.
Crowd Funding: A Different Way to Pay for the News You Want by Sarah Kershaw - Citizens make micro-donations to fund the investigative reporting they would like to see.
After the Newspaper by Jesse Walker - The seeds of the new journalism are sprouting around us.
When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
