Man bites newspaper- newspaper problems traced to Richard Nixon (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

Boston Phoenix ^ | April 14, 2009 | Steven Stark

[RobinOfKingston]

Mr Stark could get a good thumb-nail sketch of why newspapers are failing by simply reading his own article.

[Valpal1]

I think many hate the media because of media behavior and agenda driven reporting. I think the Nixon era was when the media jumped the shark and became so intoxicated with it’s own power that they totally failed to notice the shifting of public attitude toward the press.

When they went after Reagan, they failed miserably because in general the public was damned tired of the press (and we loved Reagan).

The death spiral continues. But hey, they’ve finally noticed their complicity in their own demise. That’s something.

[DManA]

I blame Jefferson:

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Thomas Jefferson

[abb]

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i89d7632ddc985bd10299b4c00659348d
ZO Revises Ad Spend Forecast Downward

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/196214-Report_TV_Advertising_Expected_To_Fall_5_5_In_09_But_Increase_in_Market_Share.php
Report: TV Advertising Expected To Fall 5.5% In ‘09

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123967358227115677.html
Global Ad Spending Seen Off 6.9%

http://adage.com/cabletv09/article?article_id=135922
Top-Tier Cable Networks Set to Take on Broadcast

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003961946
Earnings Preview: More Gannett Woes Coming in Q1?

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/Cable_20/Uncertain_mood_as_cable_upfront_nears.asp
Uncertain mood as cable upfront nears

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=104016
Trending Up: Nielsen Says Online Video Usage Soars

http://www.slate.com/id/2216028/
The Great Newspaper Crackup of 1918 And what to learn from it.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20090414_Phila__Newspapers_offer__50M_deal.html
Phila. Newspapers offer $50M deal

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/
Newspaper web sales lag by every measure

http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/
Analysts Foresee Ugly Earnings Season

http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/
Newspapers Check Out at Marriott

[goat granny]

Decades ago my father was a mounted policeman in Detroit..He knew many reporters. He always said on the ladder of morality, newspaper men were 2 rungs below a pimp. A pimp would sell your mother or your sister, but a newsman would sell his own mother and sister for a story. Pimps didn't sell their own flesh and blood..(this was back in the 50’s.....

[RexBeach]

Wow. Good post. Thanks, gg.

[stinkerpot65]

Steven Stark, a writer, teacher, and consultant,....He has been a commentator for CNN, National Public Radio, and the Voice of America, .... A former aide to Jimmy Carter, .... He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.

And therein lies the problem with the press.

[Luke21]

This joker is really in denial.

[Luke21]

It goes way back before that. They slaughtered Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater. They first tried to get Nixon in 1952.

[Interesting Times]

It’s somewhat amusing that this “journalist” thinks Nixon was a conservative.

See? We can use scare quotes too.

[abb]

They first tried to get Nixon in 1952.

They never got over Nixon winning the 1950 election for Senator from California by beating Helen Gahagan Douglas.

[bill1952]

One of the great “successes” of the modern conservative movement has been the extent to which it has discredited and delegitimized mainstream journalism.

Ah, Horsesh*t.
The media did that all by itself.
Rotten and dishonest to the core, it's readers have been flying away as it becomes more and more nothing more than the 5th column department for the DNC.

Not even worth wrapping fish in - you just can't get that smell out of your fish.

>But without the legacy of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, the history and future of American journalism might be very different.

More BS. I was a democrat then.
Now I am not and I also see how the media has made an unparalleled descent into slanted yellow trash, not even worthy of the legal protections that are afforded to real “news.”

freedom of the press does not mean freedom from the truth

[bert]

the article is pretty much irrelevant. The papers have debilitating disease. If they don’t die, they will be put on support in a hospice.

[abb]

[ConservativeMind]

Well said.

[abb]

http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/dontquoteme/archive/2009/04/14/globe-union-to-times-co-negotiate-publicly-share-revenue-let-us-talk-with-potential-buyers.aspx
Globe union to Times Co: negotiate publicly, share revenue; let us talk with potential buyers

[a fool in paradise]

Just headline after headline screaming that Nixon was guilty. Guilty of what? well, that’s never been entirely clear.

He was guilty of going after Communists in the 1950s.

[N. Theknow]

But a large part of it can be traced back more than 30 years to Richard Nixon. It was he who made hatred of the mainstream press fashionable,

BS!

My Dad hated the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation, and especially Furman Bisher, long before Nixon.

[N. Theknow]

Dear Steven Stark,

Want to know what is wrong with the news reporting business and newspapers in particular?

Tape a copy of this column to a record and run it backward at 78 RPM and read it.

When you say, "This is bull$hit!" you will have discovered truth.

Hint: It's that way at any speed.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

This was not always the case. The media have shited so far to the left in the last 30 years

If you read Ann Coulter Treason or M. Stanton Evans Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies on McCarthy and his treatment by Big Journalism, you will realize that journalism was full-throated leftism fifty and sixty years ago.

Indeed, if you reflect on the fact that according to William Safire, the meaning of the word "liberal" was changed (essentially inverted) during the 1920s and ask yourself who could have had the motive and the opportunity to accomplish that, you will realize that only socialists had the motive ("socialism" having failed as a brand in the U.S.) and only journalists had the opportunity. The inevitable conclusion is that journalists were uniformly socialist back in the 1920s. I wondered for years, even decades, why in the twentieth century journalism claimed to be "objective" but actually was leftist. Whereas the newspapers of the founding era were openly partisan and not uniformly leftist.

Relatively recently I was struck by a blinding flash of the obvious - the newspaper business was transformed by the telegraph and the wire services (mostly the AP) in the second half of the nineteenth century. Journalism which claims objectivity but is actually uniformly leftist seems to trace back to the post-Civil War era with the implications of the transformation of the business model of journalism working out.

The Right to Know