Newspapers dying. You should care.
Debra Saunders, who’s a (the?) conservative columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, is upset by conservative glee every time a dead-tree newspaper takes a hit:
Conservatives rooting for newspapers’ demise should be careful what they wish for. Yes, fewer reporters mean fewer biased stories about lesbian immigrants fighting an unsympathetic establishment. But there also won’t be as many stories about sanctuary city policies gone bad, the latest zany law out of San Francisco City Hall or the growing bite that public employee pension systems are taking out of city and county services. They don’t understand that Fox News and talk radio aren’t going to report on stories that require local beat reporting and time-consuming and expensive investigation.
She’s got a point there. Remember that the story of Mayor Smoove’s murderous drug-dealing gang member illegal alien shuttle service and “cultural affirmation” grants was broken and and developed by the SF Chronicle’s Jaxon Van Derbeken. Major kudos to the paper and to Van Derbeken for his work there. And the paper’s done a good job of keeping up with the investigation of the murder of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey and the connections to the rotten racket calling itself Your Black Muslim Bakery.
As much as I’m for amateur and semi-pro sleuthing, the fact remains that most news gets reported because someone, somehow, gets paid to report it. Obviously, newspapers need to adapt and respond to market pressures. And maybe someday maybe the web will be organized to deliver the same degree of full-time local reporting and investigation that print media does, and a paperless news environment will come about. Until then I’m going to keep subscribing to a paper–even though I’m not in any particular hurry to get cable TV.
When we moved to NoVa, one of the first things I did was sign up for the Washington Times. They’ve got a great stable of investigators there, especially (but not limited to) Audrey Hudson, Jerry Seper, and Sara Carter. I’d been reading (and linking) their writing for years and now that I’m local and wanted a daily paper, I thought I’d support them.
______________
{Post by See-Dubya.}
See what others have said
Note from Michelle: This section is for comments from michellemalkin.com's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that I agree with or endorse any particular comment just because I let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with my terms of use may lose his or her posting privilege.
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
 |
Global Warmists Seek to Flush Out ‘Denier’ Meteorologists
January 30, 2012 04:09 PM by Doug Powers
104 Comments
Did you miss the Christmas White House visitor log document dump?
January 2, 2012 03:31 PM by Michelle Malkin
68 Comments
Left Kind of Upset With Politifact’s ‘Lie of the Year’ Choice
December 20, 2011 01:41 PM by Doug Powers
73 Comments
Capitalist Magazine Seeks to Reap Profit By Exploiting ’99%’ With Annual Distinction
December 14, 2011 10:34 AM by Doug Powers
102 Comments
Al Sharpton: Parody We Much
December 11, 2011 03:33 PM by Doug Powers
38 CommentsLib media journos punked by fake SEIU press release
December 7, 2011 09:41 AM by Michelle Malkin
31 Comments
Professor: ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ Promotes Bullying
December 5, 2011 04:39 PM by Doug Powers
136 Comments
Pundit & Pundette
» Obama's war on conscience, cont'dBabalu Blog
» Greece is BurningBetsys Page
» Cruising the WebPatterico
» NYT hails the safety net: Poor hardest hitDaily Caller
» Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizationsAmSpecBlog
» Weekend Political Wrap-UpJustOneMinute
» I Guess I'm Still Stuck On StupidThe Hill
» Rep. Ron Paul not conceding Maine vote
print Magazines like Time and Newsweek can go away..
hell, if all doctor’s and dentist’s office would quit subscribing to them, their circulation would fall by half..
Sorry, couldn’t care less if the SF Chronicle is in the toilet, or any other newspaper, for that matter. Newspapers ceased to be relevant years ago.
The last time someone came to my door to sell a paper, the best he could do was “Well, they have great coupons for stuff you need.” I just smiled and said no thanks.
I quit buying and reading newspapers a few years ago because I was tired of seeing my money go into the pockets of people with views so far to the left of mine. I rather miss lounging around on my couch with my coffe and newspaper but it became too infuriating. If/when the newspapers start responding with more balanced coverage I will start buying again.
I get the local paper as well here in the desert, it’s also available online at mydesert.com if you’re ever wondering whats going on in the Palm Springs area or plan a visit.
mydesert.com
Therein lies the rub, see_dub. The papers don’t seem inclined to “adapt” or “respond to market pressures.” They seem content wtih doing the same ol’ biased reporting they have for years.
It really isn’t surprising that they are declining so quickly. I agree that we need journalists that are paid to investigate and break the news. But, it is the bias that is hurting papers the most. More people get their news from the internet now than anywhere, it would seem.
