From hard market conditions by allowing them to corner the print market. SF Gate reports that Speaker Pelosi is asking the Justice department to take a broader view of anti-competitive activity:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, worried about the fate of The Chronicle and other financially struggling newspapers, urged the Justice Department Monday to consider giving Bay Area papers more leeway to merge or consolidate business operations to stay afloat.
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, released by Pelosi’s office late Monday, the San Francisco Democrat asked the department to weigh the public benefit of saving The Chronicle and other papers from closure against the agency’s antitrust mission to guard against anti-competitive behavior.
“We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect,” Pelosi wrote.
The owners of The Chronicle had said that increased competition and tough economic times would force the newspaper to close unless they could cut costs. It warned that its unionized workers would have to accept deep cuts and layoffs if the paper was to survive. The other option, apparently, was for the newspaper to tie up with other media companies in ways that might initiate anti-trust proceedings, unless Pelosi could convince Justice to see things differently.
In the carefully worded letter, Pelosi urged the Justice Department to take a broader view of media competition in the Bay Area. Rather than seeing The Chronicle’s main competitors as other newspapers, she urged the department to consider television and Internet media sources and online advertising outlets as competitors as part of any future antitrust review.
A more expansive view of competition could smooth the way for future discussions of a merger or a consolidation of advertising, distribution and other business operations between The Chronicle and the Bay Area News Group, which owns the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times and the Oakland Tribune. Hearst has a nearly one-third stake in the non-Bay Area papers of MediaNews, the Denver chain that owns the Bay Area News Group.
The idea of a granting anti-trust exemption to newspapers has been kicking around for some time. David Carr in the New York Times has advocated the repeal of the Newspaper Preservation Act. “Regulatory reform will allow the industry to consolidate to an economically feasible model and preserve newsgathering. Does Seattle need two newspapers? Did Denver? Sure, it’s preferable for all kinds of reasons. But one is better than none” Some might argue that this amounts to creating monopolies in places where the barriers to entry (in terms of plant and distribution) are high so that the print media eventually becomes a kind of liberal ghetto. But even the repeal of anti-trust regulations won’t fix what Carr calls the “original sin” of the Internet. Distributing news for free without paying the “newsgatherers” what they believe is their due.
No more free content. The Web has become the primary delivery mechanism for quality newsrooms across the country, and consumers will have to participate in financing the newsgathering process if it is to continue. Setting the price point at free — the newspaper analyst Alan D. Mutter called it the “original sin” — has brought the industry millions of eyeballs and a return that doesn’t cover the coffee budget of some newsrooms. …
No more free ride to aggregators. Google announced that it would begin selling ads against Google News, with almost no financial accommodation to the organizations that generate that news. The book industry — of all Luddites — has extracted cash from Google, as did the wire services. Google, The Huffington Post and Newser have built their audiences and brands on other people’s labors.
Most aggregators are not promoting newspaper content; they are repurposing it to their own ends. Newspapers’ audiences are harvested and sold divorced from the content that attracted them in the first place.
That original sin bankrupted the traditional papers, which in turn made it impossible for them to support traditional reporting and editing. The public interest argument, then, really amounts to the compelling need to keep the “newsgatherers” in business because it is an irreplaceable thing. Under this logic, the electronic broadcast networks and the print monoplies must be preserved because they and they alone (or primarily) supply the real news. The Internet is just a repackager. But the problem with this argument is the supposition that the Internet, left to its own devices, won’t ever find a way to supply the demand for real news through another business model. There is no logical reason why only the networks and the newspapers can be real newsgatherers. Among trade publications (and this happens with financial newsletters) people are willing to pay for information that isn’t put in the public domain in real time. If there’s a demand, you can charge for it. It may be argued that the real barriers to generating original news on the Internet are architectural: that we haven’t created the framework to gather, assess and remunerate original information gathering over the network. But in time, there’s no reason why a distributed network of journalists, using laptops or cell phones can’t provide a stream of facts that can be editorially processed in some way. No technical reason why, anyway.
