The Truth Monopoly Mindset:

The Truth Monopoly Mindset:

Finally, newspapers need to realize that they are no longer the monopoly on truth. If they report incorrectly, or misleadingly, the information is out there. There was a day when a newspaper’s competition was the opposition newspaper in the same town – now a newspaper’s competition in most metro areas is both a monopoly (most cities only have one major newspaper) and a model of perfect competition, as people can access just about every newspaper that is printed online, and bloggers can cover the same beats. I can imagine that civic disengagement can’t help but be exacerbated by a situation in which the only choice for news is “buy the paper or not” and people will, of course, choose not. Now that there is an infinite possibility of news sources, newspapers need to solicit more information from readers, be quicker in response to corrections (and be more responsible about printing those corrections in the same context and the same general priority as the original story ran,) and be more responsive to what consumers are asking for.

This is not so much an “annoyance” of the newspaper as it is the ultimate barrier towards implementing solutions aimed at eliminating the other six annoyances.