I think See-Dub has a good point overall..
where else would you go to get coupons for the local store, post a garage sale classified add, see who is getting engaged/married/divorced (once in a great while, the same person will be in all three), obituaries, and the local news and investigations..
but I would like to think that the local paper really is local.. not some big umbrella news corp. that has the same headlines in every other paper across the US..
Local paper,
Local control,
Local ownership.
If The Washington Times had better local reporting, I’d subcribe too, but the WaPo beats them hands down in that area.
One of the things we love to do with our mullet (fish) wrapper here in the office is look for typo’s and grammar problems. The paper keeps us busy. My all time favorite was “boituaries”.
Don’t let
Disconews papers die, kill them.The newspapers need to come online with well built sites that are user friendly for commenting. My local paper, The Grand Rapids Press, is a joke. They download everything from the AP, for National News, and with local stories, they are usually a one sided story that leaves you with more questions than answers. They have no investigative skills that are apparent to the reader.
I get my local newspaper on line. It too, is a liberal one in their views on reporting the news.
L
The “Old media ” as I like to call them, are digging their own grave with every slanted story they publish. I believe that if they go under, it will be a good thing! Paid reporters have to have a job to get paid…they will find a place to go, or change the way they slant coverage, it is that simple.
Mourning the decline of paper news is like mourning the loss of cassete tapes. You can still buy cassete tapes, but why would you?
Sorry, Ms. Saunders, but newspapers across the nation set a course for their own demise when they made the decision to follow NYT’s leftist model in presenting local coverage.
I loose no sleep over my state’s largest, left-leaning newspapers the Lexington Herald-Leader and Louisville Courier-Journal’s dwindling readerships and declining bottom lines.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I read the Chronicle on the train going to work. It’s worth the 25 cents to pass the time. I do wonder, however, why the paper is so consistently left, when it’s owned by Hearst. I worked for the Chronicle/Examiner for nearly 20 years, back in the 70s and 80s. The Hearsts owned the SF Examiner, and the Chronicle was owned by the DeYoung familiy, who had had it since its founding in 1865. The DeYoung family sold the paper to the Hearsts, who then disbanded the Examiner and sold it. Today, the Examiner is one of a chain of free papers around the country. The Chron, meanwhile, has moved far, far left in the last several years. Not surprisingly, the paper has lost over $200,000,000 in the last 5 years, and has laid off many staff people. I simply don’t understand how business people can be so blind.
do all people in San Fran think the only news outlet is radio, TV, and newspapers?
sorry, toots. i’d rather get all of my news from blogs than read any newspaper. i hope they do die out. it will be the best self inflected death of an industry to date.
It just seems like there are no true journalists out there see-dub. I love newspapers but can’t stomach the complete and total liberal bias in most of the stories and opinions.
Instead of offering analysis of problems and possible solutions for said problems, they are only out to place the blame for social ills on conservatives. Can’t Like That.
Just maybe what few actual reporters that will be left in the rubble will start their own “real” papers, that just “report” on the news.
Like in the words that once were, “newspaper” and “reporter”.
Like everything else in life, if the liberal newspapers die out there will be replacements. When one obsolete archaic business dies out, another more effect business takes its place. Conservative bloggers can replace newspapers. They have common sense, sophisticated investigative skills, proof of facts, analytical questioning and a worldwide web audience eager for the truth. SF needs local bloggers to break a few stories and draw readership toward themselves. Liberal newspaper editors like to add commentary to hard news and falsify information without fact checking. I get my Britney Spears drama from AOL & FOXNEWSSHEPARDSMITH and my hard news from Conservative bloggers
should read
Newspapers dying.
YouTHEY should care.Attempting to save a liberal establishment from itself is a losing proposition. When capitalist survival instincts kick in – because reality bites – then I’ll care.
Investigative reporting is but one aspect of news reporting. The other news, the stuff that affects our daily lives whether it is regular police blotter stuff to loacal activities also are suffering from under reporting by the mainstream media. There is a growing groundswell and network of what is being call Main Street Media that is emerging on the net. It is reporting done by non paid citizens, but it is reporting to sticks to the basics of what reporting should be. Who, What, Where, When, and How with not so much empahsis on Why.
The web is full of pucidts, each willing to chip in with their 2¢: worth, but the grassroots reporting is starting to take hold. Once it is able to established under a couple of big banners on consolidated sites then the old media is really going to have a problem.
The biggest detriment to this citizen type reporting is that this sort of Main Street Media reporting doesn’t pay the bills. Once somebody figures out how to fund these citizen journalists so that they can take this on in a more full time occupation to replace their current jobs. It is hard to attend city council meetings or respond to an emergency situation when you are working at another job.
The tools are out there for the citizen journalist, what remains to be answered is how to make the time.