I think that there will always be a market for traditional reporting. Distributed reporters can never replace an area specialist, or someone with a broad knowledge and good language skills for example. But the market for traditional reporting will probably become very competitive, and not all the mergers and combinations can preserve it at anything near its present size. But while traditional reporting will survive in some form, it will probably be complemented by structures that don’t exist today. My own guess is that while Pelosi may get Holder to let the Chronicle set up its Bay Area monopoly, for political and ideological reasons if nothing else, in the long run the solution to the newspaper crisis lies elsewhere. In news systems and industries. The old ways are over. If people can accept that about parts of the financial system, why not the newspapers? And many of them shoveled themselves into the grave, little guessing the world had changed around them. As Gerard Vanderleun put it:
What we will never hear is that their editorial policies and news slanting were part and parcel of their demise. We will never hear about the willed insults, slights, and snubbing of fully half of their potential circulation pool. Journalists and editors write a lot about “taking personal responsibility” when it comes to others. You never hear them write that about themselves. There’s no mea culpa among liberal newspaper journalists these days. There’s only “The Internet ate my newspaper.”
Maybe that’s not something the Chronicle would write about itself.
For some reason this post disappears in the previous thread, don’t know what the problem is:
“No Bill of Attainder…shall be passed”
Representative Carolyn Maloney is considering introducing a bill that taxes back 100% of the AIG bonuses.
Test
The notion that news gathering and analysis coming from traditional newspapers is better than what you can get on the internet is pure bunk.
I defy anyone to produce a traditional media outlet that has created content with 10% of the value of what we produce here at The Belmont Club.
There are really two functions of a newspaper: editorial (search and selection of topics) and content (writing and copy editing). IMHO, the fundamental problem with the newspaper model is that the content is a slave to the editorial. Reporters write about what their editors tell them to write about, or, at best, allow them to write about.
The internet has a much more flexible model:
You have editorial sites, like Instapundit and Drudge Report, that gather interesting writing from a variety of sources (some traditional media and some not). There is very little additional content provided; the value is the search-and-sort function provided by Glenn Reynolds and Matt Drudge.
You have content sites, like NRO and The Belmont Club, that produce original content. They have a writers – one or many – who pursue issues of interest to them, and for which they have knowledge and talent.
The Achilles Heel of newspapers is that the editors control the content. This has dramatically lowered the quality of newspaper content; writers write to the headline, much as teachers teach to the test. It means the narrative is a given, and the “facts,” to the extent any facts are used, are chosen for their alignment with what the editors want.
It also means that there is a downward spiral of writing quality. Editors have the only meaningful job at the newspaper, and they end up paying writers less and less. Monopolies only exacerbate this problem, since there they eliminate competition for good writers who develop a local following. That’s why reporters get paid so little, which then leads to fewer good people entering the profession, which leads to worse reporting, and so on.
This editorial dominance also loses readership. At the end, the only people who read the newspaper will be those who agree 100% with the editors. IOW, a bunch of lemmings. Not a great ad market, lemmings.
Newspapers are all going to die. The only questions are: 1) when, and 2) what takes their place. Not even someone as powerful as Nancy Pelosi can change this fact, although she might be able to impact the answer to those two questions.
Which is not a good thing.
L3
Wretchard,
Please check the filter. I can’t make a short post with a link here or in the AIG thread – it just disappears.
The pulp/ web-press media is and has been dependent on style of advertising that can’t stand up to the World Wide Web.
There is no way to save the business model.
The two biggest buyers of media space are autos and real estate.
What the WWW brings to them, things like See Dragon
http://tinyurl.com/ccuju3
makes print media totally passe at any price.
New car dealers are going to install jumbo-trons vs wasting their media dollar on classic media.
The opportunity to promote a brand/product specific web forum wherein the users can net-back to the manufacturer reveals the one-way radio/TV/newspaper broadcast totally obtuse: all mouth and no ear.
