Posted on 12/11/2008, 1:25:23 PM by COUNTrecount
They say that journalists prefer bad news to good news. There is plenty of that close to home.
This is becoming a terrible week for the US newspaper industry. On Monday, the Tribune Company, which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, filed for bankruptcy. The New York Times Company followed by saying it might mortgage its Renzo Piano-designed headquarters building by Times Square to reduce debt.
The recession has turned the long, slow decline of newspapers into a brisk fall. On Tuesday, I dropped into a UBS investor conference in New York to catch Gary Pruitt, chief executive of the McClatchy newspaper chain, calling its results “lousy”. At this rate, US newspapers will be lucky to make it to the weekend.
Many American journalists, facing job losses and the death of an industry they loved, regard it as a tragedy not just for them but for society. They fear that television, radio and blogs can never replace what newspapers provided for readers.
Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, put the point succinctly to National Public Radio earlier this month: “Good journalism does not come cheap. And, therefore, you’re not going to find a lot of blogs or non-profit websites that are going to build a Baghdad bureau.”
Up to a point, Lord Keller. The failure of papers will deprive US readers – and those in countries where similar forces are at work – of plenty of useful information. But, let us face it, the industry also plays host to an immense amount of duplication and self-indulgence.
The internet brought trouble for regional and city papers not only because it gave an outlet to bloggers, and broke the monopoly they had on classified and display advertising, but because it let Philadelphians, for example, peruse publications other than the Inquirer.
There are things you can only learn about Philadelphia from the Inquirer, or Chicago from the Tribune, or Miami from the Herald. If they went away, they would also take with them a check on local abuses of political power, as the phone-tapped desire of Rod Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois, to get his critics on the Tribune fired shows.
Nor is it obvious that such coverage could be produced by internet sites instead. In theory, information about local events can be just as efficiently distributed online as in print – in some ways, better. In practice, papers’ dominance of local print advertising brought them a revenue base that is unlikely to be replicated.
This week, I had a chat with Joel Kramer, the founder of MinnPost, a news and analysis internet site devoted to politics and civic affairs in Minneapolis and St Paul. He was formerly publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has cut jobs as it gets financially squeezed.
MinnPost is among a new breed of non-profit sites, including Voice of San Diego and ProPublica, which are trying to fill the gap left by the decline of city papers. He raised $1.5m (including $250,000 from himself) to start the site, which employs six editors and pays freelances to write.
It does some valuable work. But Mr Kramer admits that it functions more as a “complement” to the Star Tribune and its rival, the Pioneer Press, than as a substitute. He says that it tries to add depth and analysis to stories that are already in the news more than dig up news itself.
As Mr Keller says, reporting is expensive. It requires someone to get on the phone, gather information, balance conflicting views of what has just occurred, and present the result. Papers have done this basic work for cities and states for so long that we take it for granted.
Other aspects of US journalism will not, however, be missed. Some things, such as sports scores and weather forecasts, can be collated in a more timely and user-friendly way online. In addition, there is a swath of national and foreign coverage that is no longer needed.
There used to be a logic to the Chicago Tribune or the Miami Herald having large Washington bureaux and even foreign correspondents. People who lived in those places could not access The New York Times or The Washington Post online and relied instead on the local paper.
These days, they can do so free, which eliminates the need for a lot of coverage to be duplicated. Aggregation sites such as Google News have shone a harsh spotlight on the overlap and repetition in national coverage in hundreds of newspapers.
I am sure US citizens would lose something if fewer papers or wire services covered national affairs. But would it really be insufficient for society if five or six organisations (including Reuters and Bloomberg) competed to cover, for example, the Federal Reserve? I doubt it.
The question for national and international reporting is not whether city papers survive but whether news organisations such as The New York Times do. Clearly, if they did not, and blogs were left alone to provide coverage of Washington and Iraq, there would be a problem.
The honest answer is: we do not know. The New York Times, with its thriving online readership and global clout, seems in better shape than The New York Times Company, which has been indifferently managed by the Sulzberger family. A change of ownership might fix that.
My working assumption, in more ways than one, is that consolidation – or, more accurately, eradication – of local newspapers will strengthen the editorial position of the remaining elite: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the Financial Times etc.
I also assume that this elite will find some way to cover its costs. Here’s hoping, anyway.
Why wait one time a day for the news when you can get it constantly updated on 24-hour news channels and the public Internet?
Who will mourn the demise of the liberal and socialist local newspapers?
NOT ME!
One major Sunday paper starts my fires for about a month ... except when the deep cold hits, then one daily is sufficient for a couple of months.
Taking out a loan is reducing debt?!!