Wee see-dubya I can see that Debra Saunders
does have a point and something to think about. They we see her discription as “a (the?) conservative columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle“.
When we buy or subscribe to a Lefty newspaper we are more propping up a Leftist/fascist organ than the token conservative.
So perhaps I should care about the fate of newspapers, but my fear and hatred of fascim tempers that concern.
So I’ll read it again and see what happens.
I’d miss the local paper if it died.
I want to have one of the papers that is struggling run an experiment with across-the-board straight or even slightly to-the-right reporting of the news. I bet something other than the typical lefty bias would get picked up and read – thus possibly saving the business.
Heck, that’d be a story in itself for an investigative reporter: “Daily Planet Turns Right – Formerly Socialist Enterprise Saved By Capitalism”
I have always been a newspaper junkie but I still can’t abide the incessant liberal cr#p that fills our local’s pages. Why does it have to be this way? You’d think, with the circulation numbers crashing down, they’d try a different tack. And don’t even get me started on the Newspapers-in-Education promotions……
See-Dubya, one good thing about your reporting, it’s not a waste of paper. My preferences for the news, I have not subscribed to two local rags in the past 20 years, is not haveing it wrapped in political correctness. One of them is so self deluded it offers subscription for a fee to their online “news paper”.
I would in fact be sad to see the NY Times go under… We would lose a marquee for liberal duplicity. Very sad indeed.
I don’t subscribe to a paper because I am on an airplane in a different city most weeks. I will usually get USA Today or the WSJ dropped outside my door, but mostly pull local, state and national news RSS feeds, as well as several blogs onto my Yahoo page.
I was mulling this over..
See-Dub.. are you arguing that the Free Market should NOT determine the outcome of the printed paper?
let the leftist rags fail and hope that a centrist or right of center paper opens?
or sort of program rushed through the congress to help the papers stay ‘afloat’ and help ‘bail’ them out..
the Newpaper, after all, too big to fail..
The newspapers have themselves to thank for their growing irrelevancy. Conservatives have known for years of the open bias, but now, even though liberals love the bias (because its in their favor), some of them actually want the truth, and are offended by attempts to have their thoughts controlled by the media. Welcome to the club, libs.
I’m not against newspapers per se, I’m against biased reporting by said newspapers. If their editors (and I’m speaking generally here) would actually report news without their personal political spin on it (which in many cases is liberal), then perhaps their industry wouldn’t be collapsing. Don’t blame the public for not buying newspapers, look at why they’re not buying them and you might find the reason is the newspapers themselves. They are the cause of their own demise.
What will my bird and cat think? No more SF Chron or NYT to poop on! Oh the animal cruelty.
As far as I am concerned, newspapers are so biased (may I say corrupted?) by the left that they are no longer redeemable.
I am weary of being dissed by a bunch of indoctrinated elitists from the journalism school.
Newspapers? Let ‘em die. Something will replace them.
There’s something to be said for having a paper delivered every morning. Still, I regret the hard-left views of too many reporters and editorialists.
I subscribe to my local Midwestern paper, a fairly conservative daily, but I question some of the syndicated articles that it chooses to run. For example, yesterday, it ran Paul Krugman’s useless rant about Republicans after the piece ran in the NY Times a day or two before. Balancing viewpoints is one thing; I scratched my head through the entire article.
In the end, I’m concerned that losing papers will also ring the death knell for people who provide readers with an invaluable service–the copy editors. Maybe some of them are hacks, but it’s nice to know that people such as Bill Walsh (WaPo), John McIntrye (Baltimore Sun), Pam Nelson (Charlotte Observer), Jan Schenk (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal), and Craig Lancaster (Billings Gazette) are minding the store at their papers.
I get better news on the ‘net. The local advertiser provides enough paper to help start the charcoal. The only birds I have are wild birds at the feeder.
Nope, no need for a newspaper.
If I get what I wish for than the old dead tree media will be gone and the alphabetized media will be history….I don’t care one whit how they “feel” about our glee at their demise….they have placed themselves in this dying position and oh by the way it’s not just conservatives….they are trusted less then the 9 percent congress….Americans know when they are being shystered and they and I have had quite enough thank you.
First off, newspapers are dying. Deal with it.
Second, A) either the market will generate replacement(s) or B) it will not.
If A), no problem.
If B), what would C.W./Saunders propose to keep newspapers going? Government subsidy (I’m sure a lot of lib journalists are mulling over that one!) or regulation? Likely it’s somewhere in the constitution that it’s a crime against freedom of speech if Saunders and her ilk are in danger of losing their jobs. But if it’s not, and the Constitution really has nothing to say about the employment status of Debra and her friends, then we are back to deal with it.