No…
Getting towards the new way of commerce means getting away from the old way of information propagation.
L3 @ 2:
“The Achilles Heel of newspapers is that the editors control the content.”
Amen. A dictatorship is constrained by the imagination of the dictator.
If you think the American papers are struggling, witness the European! More and more people are getting fed up with being force-fed opions – if you can call them that…
Then again, many people there don’t have internet access. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at where we see restricted internet access or slower access…
“Representative Carolyn Maloney is considering introducing a bill that taxes back 100% of the AIG bonuses.”
Not to worry, mostly they are being paid to foreigners living in London. No jurisdiction.
the achilles heel of newspapers is that they are centered upon a printing press, a very expensive industrial item.
Back in the day, printing presses were very small and all over the place. They printed small pamphlets and broadsheets, and were the bane of governments because they disseminated gossip and information and just plain clamourous stuff throughout Europe’s cities. Just like today’s web.
Pelosi is so very irritating. I do wish she would just go away and be a grandmother.
So Pelosi wants the Justice Department to “ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect?” More hypocrisy wrapped in high-sounding rhetoric. The same group that gave us inefficient Fannie and Freddie (in exchange for campaign donations) now want to give us inefficient media consolidation (surely in exchange for endorsements of Pelosi and like-minded folks). Is there absolutely no shameful length to which these politicians will go? Hah, why do I ask such a silly question. Of course there is none if it preserves and protects their political power. Pelosi really has to go. Along with a lot of her colleagues. F
Not about the newapaper business but about the book business. My science fiction novel SOLILOQUY has advanced to the quarterfinals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, originally 10,000 entrants, now down to 500. I invite all interested Belmont Clubbers to read the judges’ reviews and a 19 page excert, for free, and write a review, since the judges apparently think it important. If interested, go to Amazon.com, type in Breakthrough Novel Award, to the left of the resulting page will be a list of genres, click on Science Fiction, and the resulting page will be a series of entries. SOLILOQUY by Walter Erickson is second listed. Semifinals in May, with winner getting novel published with $25,000 advance, with favorable reviews apparently helpful. Thanks.
Walt Erickson
“We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect,” Pelosi wrote.
As an American, I expect any outfit that Pelosi calls a ‘news organization’ to gather all the news and report it clearly, regardless whether it damages the editorial position of the paper, or offends the sensibilities of the editors and cartoonists.
In my experience of the last 40 years or so, less and less print and broadcast media act like that as time passes. If my expectations are to be met, Nancy ol’ girl, the news staffs will immediately commence gathering and reporting all the news, and the editorial staffs will seek out and promote stories contrary to their preferred political outcomes – rather like affirmative action. That’s to be the policy until the last conservative consumer is satisfied that the traditional biased…. “newsism”… is as thoroughly abolished as “racism” has presently become, in the eyes of minority races.
Just report the news, and you’ll find that people are interested in it. It has far more value to the nation than the bulldozing of public opinion held by current editorial staffs to be their highest duty.
Walter, that path did not work at Amazon. You want to try another set of instructions? And best of luck with this!
OldNeocon: Thanks for the heads up. Very frustrating. Sometimes it works, most time it doesn’t. If I knew how to provide a link I’d do so the next time I catch up with it.
Walt
Okay, got it now. The correct address is:
Amazon.com/abna
That will take you to the main page where you can click on Science Fiction in the genre list, and that will take you to the right page.
Thanks,
Walt
I think one of the main reason why traditional newspapers are going under has nothing to do with editorial content or the quality of reporting. The main reason is that the circulation departments tend to be run incompetently by ignorant jerks who get promoted by their friends.
When a newspaper treats its paper carriers badly, word gets around and it affects the newspaper’s reputation. And word of mouth is the only means of retaliation a carrier has against his employer because newspapers are specifically exempted from unionization. (If there were any area prone to massive unionization now, it would be the nation’s paper carriers!)
