In "No Kidding" News

From the Los Angeles Times:

As the number of sources for news proliferates on digital platforms, most original reporting still comes from newspapers, television and radio.

A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that surveyed news gathering in Baltimore as an example of nationwide trends found that 95% of stories with fresh information came from "old media," and the vast majority of that from newspapers.

"The expanding universe of new media, including blogs, Twitter and local websites -- at least in Baltimore -- played only a limited role: mainly an alert system and a way to disseminate stories from other places," the study's authors write.

As much as the Internet and social media have been revolutionary, it's been catastrophic for the news model. We've got to find a way so that real reporting--and journalism as a whole--is rewarded and funded, a workable business. It's only going to get worse, and anyone who ever reads or watches the news on a fairly regular basis--no matter the outlet--quickly realizes that the sources, the original reporting, comes from a handful of big guns. Even the local news is usually done by the big paper in town, the one with the resources. Because money and manpower means that the story has a chance of being told.