Oh, the humanity. The vanishing of newspapers is just one more enormous burden the citizens of the republic will have to bear as technology relentlessly marches on crushing all before it.
My local paper’s editorial staff has the political outlook of Nancy Pelosi and has become nothing more than a printed version of the AP Headlines website. The small town, and the surrounding rural area, is 72% registered Republican. You would think that someone at the paper might take into account the political leanings of their customer base, wouldn’t you?
Newspapers such as the Atlanta Journal/Constitution lost their relevance years ago when they turned the editorial over to people like Cynthia Tucker, an affirmative-action hire, who turned the paper into a one-note pony on race. People got tired of reading her rants and the liberal leftist views she and her “reporters” forced on the public, thus the newspaper’s readers disappeared. So has the Atlanta Journal/Constitution in most of Georgia as a result, since no one is buying it. This paper stands as the poster child for going against your market and wondering why your market share collapses. My local paper here is, unfortunately, not much either, so I end up getting most of my news from the net.
Papers that continue to shoot themselves in the foot shouldn’t wonder why it hurts. Self-inflicted wounds usually do.
Sorry, but I don’t care, not for most newspapers. And I don’t find her reasoning very compelling, either. This notion that important stories will go unreported unless we keep dead tree liberal media is, frankly, bunk. We’ve plenty of examples where important stories were in fact not picked up until Drudge and Fox and the right blogosphere hammered on them.
Lib newspapers jumped all over the Vito Fosella story, but ignored John Edwards’ dalliances. You’re telling me I should shed tears of these newspapers? Hell no. Let them die. Haven’t we always argued that if these news outlets don’t truly serve the public, that the public would stop supporting them financially? So why are we changing that position?
No. Let most of them die. If I could get a kind of national Washington Times, I would. But I’m not going to support papers with writers that are doing their damndest to get Democrats elected. No thank you.
I’m sure plenty of print media reporters could transition from dead tree to the 24-hour-a-day video news with little problem. The networks need their information from somewhere.
Our local newspaper collapsed because of the liberal tripe. Then along came a free newspaper supported only by advertising. The stories are much more informative, fact filled, middle of the road. When the business is required to attract people to pick it up, they are much more in touch with the sentiments of the people. You need wide appeal to get readers to make free work.
All the local ads are online from the stores, because of the newspaper failure … So there are alternatives for the grocery buyers to get sale ads.
It appears it is the paid ‘subscriber base’ that leads to abuse of very same subscriber.
“They don’t understand that Fox News and talk radio aren’t going to report on stories that require local beat reporting and time-consuming and expensive investigation.”
The point being that the pooling of resources (advert. & subscription money) allows the funding of full-time investigation of local news. The thing is, the money itself will not cease to exist just because a newspaper (or even a print conglomerate like Tribune or Knight-Ridder) folds, and the urge to pool such resources will likewise not go away. The ability to do so will present itself soon enough, as well, albeit not under the auspices of the tired hacks who currently run the game.
That said, I do prefer to read a newspaper over a computer screen.
My glee over newspaper’s loss of readers is the hope that the businessmen that run the papers will eliminate the Liberal Bias out of self-preservation!
Let’s not forget the elephant in the newspaper industry’s room: they’re selling yesterday’s news!
I remember when most papers had a morning and an evening edition and when the Boston papers had as many as 5 daily editions.
Also the overall product IMO has degraded steadily since the early 1980s
starting when electronic composition resulted in newspapers being laid out around the adverts rather than the other way around back in the “cut and paste” days.
I’m sure many readers here find it most annoying to jump 2 or even 3 sections of a paper to finish a story.
Also the content to advert ratio has been steadily dropping.
This is something happening to all the “old” media, audience shrink results in lower ad rates thus the amount of advertising increases to make up causing still more audience shrinkage
resulting in yet another round of layoffs and discontinued features…classic (slow) death spiral.
Also, how many newspapers ( and other media outlets) are truly “local” anymore?
With “chain” papers, seems the first thing they cut back on is local content to be replaced by wire-service content.
It’s very possible these big media conglomerates will fall apart and local ownership will return.
My local daily figured it out – rather than “adapt and respond”, they just raised the price per copy from 50 cents to $1.
I agree with Debra Saunders, we do need good responsible local reporting, but if that means putting up with 95% of the articles being left-wing nonsense then let it die… I’ve lived in SF for more than 30 years; I stopped reading the Chronicle 20 years ago. I get my SF news from neighborhood newspapers, blogs and local websites. I’d love to have a readable daily, but the clown college on 5th and Mission doesn’t deserve to survive. When it’s gone something will be there to replace it.