The internet doesn’t make the newspaper obsolete, not by a long shot. The problem is that when a circulation department gets run incompetently, any new technology appears to be an improvement simply because it provides a reason to get rid of the circulation department entirely.
There is still a strong market for newsprint editions of newspapers; many people prefer to read paper rather than read a computer screen. However, the newspaper industry has become so thoroughly corrupted by its de facto monopoly power that it has been ready to crumble under any push at all. That push just happened to come from the internet, but it could have come from almost any other technology.
Still, I’m still waiting for Thomas Friedman to be out on his arse, losing his job to some obscure blogger from New South Wales.
The biggest online celebrity in Australia is a 22 year old lady called Natalie Tran.
Think about those numbers for a while. Tran probably has an audience bigger than many Australian broadsheet columnists and in excess of some US pundits.
What’s a small town newspaper good for these days?
The crossword puzzle, the obits, the classifieds, and the police log.
And, the legal notices.
In the larger areas CraisList is killing the classifieds.
The McClatchy Sacramento Bee is being wiped out by CraigsList.
Debra J. Saunders: Who killed the newspaper?
After the Rocky Mountain News closed on Friday, local congressman Jared Polis (a Democrat) told a gathering of netrootsers, “I have to say, that when we say, ‘Who killed the Rocky Mountain News?’ we are all part of that, we truly are. For better or worse, and I argue that it’s mostly for better,” the Denver Post reported.
Why do I love The Chronicle?
Comment
A thumb in the eye
Why has The Chronicle’s circulation been in such a nosedive in basically a one-newspaper town? The answer, I suggest, is that The Chronicle defiantly maintains an imperialistic philosophy vis-a-vis its local readers. Thus, in a liberal city, The Chronicle’s only local political columnist is a staunch conservative who supported the Bush-Cheney administration in such benighted ventures as the Iraq war and blocking solutions to the climate change crisis. And just to put a thumb in the eye of San Franciscans in particular, The Chronicle management anointed a conservative out-of-towner as the author of its On San Francisco column. In view of just these two examples of The Chronicle’s disregard for the majority of local residents (and potential readers), one must wonder whether The Chronicle has a death wish or is the newspapers’ answer to mad King George and his efforts to force imperialistic governance on an independent-minded citizenry.
JOHN M. KELLY, San Francisco
—
One of Debra’s examples of the type of work done by papers was a series in the Chronicle about the sanctuary city policy… someone with good local knowledge and connections following up the personal and legal ramifications over a long period of time.
16. Alexis said…
“I think one of the main reason why traditional newspapers are going under has nothing to do with editorial content or the quality of reporting. The main reason is that the circulation departments tend to be run incompetently by ignorant jerks who get promoted by their friends.”
—
We have a vibrant local paper here that is distributed free.
They sell enough advertising to make a go of it.
Chock full of local stories about people, organizations, entertainment, social functions, etc.
…and they do an amazing job of grabbing your interest with four of five photos of people down the left side of the front page with just enough of a caption to get you to turn to the page with the story.
Suzanne Herel: Why newspapers matter to you?
Twenty-one years later, as I thought of that story while driving home from work at yet another newspaper on another coast, I could still remember her name: Adrienne Merganthaler. I want to say her parents were John and Marianne.
I visited the Merganthalers and Adrienne in the hospital. And I called both insurance companies. And I wrote a story about an everyday couple who could be in your family, in your neighborhood, in your church, who didn’t want an insurance company to pay for extraordinary measures to keep their daughter alive. They were realistic. They were human. They were parents. They just wanted their little girl not to be scared in her last days. To be home with her family — there was an older sister, I believe.
And guess what? The day the story was published, both of the insurance companies called the newspaper. They were fighting over which one would get to foot the bill to bring Adrienne home. And so it was that Blue Cross paid for Adrienne to come home and die in her own bed.
I did that.
A college classmate of mine, Dino Ciliberti, said to me once that he chose to go into journalism to help people.
At the time, I thought, “Then be a doctor.”
