Media analyst Ken Doctor is bullish on the future of the news business in a digital, post-newspaper age. He's especially keen on using smartphones, Kindles and iPads for content distribution and consumption; they're "much better than sitting locked in front of a desktop," he says.
But he worries about what is being lost as we hurtle toward this brave new world: Reporting.
Doctor, author of the new book "Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get" (St. Martin's Press), calculates that roughly a million fewer stories have been written in the last few years than would have been otherwise, due to newspaper closings, cutbacks and layoffs.
"The cuts have primarily been at local and regional papers," Doctor says in a phone interview. "People at school board meetings say they don't see reporters there as often as they used to.
"There's lots more writing and commentary on the Internet. But we have fewer people paid to find out facts about our complex world and weave it together so we can understand it. That's a big problem."
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Photo courtesy the author
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