If you build a car that uses five miles to a gallon. If the paint fades in a year. If it’s in the shop more than you drive it, you won’t but it again. Newspapers have lost most of their credibility. IT’S A BAD PRODUCT.
The way Bush and Washington are working over the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech will probably go the way of habeas corpus, freedom from search and seizure, and other rights anyway.
I think of newspapers as the headwaters of our information streams and rivers. That’s where the real reporting is done, then it trickles down into other media sources. Without them, I don’t know where we’d get any well-researched news. If newspapers die, we’ll have a lot of dry river beds. To extend the analogy beyond reason LOL.
I don’t even mind biased reporting. What annoys me is when the Annointed Ones try to tell me they AREN’T biased, but oh, so objective, when anyone who reads at a fourth grade level knows better. Go ahead and report according to your perceptions of the world, just be honest with your biases.
When we lived in NoVa, we got the Washington Times for national news and three (3!) free weeklies that reported on local news (council meetings, police reports, etc.) Newspapers CAN make money if they fill market need.
BTW, the Washington Times has a national weekly edition. A few years back I ordered it for my step-father. He loves to relax in the evening with a paper, but he’d grown disgusted with the liberal slant of his local rag. It was a big hit, and now I renew it for him every year as his Christmas present.
I haven’t read all the comments, see-dubya, but – respectfully! – your concerns are overblown. The fact of the matter is that all the same reporting can be done with fewer reporters online, rather than print. Local reporting won’t suffer at all, and will actually be better, because you won’t be reading yesterday’s news in the morning.
Once the dinosaur media realizes that people don’t want to pay $2 for biased crap that they can get for free online, they will cut the print stuff and expand the reporting staff appropriately. It’s a normal business cycle.
Hmm. I suppose I might agree with her sentiment if I truly believed that the dead-tree press actually reported news anymore….or, indeed, did any investigative journalism at all.
The very few newspapers available here seem to have no journalists on staff, a marginal reporter force (most of who regurgitate AP releases, with little or no confirmation….or make 1 or 2 phone calls to like-minded sources that espouse the same view), and a ridiculous percentage of columnists…talking heads telling you how you should feel about some issue, with no room for dissent.
As example, most papers no longer have a reporter with a science background on staff. That means they use regular reporters who gushingly report what the latest study says, but haven’t the background to evaluate whether what they’re being told is pure hype ‘n tripe or something substantive.
In this day and age of press release before (or even instead of) peer review, the science beat reporter becomes even more important, but they were deemed unimportant and died out.
If I could find a paper with just news, no entertainment section, no sports section, no classifieds, etc; in which the reporting was clear and well researched and where you couldn’t read the reporters bias (regardless of direction…left, right, who cares if the facts are what lead you there rather than fitting the facts to some press hacks preconceived notions) in every second word…..I’d be inclined to subscribe. Yeah, that’ll happen in my lifetime.
Until then, I’ll get my news from a headline aggregator set for headlines from left and right sources and make the assumption that reality is somewhere in the middle. Just like I have for the past 5 years. [/rant]
BTW, thanks for opening comments Ms Malkin, love the site. And greetings all, from a newly registered member.
Of course, it probably won’t happen, because newspapers and network news consistently run an industry with a stunning and complete lack of concern for their customers.
It’s not that conservatives are happy every time a newspaper dies. It’s that we’re happy every time a preposterously-pro-left-biased newspaper dies. The lesson to be learned is not that newspapers don’t sell or can’t survive, but rather that they actually have to report the news instead of making up whatever fits their agenda.
I may be mistaken here, since I don’t closely track the circulation numbers. .
But AFAIK, it’s the aging titans like NYT that are dying. They’re a bit of a different creature than a local paper. The local papers around here are doing fine, and given most people’s interest in local news, I doubt that the small local papers will be going away any time soon.
WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, AND HOW was the standard format for journalist. They would have multiple sources. A balanced approach. That’s all gone.
Nearly all the articles I read have an activist slant. Never mind the editorial pages.
I haven’t read a newspaper in fifteen years. Wasn’t even sure Atlanta still had a paper until I read bradley’s comment at #36. lol
I still buy a Sunday paper, and probably will for some time to come. This paper gets read over my usual Sunday lunch (chicken sandwich and coffee).
If you want true newspaper sacrilege, the Hartford Courant has been putting the Sunday comic section into SATURDAY’S paper for some time now.
I’m sorry but if the Boston Globe-Democrat takes a dive because I won’t read it too bad. If they bothered to report the news honestly once in a while I might just buy a copy. I even cancelled my “once a week” local suburban town paper because the editorial page was so biased. Maybe if times get tough enough for these folks the will stop pushing their socialist drivel down my throat.
