That’s the funny thing. The Internet is killing newspapers, but it’s not blogs, it’s Craigslist. Classified advertising has collapsed, and it turns out that people weren’t paying for all the news and bloviation – they were paying for the ads. Heh.

In DC, the Sunday Times costs $ 5.00 and is a bulky doorstop of paper of which even the bluest liberal reads 25 pages at most.
The daily Post leaped 46% in price a few months ago to $.50. Formerly, classified and other ads in the past covered the subsidized “on the street” price. With Craigslist raging, the papers reduced that subsidy and raised the cost. Falling revenues from disappearing ads will demand further cost cuts which will increase reliance on wire services first for foreign reporting and then for opinion. The high cost of opinion will shift to the web as the increasing cost of paper and the presses forces hard copies off
the street.

State flower — rose
State fruit — apple
State mammal — beaver
State motto — excelsior
State joke — New York Times

Remember it is the AP which picked it up as his anger, not the Times.

You may be right about the wire services, and if so I fear more than ever for the daily information intake of the voting citizens of the US democracy.

If the AP is to be entrusted with informing us, I shall double and redouble my hopes for Pajamas Media. Just in the last couple of days, the AP has presented the Colombia-Ecuador-Venezuela scramble first, as Hugo Chavez’s righteous outrage at the Bush stooge Uribe (omitting Hugo’s bankrolling of FARC), next, as the fault of Colombia for allowing its wholly-domestic ‘insurgency’ to spill over its borders to threaten the neighbors.

At least the NYT has reporters with names, some of whom report the news. The wire services have been fingered by various blogs, with convincing evidence, as eager participants in information warfare and the mendacious bulldozing of public opinion. One hopes that the Bangalore editors might develop some sense of verification, but such hopes will be pretty faint until verified themselves.

Please do intrude. Further explanation will help.

1.) My comment does not exclude wire services.
I suggest all which will remain will be the wire services; AP,
UPI (very small), AFP (French), Reuters, etc. Wire services will contribute on time video and editing as done now. Content may remain king but it will be web based.

2.) Newspaper stocks cascading in stock value. Goldman predicts classified revenues in 2008 will be off another 11- 15%.

3.) You may find the Times and Washpo and LATimes still being sold in hard copy in smaller editions but they will be web based.

4.) English speakers in Bangalore will do the ledes, snatched from the wires, all appearing online.

McCain will soon find out that the honeymoon is long over with the press.

Um, sorry to intrude, but those Bangalore ‘editors’ will be editing exactly what? If it weren’t for MSM organizations paying reporters to ask their stupid tendentious questions and buzz their nifty videocams, YouTube would be reduced to home movies of puppies and visual surprises and flashy bouzouki players.

The MSM will survive in one form or another. Whether it will be as savagely biased as at present, who knows, but there’s much wealth in owning the manipulation rights on public events and there are plenty of vested interests in keeping it going.

I can’t help but hope that Pajamas Media leads the way to some healthy changes in the industry. Lord knows there’s a need for fresh air in it (NOT the NPR version – Ed.) And heaven help us if an overwhelming Democratic administration gains power and resurrects the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ as a blog-killer.

2.) We are seeing a transformation in coverage brought about by YouTube. Rather than the media filtering/translating/interpreting the interview, “anger, anger, anger,” the Internet will judge: “no anger . . . what rubbish !!”

3.) It is no great thought to suggest that in ten years, there will not be newpapers like the Times and Washpo; only editors in Bangalore, providing the lede and a couple of quotes and a link to YouTube.