This writer agrees with Grampa Dave about how the dinosaur fishwraps are doomed and most will not make it into the next decade. The 2008 elections will be last election where they can lie, spin and cover up the insanity of the Rats.
“The Death Process Sped Up? It’s only been a couple of years since I first made the prediction, which earned me a ton of brickbats in the media, that newspapers were dying, and that only a handful would survive this decade, and that even those would be utterly transformed.
A crucial reason for that, I said at the time, was that as newspapers began to spiral down, they would lay off their top talent first and be unable to recruit the best and brightest of the next generation. The result would be a rapid collapse of the intellectual capital in those institutions. In other words, they would grow dumber and make more and more stupid mistakes.”
“The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is sad proof of my prediction. I now put it near the top of my doomed list.”
I liked this part :
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune should simply let its employees go work at home or at Starbucks, sell off its building and printing plant, and use the resulting revenues to buy editorial space on Lileks.com.
Lileks already got more readers than the Strib, and they are certainly more loyal. And, of course, his site is actually growing. But best of all, his business judgment seems far superior to the clowns currently running the newspaper.