See, here’s the problem – most newspapers, regardless of their tilt, do stupid things with their Internet presences and make crucial mistakes with marketing by not bringing us content that we want to read. I read the NY Post and not the NY Times, primarily because I find the NY Post more interesting (and closer to my belief set) but also more willing to be open to more than one viewpoint across the board, instead of just relegating conservatives to the editoral pages. Content must be interesting and useful, with more than one POV, or it will be soundly rejected and passed over by the consumers.
As for the web presences of most of these dying newspapers, I can point to the Star-Ledger of NJ as a perfect example of a bungled site – ridiculously hard to search, content for today’s paper is only available later in the day, structured horribly (far too many advertisements thrown all willy-nilly around any particular page).
What garbage. So now I’m to be blackmailed into subscribing? If I don’t I wont have accurate news stories because only newspaper reporters are qualified to write stories?
Information sharing existed long before newspapers. And if newspapers want to remain relevant the way to do that is to adapt and change and get with the times. And her premise that print ads make more revenue is flawed. I’d like to see the profit margin on both forms of ad revenue. I bet cyper ads is higher.
It’s like music execs crying about lost revenue. Newspaper reporters once used to have a place of honor in our society. now they don’t. I think this article is more about the loss of pay and prestige than anything else.
Information will always be shared. The medium for that has never been the same. Newspapers need to figure that out.
If they could go back to reporting the facts, i.e., who, what, when, where, why, and leave their liberal opinions out of it they would stand a chance, but, since they have their collective heads stuck in an un-named orifice I’m afraid it will never happen
I have no problem with see-dubya’s viewpoint as to the specific point of LOCAL NEWS. The 4th Estate long ago entered the national political arena and have since then been manipulating those things, and only those things, that they wanted their readers to know. I am one of those persons who is cheering from the sidelines as the old MSM print media follow the dinosaurs into history. They committed suicide by disenfranchising mainstreet America all the while promoting a Socialist/Progressive agenda. Bye-bye!
What do you expect in an era where The National Enquirer is more credible than The New York Times?
I agree with some of her reasoning. I would hate to see my local or State wide papers fold and would do what I could to keep them alive–even those that I disagree with politically. I suppose the people in the mega cities feel the same way about their papers. What I would like to see happening with the mega city papers is less spin and more journalism. I think that’s about the only way they are going to stay relevant to a wider population. They need to re-earn general respect for reliability, honesty and perspective.
When I was in High School I used to read a large portion of the New York Times every day. When I was in college, I was required to do research on various magazines and newspapers. I noticed that each paper or magazine had its own focus. I am very conservative, but when I saw just how liberally slanted so many papers were, I was able to see it and then decide just how I was going to deal with it. Now, one does not need to do research to see the slant. The pretense of “reporting” is gone and the purpose of many papers is now just political. I think papers still serve a great function. If you want to see where liberals are heading, read the NYT and other political arms of the Democratic party. You will see by the objections and assertions the philosophies of the left exposed. We need these organs of socialism to keep what they stand for out in the open.
I don’t want all the newspapers to go away only some of them. What I really like to see is the reincarnation of these newspapers into unbiased institutions. I think it begins in Journalism schools…
TTFK, hmm, I get the Harford Curant (in eastern CT) with the sunday funnies in the sunday section. On the other hand I know of many papers that do “mis-deliver” the funnies.
I haven’t subscribed to my local paper, Gannet’s Journal News, since I moved back to Rockland County, NY in 1981. Being very active in the pro-life movement, I was disgusted with the lopsided coverage given the opposition. I’ve since seen the same lop-sided coverage of all political issues.
They don’t deserve a dime from me (I do make a rare exception when one of my kids’ pictures makes the paper).
I subscribe to the NY Post and get most local news from friends, co-workers and a free local village paper that is more balanced.
What really confounds me is that the more circulation these liberal rags lose, the more stridently liberal they become.
At some point I expect some conservative or non-political entrepeneur will sieze the opportunity, step in and run these guys out of town. That is, unless they run themselves out of town first.
The problem is much greater than the predictable liberal bias. The truth is that reporters generally have a very narrow education that prevents them from understanding the stories they are reporting. Add their often demonstrated laziness and what you end up with are stories that get the facts wrong (often exactly backwards). We’ve all seen this when we read stories about things we know about, but the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect works to make us forget it when we read stories where we don’t already know the facts. The truth is you’re wasting your money by paying for a broken product.
Ok, I don’t exactly get the point of this article. Are you actually saying that we should shut up and support this? Sorry, but that sounds extremely socialist to me.
If newspapers want business, they can compete for it just like every other business in our capitalistic country.
