Finally confirming a trend that many have long noted, the Los Angeles Times on Monday concluded that yes, more people now get their news from the internet than from newspapers. To bloggers and purveyors of New Media alike, this should come as no surprise whatsoever. Prior to this announcement, newspapers often closely guarded inside secrets like declining circulation, decreases in advertising revenue, forced buy-outs within individual papers, and an overall drop in quality of reporting. I suppose that now, even mulish, intractable newspapers are having to concede that the handwriting has been on the wall for years.
Tag: newspapers
Nov 25 2010
Short Attention Span Theater and the decline of Journalism
Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government
Freedom of the Press
“I am… for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.”
— Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799
So Freedom of the Press, protects even the stuff, we disagree with.
You don’t have to like it, what someone says, writes, or legislates … or tactlessly expresses.
But they have a Right to do so none the less, according to our historic icon Thomas Jefferson.
The pen, should trump, the sword.
Funny how “Money” got all lumped in with Free Speech, though?
Must of been all those Gieco “googley eyes” commercials
Oct 18 2010
Sunday Sunset Open Thread
I’m starting a regular Sunday sunset thing at Progressive Blue and I was wondering if your interested. There is plenty of text as a sunset appetizer.
Of course the number one news item today was the greatest pass interference call I’ve ever seen in regular season football. But a few other things happened today besides the Jets Mile High win!
Below have a Sunday couch potato review and a sundown. What do you hear? What do you see?
Mar 17 2010
Newspapers are Folding, and We’re Part of their Problem!
The fact that Newspapers are folding, left and right, is hardly News. It’s a long-term trend playing out, due to the ‘Market Forces’ of the Internet.
What is News is the effect that Internet Bloggers (aka Citizen Journalists) are having on the long, slow fade of “Traditional” News.
It seems fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for their News, these days — and WHY should we when we can find it FREE on-line, often with a dash of humor and wit throw-in, for free too!
One Problem though — Bloggers to maintain credibility, have this little habit of citing those very same “Traditional” News Sources who are quietly fading away, as we speak Type.
I think there is a “Chicken and Egg” thing going on here — just few of us have yet to realize it.
Could be someday we go out to get our Information Breakfast — and it turns out that both “nutritional items” have turned up MISSING! (the Blogger and the Source)
May 03 2009
Boston Globe under threat of closure if unions don’t concede to management.
In a report by Editor and Publisher via the Associated Press, talks to keep the Boston Globe newspaper operating while extorting concessions from union employees are being extended.
Deadline on Talks for ‘Boston Globe’ Cuts Extended
Published: May 02, 2009 11:00 AM ET
BOSTON Negotiations between unions at The Boston Globe and its owner, The New York Times Co., will continue after the company agreed to extend its midnight deadline for the newspapers’ employees to make $20 million in concessions.
“Because there has been progress on reaching needed cost savings, The Boston Globe will extend the deadline for reaching complete agreements with its unions until midnight Sunday May 3,” Globe spokesman Robert Powers said in a statement.
Leaders of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe’s largest union, asked for an extension of Friday’s deadline after discovering what they called a $4.5 million accounting error. The Guild, which has been asked to come up with $10 million of the $20 million in concessions, said ownership mistakenly was counting the salaries and benefits of 80 people who have left their jobs at the Globe since the beginning of the year.
“We have given the New York Times Co. and Globe management proposals for deep cuts in our members’ pay and benefits that we believe will save The Boston Globe,” Daniel Totten, Guild president, said in a statement. “We are awaiting the company’s response.”
The concessions sought by the Times Co. could include pay cuts, a reduction in pension contributions and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees for some senior employees. Those guarantees state that the staffers cannot be let go without cause.
The Globe, like many newspapers, is struggling with declines in circulation and advertising. The Globe’s operations lost $50 million last year and are projected to lose $85 million this year.
The Times Co. announced in April that it would close the Globe unless the concessions were met.
Talks are expected to resume Saturday.
Mar 17 2009
It’s In the P-I (In Memoriam)
We’ve been watching this for a week, and today it happened: the Seattle Post Intelligencer, after 146 years of publication, has silenced its presses. There will be some sort of online effort; Hearst is a big company, and MBAs will no doubt be called in to poke at the corpse and apply the art of marketing galvanics to the still limbs; but the PI, the paper I grew up with, is gone.
Jun 30 2008
Please Put A Blogger On Your Radio Show
June 29, 2008
The Media Project
WAMC, Northeast Public Radio
318 Central Avenue
Albany, New York 12206
Dear Alan, Ira, Elisa and Rex:
This evening, again, the subject of Blogs came up during your show, the Media Project. And, to nobody’s particular surprise, the usual, superficial analysis was quickly dispensed: bloggers are not journalists, blogs have no quality control, blogs are too quick, blogs have no restraints, blogs by anonymous writers are irresponsible, blogs don’t gather news, some blogs print “horrible” things. I’ve come to expect this.
The fact is that there are millions of blogs. For political and cultural analysis these come in two main types: group blogs (e.g., daily Kos in left Blogistan) and individual blogs. Individual blogs, like newspapers, radio, and TV, have enormous variations in intelligence and quality. Some are absolutely brilliant; others, unreadable. But both kinds of blogs are extremely democratic: anybody with access to a computer can be a writer and express an opinion or an analysis or spread a story. Anybody with a comment about a story is free to post it. Yoanni Sanchez, a prizewinning Cuban blogger, uses the computer at the local library. One doesn’t need money to be a blogger. Only time and desire. Bloggers who are no good remain unread and eventually give up. Bloggers who have something to say are ultimately recognized and build a readership.
May 28 2008
Reason #487 Why Blogs Are Thriving And Print Is Dying
cross posted from The Dream Antilles
Guess what. The traditional media have discovered the earth shaking news that their op-ed pages are too male and too white. Doh. Like most readers didn’t realize that?
Nicholas Kristof today reports that the Washington Post’s ombudsperson has written that op-ed pages are too male and too white:
Deborah Howell, the ombudsman of The Washington Post, has an interesting column looking at the diversity – or, rather, lack of diversity – on the op-ed page of the Post. She begins:
The Post’s op-ed page is too male and too white. And there aren’t a lot of youthful opinions, either.
I have nothing against older white men; I’m married to one. And the nation’s power structure, often represented in Post op-eds, is white, male and at least middle-aged. But a 21st-century op-ed page needs more diversity.
The 2008 numbers as of Wednesday: 654 op-ed pieces – 575 by men, 79 by women and about 80 by minorities. The lack of diversity is partly a matter of tradition; The Post’s longtime stable of regular columnists consists overwhelmingly of older white men.