But I would go on to learn that he was right:
Newspapers (in my case the San Francisco Chronicle) can and do help people — many of the same people who love to skewer us.
“Exactly who do you think gathers that news, vets it and delivers it to you online?
Without The Chronicle, there is no SF Gate as you know it, one of the top 10 most visited news sites in the country.”
To bad they can’t come up with a way to monetize that.
…but like Debra says, when’s the last time you bought something from an online ad?
(NOT just bought something online.
…I generally make an attempt not to look at them because of all the offensive flashing Flash ads)
Cutting off your News to spite your face.
…this was the article I was originally looking for.
I thought of linking to the print page as I often do for your convenience, but decided not to because TOWNHALL is my number 1 example of offensive advertising.
…I’ve thought of buying things there but refuse out of principal in protest of their advertising.
(The ad guy was an old college chum of Ingraham’s who was on the show for years.
they were hilarious together, esp stories of traveling together as platonic partners)
I am a native of San Francisco and have been a journalist for more than 30 years (in Australia).
I think the Chronicle is one of the worst, most self-indulgent newspapers in the world.
I’ll bet Pelosi loves Pravda by the Bay. Useful idiots for her never ending games.
What’s happened to Babs Boxer?
Has she gone to ground?
From J. Kelly via Doug:
The Chronicle’s only local political columnist is a staunch conservative who supported the Bush-Cheney administration in such benighted ventures as the Iraq war and blocking solutions to the climate change crisis.
Apparently in San Francisco, one guy expressing a different opinion sets the whole town on edge.
In a nation where every decision is being made from the White House, why do we need more than one news gatherer?
If you subscribe to Investor’s Business Daily and then also to their Industry Group’s function, you can find rankings for all 197 industries that they track. As I mentioned previously, the Media-Newspapers industry is the one to which NYT and nine other publicly-traded newspapers belong. Currently, this sector is ranked 144 of 197. Three and six months ago it was ranked 193rd and 196th, respectively.
The firm in the industry that is performing the best is the Daily Journal Company [ticker = DJCO]. It profitable and has the highest EPS per share and Relative Strength ratings of any of the firms in that industry. It is described on Google FInance as follows: “Daily Journal Corporation publishes newspapers and Websites covering California and Arizona, as well as the California Lawyer and 8-K magazines, and produces several specialized information services. It also serves as a newspaper representative specializing in public notice advertising.”
If you go the website [http://www.dailyjournal.com/] what you won’t see is ads. And if you click on the link for the lead article entitled “Justices Give Deportees Fewer Options” you will see…an invitation to subscribe.
News targeted toward an audience that is willing to pay for it. There’s a business concept.
Click on it and you’ll see that
Congrats on your TV Show Starling!
Who’s that “Gates” character you mentioned?
It seems the real competitive threat to newspapers is the internet. How far away form removing antitrust restraints from print media competitors would some kind of regulating of the internet be; and, how far away from the real gem, the extraction of money from the internet class to the looting class (i.e. taxes)?
A couple of points:
News is no longer news the day after it happens. The internet never sleeps.
Electronic media and production equipment, including your cell phone, lowers the price of admission to be a news contributor.
Rathergate exposed the need for independent watchers of the corporate media machines. That can now be anyone who cares enough.
One question:
Will Pelosi go through their budgets looking for wasteful spending, corporate excesses or golden parachutes before opening the coffers?
P-I’s last, commemorative…
Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a thick commemorative issue tracing the…
Michael Yon, Bill Roggio.
While I understand your concern at the apparent end of the system you devoted your life to, one must now embrace the change.
With less sarcasm, it would be interesting to talk about different models of delivery.
(Disclaimer, I am not nor ever have been a journalist. Thus a couple o’ tons of salt are appropriate).
Why not examine the free lance model. If an opinion writer is good, i.e. our host, the readership will come. This is different from the J’school model that says “If I have enough money and can suck up to the profs at a high end J’school, I will get a big job where at 23 I can potificate about things about which I do not know.” I.e. Jason Blair.