That IS the American way after all…
I don’t even bother with newspapers. Anything I want I get on the internet. I haven’t had a newspaper delivered in years. I did buy one local paper recently; just to check “help wanted” ads. BTW, see-dubya, welcome to Northern Virginia and Fairfax County. I just moved from there, after 40 years, and happy that I did. It’s been over 3 months and I still haven’t seen a “day laborer” around. Front door is open and neighbors are great…mostly military.
Houston is not well served by our local rag (another Hearst paper). Between the leftward tilt and the censorship on their blogs I would not miss them being gone at all.
adapt or die, that is my understanding of the market. these papers get all of the info from the left leaning AP. Any true journalism, will continue as these true journalists will find a forum within the ‘new’ market demand that exists.
newspapers have made themselves irrelevant when they began to get their news from the one single source (AP) and became a propaganda tool for the democrats or the left side. any true investigative journalist will still find a paycheck in the new market of online if they are worth the read.
WSJ is thriving, which makes you wonder if the lack of thriving has to do with what is being printed (slanted to the left). It does seem that these papers that are failing to gain subscribers has more to do with the paper being an opinion piece on every page. Why would I want to get regurgitated news from AP and pay for it?
adapt or die..it is evolution at its best..funny how the process of evolution is found as repugnant to those that believe in it?
Someone will keep the liberal papers afloat if nothing more than to enable them to leave off copies every morning at the school libraries.
Not to mention they will need lots of reading material for the re-education camps when the time comes.
I used to read 2-3 newspapers per day. Now I get one for the weather page and birdcage liners. I find the articles too poorly written to bother reading them.
Are you kidding? What is this?
First and foremost, any true “journalist” died out a long time ago. The demise of the papers has already happened and we going through a cleansing process.
Just like any other market condition, it will right itself with something better and more efficient.
The one thing I can’t stand, which is my disagreement with the RNC and so many politicians, is when they use the liberal line of disagreeing with things because the other side is doing it, but when it affects them, they change their tune.
Either AP or Reuters will get the picture and change in order to survive, or they will die with their stupidity and a new, better organization will sprout up in its place. No to both articles!
If the newspapers die, let them. I have no sympathy for leftist rags spreading disinformation.
As for local news, let the free market come up with its own solutions. Pamphleteers a la Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, et al, can step up and fill the void. Let it spring up via grass roots.
Like most here, I know most newspapers are biased. But I think more than anything we are seeing the evolution of the ‘printed’ word. I’m sure the typesetters unions were upset when electronic type came out but news continued– just in a different way.
Today we have instant reporting from MIDs, satellite video from around the world, Blogs, etc, etc. And of course, nature abhors a vacuum. No need to fear, news will happen and be reported. Just not the same way. That is progress.
And thank God for the Internet (no Al, I wasn’t talking to you). The far left had almost completely taken control of all news, training (brainwashing) of journalists, and were even opening a new front on the only media they did not control completely (talk radio and the ‘fairness doctrine’). Instantly they lost their growing monopoly. We must, MUST protect this medium as the last bastion of a truly free press. Don’t fear it– embrace it.
I majored in Journalism and History at San Francisco State University in the 1970s and 80s. The Journalism Dept, at that time, was staffed by career reporters and editors who taught us to write, edit, and layout a paper. There was NO political indoctrination in class, and no “agenda”. This was in the days before PC. Today, the department is staffed with “diversity hires”, and it shows. The major focus of them all seems to be ethnic media and “diversity”. This phenomenon has happened at J-schools all over the country.
Well, if the newspapers go the way of the buggy whip they have no one to blame but themselves. Printing biased articles, and outright lies have consequences. They should have stuck with reporting the TRUTH and let the chips fall where they may. Don’t worry the local news will be reported.
That’s ok.
I hope they ALL go.
I’d rather not see them around to brainwash the masses (trying to pass off deviant behavior as normal) and steal elections with their lies.
I took my local paper for decades, despite it’s never changing liberal slant. Its reporters and editors changed, but its left-looking output never did. When it endorsed Kerry, I called, told the editor I was cancelling, why I was cancelling, and hung up. Since then, I’ve picked up a copy several times a year just to see what might have changed. Nothing but the price! My only paid newspaper subscription now is the weekly Washington Times.
Think of all the paper that would be saved if the Neanderthal News succumbed to evolution.
Liberal policies are destroying our country. Liberal hedonism is subverting our culture. And, liberal reportage has killed newspapers.
We must all stop tolerating liberal intolerance.
Seems to be a pattern with Hearst. We used to have two papers here, a liberal (and failing one) owned by Hearst, and a more conservative (and thriving) one owned by Newscorp (Murdoch). Hearst bought out the Newscorp paper, closed their old one, and moved the staff of their old liberal paper to the new acquisition. So, now we have only one liberal paper left.
