1) Whenever layoffs at media outlets occur, most people regardless of politics lament the loss of frontline jobs. But where is the line drawn on the organizational chart between those concerned mostly with propaganda and manipulation and those concerned with stories and deadlines? If a cub reporter uses terms like 'critics say,' 'experts say,' and the rest of the big book of cliches do we blame the editor, the VP or do we blame the reporter himself?
2) Unions are a hopeless parasitic anachronism. Not only have they failed utterly to protect jobs, salaries, benefits, etc., they have financially gutted their hosts.
3) Spare me the crocodile tears from president/editors, presidents, editors and anyone else talking about 'loss.'
4) Spare me also the 'the community lost important voices' rubbish. If the voices were important to the community, then the community would have paid to hear them. QED.
5) #4 ties in with the main point surrounding media shrinkage/consolidation: why do they ALWAYS point the finger of blame elsewhere - mostly at the readership? If McDonald's introduces a sandwich nobody really likes and about which many customers openly complain, does McDonald's tell the customers they are fools? Does McDonald's tell them not only is the sandwich staying on the menu, a more popular sandwich is being taken off the menu and oh, by the way, you'll also get a smaller order of fries costing more money? The media mindset of punishing dissent by serving up more of the same is Fascism 101. Yet columnists everywhere respond to job losses down the hall with a nauseatingly disingenuous expressions of wonder and equally disingenuous statements of how fantastic newspapers are, particularly the columnists themselves, and that anyone criticizing their faults: bias, a reliance on wire copy, a reliance on old news, a bizarre love of government in all its forms, an insistence on importing leftist coastal values to 90% of the nation that isn't leftist or coastal.
6) The Columbus Dispatch and the Cincinnati Enquirer were longtime relatively conservative papers, reflecting local values. The PD was always a bit Bolshevik due to the strength of unions and the prevalence of industry in NE Ohio. The Dispatch and especially the Enquirer dashed themselves to pieces on leftist rocks. The PD was a longtime employer of unreconstructed Marxist the late Tom Brazaitis - whose widow is Eleanor Clift no less. It also carried columns from the terminally smug lefty dilettante Connie Schultz - married to Sherrod Brown no less.
7) Nowhere is the mass psychosis of liberalism more evident than in the media. Virtue signaling and a lust for power (by squandering 1st Amendment protections and becoming mouthpieces for government) literally prevent them from taking any steps to survive.
On the bright side, they could learn to code.
“Learn to code.”
L
Another good start for our side.
and in the case of #2 the Teacher’s Union destroys the future by produces an inferior product called kids
You’re correct about the Plain Dealer. It’s unreadable with its doctrine. (It goes beyond bias). It’s unreadable. Besides that, it’s stopped being a window into the history, culture and activities of very diverse and unique greater Cleveland. Besides that, their puzzles are awful!
The Ministry of Propaganda shrinks.
The Plain Dealer Endorses Hillary Clinton For President
Hillary Clinton - demonstrably, the better choice for president: by Thomas Suddes, Oct 9, 2016
“Thomas Suddes writes that Clinton’s in-depth knowledge of the nation’s security challenges and grasp of economic realities compared to Donald Trump’s narrow skill set make her the clear choice for president.
You don’t have to like Hillary Clinton or for that matter to loathe Donald Trump to consider Clinton the better presidential prospect. She is. Demonstrably.”
Thomas Suddes is an editorial writer and member of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.
Trump curse is working....
HAHA HAHA HAHA HAHA HAHA HAHA
Newspapers are not in the “news” business, they are in the advertising business. News is the content that bring the eyeballs to their ads.
Newspapers as they exist today are failing because they have decided to become crusaders and have chosen sides in our cultural war. They have in effect told half their potential readers we do not care about you or what you think so go away. And go away they have.
RIP newspaper, no one killed them, they committed suicide.
Not a word about the Readers, who may be fewer than the original news staff. I suspect that the Plain Dealer has behaving like most newspaper over the past 20 years. Their priorities was their union, fellow workers, and their political agenda. Once the readers and subscribers figured that out, they left. Our own Kansas City Star added another priority, they built a brand new expensive building so that they could become irrelevant in style. Stupid is what Stupid does.
Nice. Journalism schools are essentially leftist domains. The public domains inhabited by these graduates of the past 50-years are taught that Unions, the DNC and socialism are the three tiers of rule. They are taught to hate republicans, conservatives, people who believe in God, and those want to raise and home school their own kids. The government has failed. Part of Trump’s strategy to revamp schools at the college level is to put the schools financial skin in the game for school loans, coupled with the EO of free speech, the president is off to a good start.
I was in the newspaper business for 25 years as reporter and editor, and I can tell you that I never used shoddy attributions like “experts say.”
And I strongly discouraged any young reporters I coached from doing the same.
Top editors are the ones with the most connections... they're traditionally liberal and their sources are liberal. When downsizing comes, they're kept. Institutional knowledge etc... That means in the short run connected liberal editors are most important - in the long run their liberal bias shuts down the whole operation. Excellent analysis relictele
Simply put in Dr. Raoul’s maxim....
Bias = Layoffs
It’s not just liberal publications. Salem media just laid off staff and is trading near it’s 52 week low. Rush and Sean syndicator is just now emerging from bankruptcy. Content doesn’t seem to be the only issue.
Well stated. I used to LOVE to sit down on Sunday morning with the two hundred page local fish wrap and read for an hour and a half. But those Commie b@st@rds pushed taxes and gun control at every available opportunity, even local interest articles. Eff ‘em. It is indeed unfortunate that they have not yet failed.
Nothing beats newspapers for starting charcoal.
You know you're in a terrible business when fewer and fewer people are even willing to read or watch your bullsh!t at no cost.
“continuing decline in advertising revenue that has battered virtually all mass media, including television, radio and digital-first news organizations such as cleveland.com”
VIRTUALLY all, but not ALL all, because (except for TV) the hundreds of billions that used to go to the dying lying leftist fake stream enemedia have now almost all shifted to non-media digital platforms like google and bing ...
““In the near future, we will be refocusing our efforts to invest in deeper coverage of key topics that are of high value to our community. We will be sharing more about those plans in the coming weeks.””
uh, yeah, right ... we’re supposed to believe that even though they just laid-off 1/3 of their news-gathering staff ... unless “deeper coverage of key topics” really means publishing even MORE anti-Trump garbage from the wire services ...