Good newspapers, bad research, and the failure of market capitalism

Yet another badly researched newspaper article about Wikipedia, this time in The Age.

"Submission of new articles is slowing to a trickle"

Actually, new article creation is up 25% since the beginning of the year. Total editing is down 17% in the same period -- after climbing an exponential curve for several years. Hardly a trickle.

The mistake wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't the keystone of the article (the headline is "Delete generation rips encyclopedia apart"). Tellingly, The Age is owned by Fairfax Media, which is a publicly traded company -- which means that The Age's shareholders demand relentlessly increasing profits -- a 20% margin is a common floor for papers.

The New York Times (and other non-public papers) only needs to make around 5 percent. So the Times can afford to do actual research, while the Age apparently can't.

Note to media owners: cutting so many corners that your journalism becomes detached from reality isn't "smart business" -- it's wringing the name value out of your properties until they stop being relevant.

Q: What do the New York Times, NPR, the BBC, and Wikipedia have in common?

A: They all inspire fanatical loyalty.

A: They've all run stories about Wikipedia that are actually accurate.

A: They all have people on the ground in Iraq. (Unlike the Age, the Telegraph, and -- dare I say it -- Fox News.)

A: None of them has to answer to shareholders.

Geoff has much more.