Josh Benton, o editor chefe da revista digital Nieman Journalism Lab acaba de publicar um texto no qual se mostra pessimista sobre o futuro dos projetos jornalísticos voltados para a cobertura local. O artigo, recomendado por Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva, atribui às grandes plataformas de distribuição de conteúdos na internet a razão pela qual as páginas locais e hiperlocais poderão enfrentar muitas dificuldades para alcançar uma sustentabilidade financeira mínima.
Benton que plataformas de distribuição de conteúdos como Facebook, Google, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram e Youtube tendem a se transformar no ambiente para publicação de notícias locais, o que cria um dilema para os jornalistas em comunidades: tornar-se meros produtores de conteúdos que serão comercializados pelas plataformas; ou apostar numa, até agora, incerta sustentabilidade autônoma.
Veja os três primeiros parágrafos do artigo As giant platforms rise, local news is getting crusched (Enquanto as grandes plataformas crescem, o noticiário local é esmagado):
This has not been a good year for local news.
That’s a sentence I could have written any year for the past decade, for a host of reasons now numbingly familiar. But 2015 has felt like a turning point for the most threatened sector of the American news ecosystem. And I’m worried that some of what hopefulness remains in the system is being wrung out by changes in the larger digital world.
There will still be success stories, sure. But the most important job that local news has done for decades — providing a degree of accountability to thousands of local communities across the country — is increasingly going undone. And the chances of any true digital substitute arising seem to be on the decline. It’s worth stepping back for a moment to consider why things have gotten as bad as they have — and why I suspect they’ll get substantially worse in the next few years.
Let’s start out by looking at what are still the primary engines of local news: newspapers. As outmoded as ink-on-paper seems to many in 2015, there are very few communities where the largest local newsroom is attached to anything else.
Texto conpleto em http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/09/as-giant-platforms-rise-local-news-is-getting-crushed/