What staggering intellects journalists prove to be everyday.
I have said it before and I will say it again. If there was a newspaper out there that did not slant the news. That reported it straight up, facts only, did not advocate, did not pontificate, did not editorialize anywhere except on the editorial pages and was non-partisan there, it would sell.
For riding a train, waiting in a line, or just relaxing after work, a newspaper can be a great way to spend some time.
The problem is quite simply that people just don’t trust newspapers anymore so they don’t spend the money on them, unless they’re addicted to crossword puzzles.
AND PRINT ENEMY PROPAGANDA?!?!?! I think we can do without that.
The local newspapers have several tragic flaws we're all familiar with but the biggest two are as follows:
1) A lazy reliance on AP copy without even so much as a glance at its content. Hey it's 500 words and it fits the column - run it.
2) A desire to be like the 'big boys' in all respects which means - unfortunately - adopting their liberal worldview even in the most conservative and traditional of cities, states, regions, etc. Journalism schools are partially to blame but so are the weak-minded editors and publishers who constantly trot out the most ludicrous socialist agenda.
Music to my ears.
A good and obvious point, but it doesn't go far enough. I don't just mis-trust them, I actively hate them for lying to me and trying to manipulate our political system. I want them dead.
Some may argue that it reduces the free flow of information and promotes illiteracy to have the newspapers gone. I say that what we're getting isn't news anyway - it's propaganda that flows to the semi-literate. Their lot, and their level of understanding, isn't enhanced in any way by these propaganda rags.
They use AP for the canned stories, and they don't do investigative journalism any more (bloggers do that, much to Dan Rather and others' chagrin). They serve no purpose other than to preserve the (liberal) Establishment power structure, and just like I was taught in the 60's, "Down with the (liberal) Establishment!"
They’re not victims. They’ve had plenty of warning. If they didn’t act on it that doesn’t make them victims, it makes them complacent and lazy.
There was a time when I read one-two newspapers a day. One Easter morning I scoured my subscription paper, looking for the word “Easter”. It was mentioned ONE time, in the editorial section. I canceled my subscription.
Many American journalists, facing job losses and the death of an industry they loved, regard it as a tragedy not just for them but for society. They fear that television, radio and blogs canneverreplace what newspapers provided for readers.
There. Fixed.
My local paper is doing fine. Of course it is only a weekly and prints news that the readers want to read and is good about keeping the political slant to a minimum.
There was a time when the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and yes even the New York Times were considered truly great world class newspapers and a delight to read.
I have faithfully read the LA Slimes for over two decades. Believe me, it wasn’t always this way. The paper used to evenly split its endorsements between Democrats and Republicans.
Early in its it history, the Times was fiercely conservative, staunchly Republican and anti-Communist. The liberals even called it a conservative rag sheet with some degree of accuracy from their point of view.
It was Otis Chandler who made the decision to transform the LAT from a parochial backwater into a truly international newspaper with bureaus all over the world in every major international city. I remember it used to take me nearly four hours just to get through the Sunday LAT and I’m not a slow reader.
But, unfortunately, over the last ten years or so, the LA Slimes has followed suit with the NY Slimes and is, for all intents and purposes, a left-wing rag sheet and ancillary arm of the Democrat Party. Rarely do they endorse ANY Republicans these days and when they do, it always some squishy Rino. The paper was and is TOTALLY in the tank for BHO. I can barely stand reading it anymore. It doesn’t even pretend to be unbiased. It’s reporters are as equally left leaning as its editorial staff. It doesn’t even have useful things such as TV Guide anymore. I only get it on the weekends now and it is only a matter of time before I discontinue it all together. I still read the death notices and the weather reports.
Now for the GOOD NEWS. I have suscribed to Investors Business Daily for the last six years. This newspaper has by the far best editorial page in the country. I know. I’m an addicted news junkie. Yes this paper is very conservative and I love it. During the campaign they put out a magnificent series on BHO called the Audacity of Socialism. Every American should have read this.
As far as the rest of establishment big city newspapers: What they are experiencing now serves them right for pushing BHO down are throats and moving so far to the left. Good riddance!
Always remember the liberals ruin everything they control: Big cities, public schools, colleges, churches (mainline Protestantism), big corporations, even wars—look at how the libs mismanaged the Vietnam War even though our troops won every major battle. Even after we thoroughly annhilated the Viet Cong in the Tet Offensive, Walter Cronkite went over to Vietnam and proclaimed the war was lost. The rest of the media followed suit. The Communists didn’t win the war on the battlefield, it was the liberal/left here at home which handed it over to them.
But what will we do without all those urinalists to make water on the truth? How will we know what to think?
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