But then the Times produce rubbish like last weekend's article on saving money on rail fares, which was riddled with stupid inaccuracies, most of which would have resulted in passengers paying more, not less.
Just because not every article is good investigative journalism, it doesn't mean that good journalism doesn't exist. Kim Sengupta and Patrick Cockburn for example. It costs a lot of money to fund the time it takes for a journalist to do a proper indepth report, and people aren't willing to pay for that time anymore.
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If you blink you miss it, and it's pretty hard to find it again (I had to break out a second browser), but it does give you the option to support journalism on a more adhoc basis than subscribing to a magazine.
On the other hand I've cancelled my £3/week subscription to the independent because I couldn't read the paper due to pop-up adverts in their app taking over the thing.
I'm happy to pay for good journalism from any end of the spectrum. Quality journalism can succeed if people are willing to pay. I'm not sure if the problem is that people aren't willing to pay, or if they don't think about where the food comes from on the journalist's table. Anthony Loyd takes the risk that many journalists take, he gets kidnapped, beaten, and shot in his attempt to bring us journalism, surely it's worth a few pennies to pay for his airfare and mortgage? I'm not willing to spend £6 a week to subscribe to the times (even ignoring the Murdoch angle), but I'm happy to spend 20p to read a given article. If 100,000 people paid that 20p, that's £20k, which should cover a couple of weeks of normal journalism to produce an indepth article.
You are spot on with this. I can't stand the Daily Mail but to their credit they were hell bent on getting justice for Stephen Lawrence. And they are still snapping at the heels of the other three who murdered Stephen Lawrence. Sadly the residents of Eltham continue to look after their own although Neil Acourt is likely to go to jail for drugs offences and so will Jamie Acourt if the police catch him.
Here's an interesting angle on this case:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16750408
"There had been a riot the weekend before and the Daily Mail had this story about the riots...and in the middle of that story there was about Stephen and the fact that we had met [Nelson] Mandela."
When journalists from the paper came to interview Mr Lawrence, he confronted them.
He said: "The first thing I said to them was: 'Why did your editor put my family in the middle of all that violence, we are not about violence'."
...
"I said: 'But Mr Dacre, you've met my kids. I used to take my children to places where I work'. He had met Stephen and Stuart."
Mr Lawrence added: "Because of that, the Daily Mail has been one of the biggest supporters for us over this story."
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As someone who works in the regional newspaper industry, I can confirm the main reason investigative journalism (certainly in that sector of the industry) is practically dead is because hundreds of local newspaper journalists have been made redundant in the past few years. Most local newspapers are owned by a few big firms who believe cutting back the number of people who make newspapers is a good way to make a profit. Those journalists who are left are largely overworked and forced to look for easy ways of filling the pages, such as using press releases or User Generated Content (i.e. vanity publishing)
Of course this goes hand in hand with falling sales and falling advertising revenues, and it enters a downward spiral.
Newspaper circulation has been falling (even the Mail) regardless of the quality for some time, and I'm not sure what the best solution is. Unfortunatly as people move from getting their news from professionals to seeing what's trending on twitter, two things happen
1) As has happened over the last 15 years, more and more press releases get covered as news. It's cheap and easy way to fill column inches/broadcast minutes
2) People forget what journalism is supposed to be. Instead you have an anchor host a debate between someone who says the world is flat and someone who says it's round, give them both 2 minutes for their prepared talking points, and then say "there you go folks, the debate rages on, stay tuned for a kitten playing a piano".
Oh if only The Newsroom was real life.
Perhaps I have rose tinted glasses for news from a time I don't really remember?