The freelancer, (Yon, Roggio et al) then selects areas gathers and goes live on the internet. Once readership is established, sponsorship grows.
So, those of you in the real world of journalism…whatta ya think?
Oops. Second line should say, “Doug et al while I …. “
For the last couple years (not this year, thank goodness), we have had massive ice storms in the city in which I live. Massive power outages, streets closed, schools and businesses closed. Bad juju. For many, the worst effect was loss of power which meant, loss of the internet, loss of cell phones as batteries run down, complete shut down of information flow.
The local paper, an unabashedly liberal rag, that I read only for the adrenaline jolt of anger that it provides me each morning, solved many difficulties, and put out a paper every day. And IT WAS GOOD. Reporters scrambled to find information much needed by it’s readers. They moved in to the power company command posts and kept us informed on the progress in getting the power back on (and were spot on about it, also). They provided long lists of tree trimmers, with their credentials listed. They provided information on public shelters, food banks, etc. They provided upbeat news and human interest stories for our entertainment. And not one word about how it was all Bush’s fault. Well, you get the drift.
When the crisis was over, back they went to their liberal leaning ways. But you know, I would hate to lose them. When things were bad, they fill a gap that the internet can not fill and did it in a totally non-political way. Just human.
There has been a spate of threads on various blogs on this topic the last several days and I think blert’s first post about the delivery of advertising is the only post that gets to the heart of the matter. Sure bad management and biased reporting play a major role in the demise of newspapers. So does electronic reporting. However, newspapers have never made money on distribution. They made it on advertising. Craigslist has more to do with the decline then anything else. Readers used to go to the classified to find things. Now they go to the web. As more small advertisers left paper for electrons readership followed and then the big advertisers reduced the number of ads and were unwilling to pay the same rates. Loss of advertising revenue has killed the newspaper business. Not bias, not blogging or electronic copy.
Guantánamo’s Final Days: America Prepares to Shutter the Infamous Prison Camp, and Jihad Looms
“Back in Salt Lake City, Layne Morris isn’t buying any of it. He points out that one of Khadr’s sisters has publicly advocated jihad and a brother has admitted to smuggling weapons to Al-Qaeda and plotting to kill the Pakistani prime minister. Most recently, Khadr’s family showed up at a Toronto courtroom to show solidarity for a terrorist cell accused of planning to use truck bombs to blow up buildings in the city’s downtown.“
The Guardian has put it’s news and information out as an API. Not feeds, not ad laden, encumbered. An API.
Of course most journalists wouldn’t know what that means. And they expect me to protect them?
Derek
A couple of tangential thoughts (very disjointed too).
What impact would this have on talk radio? As a hypothetical, say Speaker Pelosi convinces the DOJ of her point of view, and they allow more mergers, etc. Doing so would be a de facto acceptance that other media (internet, radio, etc.) are competitors. Wouldn’t that go both ways, though? If such a thing were to happen, followed by the old Fairness Doctrine, couldn’t talk radio then make the argument that Congress, the DOJ, etc. have accepted that there is competition elsewhere? Just a thought…
Which, from the Dems point of view, would make an antitrust exemption for print media far more appealing. From my admittedly limited viewpoint, such an exemption would still allow for possible reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine. Thoughts?
..Doug ( #24) post and link to Suzanne Herel’s ” dying baby ” story is a classic reason why newspapers should die, and soon. Ms Herel thinks her job is to make a difference, afflict those she considers comfortable and use her position to “help”, as she thinks appropriate, those who she see’s as afflicted.
..Who the F wants to indulge Ms. Herels utopian fantasy’s and predilictions ? The Cronicle can’t go bust soon enough.
The reason Newspapers are in decline, and entered into a decline LONG before the Internet (around the late 1980′s) was that people figured out what the Newspapers main job is:
*The News Suppression Business
Newspapers are like the Ministry of Truth, they SUPPRESS the news. First talk radio, in the late 1980′s, and now the internet allows news unfiltered. Ironically only in disasters and other visual stuff do broadcast media, which is also dying for the same reason, allow unfiltered news and thus brief popularity.
