Or are you implying that most journalism is nothing more than spin? If so, you’re deluded. Look at Roger’s site: most of his posts are commentary on a linked “MSM” article. Even the conservative blogosphere and the conservative political opinion journals DEPEND on the “MSM” for the hard reporting.

Are you saying that we need to keep the MSM newsprint business alive as a jobs program for “journalists”? Corporations are always looking for people who can spin information to make it seem to support the corporate line. They’ll be fine – they just won’t be able to pretend to themselves that they’re slaving away to make a better world. They’ll have to get straight with the idea that they’ve got a job rather than a mission.

To get to other topics.In the Moses Wine series,did you drive the type of car Moses did(or vivce versa)?.Because he had some pretty neat cars in the earlier books.

To get to other topics.In the Moses Wine series,did you drive the type of car Moses did(or vivce versa)?.Because he had some pretty neat cars in the earlier books.

I will admit to accessing individual online MSM news stories if a link (sometimes even via google news) catches my eye, but if registration is called for I promptly drift away.

The big advantage of a newspaper is portability, but that only helps in cities like New York or San Francisco, where most people commute via mass transit and thus are looking for something to read. I commute to my office by car and thus I get my news while commuting from Laura Ingraham and Hugh Hewitt.

I don’t agree that the Internet is no threat to local advertising: websites for car buyers, for example, let you search within a given radius of your home. Plus, you can get much better pictures than with a standard classified ad.

The main thing keeping papers going, IMNSHO, is portability…it’s easier to carry than a laptop, can be folded, can be read in bright sunlight, etc.

E-ink / electronic paper technology is emerging rapidly, and it will negate most if not all of these advantages of the traditional print newspaper.

I give it 2-4 years till this technology is packaged up properly and available to consumers at low cost. The newspapers better figure out how to take advantage of it: it’s their last chance.

Does anybody know what the numbers were five and ten years ago? That would give us an idea of whether this reflects the Internet age and increasing distrust of ‘dead tree journalism’ or simply demographic trends.

I don’t have demographics, but I do have an interesting Thomas Sowell quote from last year:

During his long tenure as NBC News anchorman, Tom Brokaw took that program from last place among the big three broadcast networks to first place. But he had more viewers when he was in last place, more than 20 years ago, than he had in first place this year. That is because fewer people now watch NBC, ABC, or CBS News. Good!

Indeed. (As a well-known figure in the successor medium is apt to say…)

I’m too lazy to go look up the demographic info but the links Roger gave us identify the median age of newspaper readers as 55 and the network news audience as 60. Those are surely well above the national medians even if we discount those too young to read or stay awake to see network newscasts

The trends seem to be solidly away from the news portions of the MSM (newspapers and network newscasts). Readership and viewership have been dropping for a good long while and the median ages have been climbing.

What causes this? As with most things we may guess that there are several factors at work. One may be declinging credibility of these MSM organs. Another may well be that the younger portion of the prospective audience is accustomed to seeking information through other sources. Yet another may be declining interest in “news” in general among younger people. It would be interesting to have some idea of the magnitude of each of these, and other, factors.

As others have pointed out the sheer size of the audience doesn’t matter much if these mediums continue to produce profitable revenue. A declining and aging audience would suggest, however, that the social influence of these mediums would also decline.

Adapt the old adage, “Get them by the short hairs and their hearts will follow” to “Get them by the eyeballs and their minds will follow.” Fewer eyeballs, fewer minds. And despite the generally aging of our citizenry we have not yet reached the point where the over-65 crowd maintains high levels of influence. That said, it is entirely possible that the 50-65 crowd is extremely influential.