Bulk of news on Web still comes from newspaper reporters? True or false?

LAT media columnist James Rainey writes:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-onthemedia-20110928,0,1025737.column

Who thinks this is still the case? Or does Rainey base an entire column on a false conclusion?

 

Re: Bulk of news still comes from newspapers? True or false?

Re your thread title: Yes

 

Re: Bulk of news on Web still comes from newspapers? True or false?

Added "Web" for clarification.

 

I read a lot of websites, I see few doing original reporting. And even the ones that do original work often use newspaper stories as jumping off points.

 

I'm pretty positive it's true, by a wide margin...with no empirical data to back that.

 

Where do wire services fall in this equation? I mean, AP gives the same stories to Yahoo as it does to the Podunk Press, right? So do you count AP, AFP, Reuters, et al., as newspaper reporters simply because the larger quantity of their clients are print-founded organizations?

 

It's definitely true. Nationally AP creates most of the news and I wouldn't really count them as a newspaper.

However, for every national story there are 10, 100 maybe 1000 local stories done on local issues by a podunk newspaper. All the local stories created by podunk papers goes to the web and those stories far outweigh the AP, Reuters ... etc.

If newspapers go by the wayside so does local news. TV can cover some but they can't go nearly as deep nor cover nearly as many stories due to time.

 

Bulk of news created? Definitely newspapers, simply by virtue of numbers.

A better question, though, would be how much of what gets READ is done by newspapers. Still a lot, for sure, but the percentage drops mightily when comparing it simply to stories created.

For example, several newspapers wrote stories on Nevin Shapiro and the UM scandal the day it broke.

But if you asked 1,000 people who read a story on the scandal that day what story(ies) they read, it would be an overwhelming edge to Yahoo!

 

This is interesting. And I agree. But I'm beginning to move into the faction that thinks the general reader doesn't know (or care) about source. Rainey makes this point in his column.
I saw a Web analytic that stated the AP rewrite of the Shapiro/Miami outperformed the original report.
Just by sheer number of postings across the Web, doesn't surprise me in the least.

 

It doesn't matter what the reader knows (or cares) about where the news comes from. The point is, when newspapers go, how much actual reporting will be left?

 

Anecdotal evidence here, but in the example you gave I clicked on the AP rewrite of the Miami story on ESPN.com because I happened to be on there reading a particular columnist. I saw the headline and clicked it. After reading that it became clear to me I wanted to go to Yahoo! and read its report.

Now I'm sure there were plenty of people that saw the AP rewrite and that was enough for them, but I'm also sure I wasn't alone in it leading me to click through about a two dozen different pages on Yahoo!.