Newspapers and broadcast and cable news networks are unable to take off their news suppression mission, and thus will never get many viewers.
A world of just distributed bloggers and aggregators like Ed Driscoll or Instapundit are better for information — you understand quickly their biases, you get raw data from their links, and get what you need quickly.
Indeed, what is the market for news? People want to be informed, rather than digest PC pap. Therefore, whoever provides news in the most convenient, easy to digest manner with “raw” and unfiltered news without “news supporession” will make money, and those who don’t, won’t.
This means, Contra Wretchard, that NO JOURNALIST can be a part of that winning organization, be it web, print, tv, radio, what have you. Because JOURNALISTS are trained in News Suppression above all else.
Over an awful lot of news the press are simply packagers. look at any paper & see how much is rewritten press releases &/or political briefings.
On the traditional definition that “news” is something that somebody powerful doesn’t want known you will get more news & more informative background in good blogs than in anything but the best bits of the best papers. Only in the blogsphere will you hear the inconvenient truths about global warming, libertarian economics, Yugoslavia, fakecharities, Obama’s background, immigration, race, anything requiring you to be able to count, radiation hormesis, racial crime, Bilderberg etc.
Yugoslavia…
Does it even exist?
What Pelosi suggests won’t help; papers in mid-sized cities already did what she suggests decades ago, and it didn’t help. Newspapers are dying because consumers have figured out that most of the information they publish is worthless or nearly so. Why pay $7 per week for trash when you can get trash for free from the Internet? Those few newspapers which have continued to publish information which is actually valuable (the WSJ being case in point) will survive. All others will either figure this out or die. And if they don’t figure it out, they should die. As in the case of the Seattle P-I, why on Earth would I pay someone to insult me? I dropped my local newspaper subscription 13 years ago after they ran an editorial shaming local voters for not voting the way the paper told them to. Good riddance.
programmer: Ham radio operators are probably the best asset during an emergency and they do not revert to liberal editorializing during the off season.
” The News Suppression Business”
My take is the news business had been doing what it had been for ages when new info-tainment outlets like Inside Edition came out and smoked them in the ratings. The MSM moved to the new business model (pap) just as the OJ Simpson trial got under way and cemented the shift.
Next, stalwarts like Dan Rather tried to keep the integrity in the news room by making news into a moral compass. The ‘health and safety police’ model has coexisted with the Info-tainment model but the moral compass keeps on being stressed by the Neolithic set like Rather who are perfectly willing to fabricate news around their pissed off opinions and leftwing advocacy.
Now everyone save the rainforest or we will send you back for reprogramming.
“Ms Herel thinks her job is to make a difference, afflict those she considers comfortable and use her position to “help”, as she thinks appropriate, those who she see’s as afflicted.”
—
BHO and Michelle are afflicted victims, taxpayers, the comfortable.
…as are wounded vets.
We don’t need no stinking Veterans Healthcare!
I think the argument that the internet, by virtue of its ability to collate and disseminate content virtually without limit or price-point constraint, will become the new matrix of news-gathering and -sharing in the new world order, is subject to some fatal criticisms, among which are these:
1) There is the argument that newspapers, requiring costly brick-and-morter concomitants like printing presses, paper pulp, and labor and technical staff, are too capital intensive to hold their own against the free-wheeling internet. This argument utterly ignores how capital intensive the internet itself is. All those PCs, monitors, cell phones, data satellites, broadband networks, server banks, programmers, and IT people don’t come cheap. In fact, the internet is a flagrant exigency to a much greater extent than the humble print media were, and as a result of its complexity is subject to greater systemic risk. The vast technological accomplishment stands atop a teetering tower of social, economic, and political stability which is by no means guaranteed.