My local paper, the Springfield “Republican,” is nothing more than reprinted AP stories. Local coverage is amateurish and sparse, for the most part, and the editorial page is a giant liberal diatribe, topped by cartoons by Toles (who apparently does nothing but anti Bush scribbling. “Editorial” articles by Kerry, Olver and local commie sympathizer Michael Meeropol (head of the Economics Dept. at Western New England College and son of the Rosenbergs. Yes. those Rosenbergs) just make the paper an ulcer inducing waste of trees and money.
Yes, there is a token conservative column, usually Krauthammer, and the occasional, non brainwashed letter from local conservatives who live far enough out in the sticks to assure that their cars won’t be keyed or worse by socialists in training from the local liberal universities (I work at one now, so writing to the paper is verboten!).
Did you know that they give out free copies of the NYTimes, the Boston Globe, and the “Republican” at local universities? Just keeping those skulls full of mush mushy, I guess.
My wife buys the Sunday edition for the ads, but I am convincing her that the online versions are a viable alternative.
Would I miss this paper? No. Would I welcome something like the Washington Times? Yes.
Right on, DanMan #71. But with the backing of the socialist/Communist Hearst empire and being able to hire the losers of academia, journalists, we are stuck with Houston’s only slime rag!
Yes, but for every decent story the SF Chronicle, you get 10,000 stories about how wonderful gay marriage is. Let’s just dance on their grave. We are losing nothing. It cannot get worse, it can only get better as far as the newspapers are concerned.
Sorry but I cannot generate any sympathy for the newspapers. For too many years these elitists told us what to think, how to think, and made us feel generally negative about the world. I choose to do without them.
Agreed. We should not be taking the decline and/or closing of newspapers as gleeful occasions. A free and vibrant news media/journalism is key to a free society.
I, for one, would love to acquire a newspaper as I think as well as my fellow conservatives know the key to turning one around. Limit opinion to the op-ed pages. Have the reporters concentrate on an overwhelming quest for the facts of the news stories they cover. Play no favorites. And, above all, to coin a phrase, “Be fair and balanced.!”
But where would I go to do my Sudoku and crossword? The Press?
Seriously, the only reason I subscribe to the Houston Comical is for the puzzle page and Shannon Buggs (biz columnist).
I last delivered newspapers in 1970. Any insights that I might possess are surely antiquated by now.
Hmmm. Maybe they should print the news on carry-out paper bags at the grocery store. I don’t know about the rest of ya’, but I’ve ALWAYS hated those plastic sacks. The guy that invented them should be dealt with — harshly.
My collie says:
Yeah. That way, people could mix and match.
Are newspapers dying? I subscribe to my local paper. Its been dead for years. I always wonder, where is the interesting local news? Where is a truthful crime blotter? Where is the crusading spirit that condemns public employee unions that are bleeding city and state governments white?
Liberals running newspapers had the choice as to whether to be truthful and interesting or to regurgitate the liberal worldview. We live in fascinating times. You’d never know it from the local dailies. Liberalism ignores what is most dramatic and interesting about about our cities and turns out the same dull myopic liberal narrative day after day.
Our nation was built on the free flow of ideas made accessable to the masses by the printing press. It’s sad to see it abandoned instead of revitalized.
Replace ‘printing press’ with ‘the internet’ in the above statement and I believe you will see the folly of your argument.
Now the free flow of ideas is made accessible by the flow of electrons along wires and fibers, then decoded into text and displayed on your screen. Most Americans own computers today, and most of them are either on the Internet or have access to it.
The best thing is that you don’t have to read about what happened yesterday, you see what’s happened thirty minutes ago if you desire, or one minute ago if you live stream.
The Remedy for Unpopular Speech is not LESS Speech it is MORE Speech.
Lessons I learned when Imus was lynched in the Mainstream Media.
Perception trumps Reality, and Commerce trumps both.
I say let those that can not find buyers go by the way. They will be replaced with others who will find buyers. Thats how its worked in this country since the begining. The USA’s history is littered with scores of newspapers that did not survive. Nature abhors a vacuum. Let change happen!
Its too bad the media liberal elites are so stubborn in their ideology that they are losing their newspapers and network news like NBC, CBS, and ABC. What will it take for them to get back to true journalism that is fair and balanced? I think it is too late. The internet has taken their place!
Liberal bias is its own punishment. It makes newspaper management incapable of recognizing that they have lost touch with their customers, and what to do about it.
Still, after all is said and done, if we look at the good that has been performed by newspapers and the bad, helping to transform the US into a socialistic welfare state, with a rubber constitution and a two party dictatorship, I would say good riddance to the newspapers.