Posted on 09/25/2006 1:14:10 PM PDT by abb
It seems hopeless. How can the newspaper industry survive the Internet? On the one hand, newspapers are expected to supply their content free on the Web. On the other hand, their most profitable advertising--classifieds--is being lost to sites like Craigslist. And display advertising is close behind. Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports.
Ten years ago, it was a challenge for websites to get people to spend time for pleasure in front of a computer screen. "Your problem will be solved actuarially," a computer-sciences professor assured a group of Web pioneers, and sure enough, it was. Now the problem is to get people under 50 or so to pick up a newspaper. Damp or encased in plastic bags, or both, and planted in the bushes outside where it's cold, full of news that is cold too because it has been sitting around for hours, the home-delivered newspaper is an archaic object. Who needs it? You can sit down at your laptop and enjoy that same newspaper or any other newspaper in the world. Or you can skip the newspapers and go to some site that makes the news more entertaining or politically simpatico. And where do these wannabes get most of their information? From newspapers, of course. But that is mere irony. It doesn't pay the cost of a Baghdad bureau.
Newspaper angst is now focused on the Los Angeles Times, where I was editorial and opinion editor in 2004 and '05. Long the industry's leading example of needless excellence, the Times has had bureaus around the world, a huge Washington staff and so on.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Aww, I didn't mean to tick you off so badly by saying you sat "primly", lol!
"newspapers", not your .gif! I love your .gifs!
I like spittin' on them.
You are a nut!
Actually, Mr. Kinsley, we already get our "news" from the same source. The Chicago Tribune, The Daily Herald, and the Northwest Herald (the last two are Chicago suburban papers) all run international (and a lot of national) news from the AP. It's the same on the hard-copy version and the on-line version. It's probably true for the Chicago Sun-Times as well, but I don't follow that paper so I can't say for sure.
And everybody is entitled to his own opinion of who is writing for the AP.
Newspapers exist to deliver ads and coupons. The artistes on the payroll think it's about them. It's not.
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