What is News?

As the media landscape shifts dramatically, the fate of newspapers is in the crosshairs.

Circulation figures show a 50 percent drop for the Courier News between 2005 and 2010, a trend I did not see firsthand, as I retired in 2003. But a stint of freelancing in 2007 kind of put me in the loop of a projected trend detailed in this Gannett Blog post.

Freelancers or what one editor called "information gatherers" as well as contributors to "Get Published" and the recently failed "InJersey" may well provide the content that strapped newsrooms can't, as paid staff dwindles. So what news stories will readers see on their phones and tablets?

The spectrum has gone from such close coverage of the local scene that once every crow that died of West Nile Virus got its own story (known in the newsroom of the time as "the dead crow beat"). More recently, the combining of the Courier News and Home News Tribune (itself a hybrid) has resulted in a very broad coverage area that is still supposed to be "hyperlocal," with national news on the next-to-last page of Section A. But do Plainfielders really read about Sayreville or East Brunswick with the same interest they have in the Queen City and neighboring towns?

News used to be what local elected officials were doing with your tax money, changes in leadership at schools and in City Hall, downtown doings, fires, crashes, crime and so on. The passing of prominent citizens was marked and changes in local institutions such as hospitals were noted. Good works were reported, as well as major disasters.

How much of all that do we need to know? Some news outlets may give a few seconds or sentences to a news story: Mayor Indicted, Floods Displace Hundreds, Fire Razes Downtown Block. Others cover news in depth, with maybe an eye on a journalism prize. Is one screen on an electronic device all we need? Do we take the time to digest comprehensive multi-media packages?

With the projected shift to content from "citizen journalists" and cell-phone photographers, will such news tell the whole story or even the real story of what is going on? What do you think?

--Bernice