2) What, then, will become of the internet if its supporting physical infrastructure cannot be maintained? What is the use of a computer without a constant reliable supply of electrical power? Perhaps someday soon, due to the economic downturn and other related problems in the Western world, a growing number of people will decide to ditch their expensive phone/cable/internet packages. They’ll be working harder anyway, trying to salvage a meaningful standard of living, and will have little time for websurfing. Sales of PC hardware and software slump, disincentivising continued investment in the IT sector. Corporations as well as individuals begin to scale down their web presence. Various server banks are taken offline, and link rot becomes a pervasive problem. These factors combine to create an environment of positive feedback which accelerates the abandonment of the net. For many intents and purposes, large sections of what was previously cyberspace becomes a cyber ghost town.
3)Society adjusts to the dwindling supply of internet capacity by demanding subsidization. Basic internet availability begins to be looked upon as a public utility the usage of which is both obligatory and metered. E-mail, shopping, identification, and registration for government services are the only online tools available to most people, while the wealthy and the government have access to a “higher order internet”; this spawns a craft-guild a highly skilled specialists devoted to producing a suite of ever more inventive web-based applications for the well-to-do, while widening the digital and cultural divide.
4) Finally, the majority of people come to regard the internet with the same mixture of disdain and paranoia usually reserved for the East German Secret Police, and it ends up collapsing in the wake of a popular uprising like a virtual Berlin Wall. The entire course of events takes only 30 to 40 years to play out, after which the future becomes very different than what we often imagine it to be like.
It’s not that the print media reestablish themselves; it’s that society begins to focus on the development of those personal, uniquely human talents and attributes that far excede the scope and performance of mere machines. The West flowers with “mentats” and “bene gesserites” who knit the great forces unleashed by modernity into the warp and weft of their own personalities. The future of the West, far from being a Kurzweilian techno-utopia, becomes a Herbertian neo-feudal Holy Roman Empire.
This, at any rate, is my best-guess blueprint for the next half century. I find the broad outlines compellingly likely. Thoughts, anyone?
#3 is the present model for newspapers in France:
Written for, and largely read by, those leading or employed by the Govt.
…the populace having written off politicians as universally corrupt.
Prefering to focus on day to day pleasures and extended vacations.
Matt @54…
The LAST thing I’d ever give up is the stuff you thesis posits: connectivity.
If anything gets cut back it’s toys and treats.
The web is now as essential as the power grid or the water supply.
A society unable to keep the lights on is crippled, and the very essence of 3rd worldism.
For any of your notions to track reality the global society would have to dissolve into civil war.
BTW, in case you didn’t notice, the price drops in digital electronics are for real.
Cell phone use has exploded even in a society sabotaged by islamists: Iraq and Afghanistan.
If cell phone use is exploding off the charts in Afghanistan then your thesis is dust.
Nice writing style, though.
Nothing wrong with Pelosi’s actions. I’d say Holder could give them 15 years of eased rules. No one seems to argue against hospice for people!
There is competition, so the monopoly claims are probably not valid anyway. It isn’t that everyone has stopped reading news. It is that everyone has stopped buying their own personal paper.
……… ok, the only reason a publication has writers is so that they have something to put between the ads. Nothing more ,nothing less.
58.cc that is quite so and that backs up earlier posts in this thread tying in the demise of the papers to the migration of the ads that pay for them to the internet.
I have been a journalist for more than 30 years. I totally accept that most newspapers will crash. They deserve to.
I have had nothing physically printed in more than 5 years. I have no interest in papyrus nor all the huge associated costs like printing and distribution.
I am a content provider. I get paid by the word. My field is transport in the broadest sense. There is not much competition from my peers in the traditional media.
And my industry is changing rapidly due to technology and legislation. There is always something vital to tell people about and connections to make that others don’t.
The complacent are getting swept aside and I’m having a ball. The hit rate on my articles says my readers are, too.
To hell with the print media. They are no longer competitive, with the notable exception of the Wall Street Journal, mentioned by another poster.
I love it. The change isn’t coming fast enough.