Newspapers start $75 million campaign to fight image of decline (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

Las Vegas SUN ^ | January 31, 2007 | RYAN NAKASHIMA

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

If the idiots would drop their leftist agenda and start reporting news, people would subscribe and they would make money. Instead, they produce socialist agitprop and wonder why people don't buy it.

They can't. People are in the newspaper business because that is, in their minds, the most significant business to be in. Journalists don't do anything; they are critics. So journalists have to believe that Theodore Roosevelt was wrong when he said :

"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . .

To the extent that they reject that notion, they promote criticism and second guessing over providing food, clothing, shelter, security, fuel, and any other necessity. And to that extent they promote journalists in general by calling all journalists (even, or especially, their competitors) "objective" - and by assigning similarly virtuous labels to anyone else who is in the complaining professions (union leader, plaintiff lawyer, Democratic politician . . .).

Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate

[shrinkermd]

Just another ploy by the left wing commentariats to prove they are really worthy of capitalism's largess.

I think it about time that advertisers, small business and individuals especially, vote with their money and cease supporting people who spend their nights looking for ways to increase their taxes, diminish social mores and practice treachery in time of war.

Why use them?

[norwaypinesavage]

I guess I won't see their ads encouraging newspaper advertising. I canceled my last newspaper subscription last year. Maybe they should advertise on the Internet?

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Nothing says "irrelevant" more than a $75 million dollar marketing campaign to declare your relevance!

There's a VAST market of conservatives out there to capture if they'd just report the news as it actually IS, not as they desire it to be.

I can't believe how blinded they are to that simple fact by their ideology and agenda. Well, actually, I can believe it. ;)

Glad it's catching up with them and that they'll remain clueless while throwing more money down a rat hole. *SMIRK*

[RayChuang88]

Alvin Toffler warned about this way back in 1979 in his book The Third Wave, where he said as communication technologies improve the power of mass media companies will decline due to consumers having more choice in what they read, hear and watch. In today's multichannel cable/satellite TV and public Internet environment, Toffler's prophecy has become reality.

[Popocatapetl]

If you took 10 random, but otherwise erudite, educated people with no connection to the media, then asked them to solve the problems of the dinosaur media and make it relevant, they could in short order compile a list of intelligent reforms to make to accomplish that goal.

And the dinosaur media, from top to bottom, would reject those ideas completely, as "We don't do things that way."

They are adamant. They will not change. They cannot change. Change cannot be done. Things must be done as they have always been done. Change is bad. Change will not work. Even proposing change is repulsive to them.

And this is why they are dying.

I have tried suggesting a modest change or two of my own to journalists. I've suggested other peoples' changes. Grand changes or small cosmetic changes, it doesn't matter. The dinosaur media are adamant: we will not change.

From NYC, I saw a panel discussion with the top journalist of a newspaper that had gone out of business. For them, the local news was generated in only two places, Manhattan cocktail parties, by celebrities, and in the upscale Hamptons, again by the same celebrities.

And these four journalists were bitter as hell at the public, for their ignorant disinterest of the lives and doings of these celebrities. It was the public's fault for caring only for their own proletarian interests, while ignoring the culture of their betters.

Is it any surprise that their newspaper folded? But they knew beyond any doubt that it was not their fault.

So I figure that eventually 10 random, but otherwise erudite, educated people with no connection to the media, will create a new media, say a newspaper, with new axioms, a new business model, and unparalleled popularity.

And what remains of the dinosaur media will bitterly hate and oppose it, then try to ignore it. Then finally they will curse the public for preferring it.

Then hopefully, they will find their new calling in asking people if they "want fries with that?", and bragging about how they used to be an important person, to bored teenagers tired of hearing about it.

[ken5050]

You'll know that thin gs are really, REALLY bad at the NY Times when it resurrects the ad featuring Rush Limbaugh..

[Grampa Dave]

This is very typical of liberal run or is it ruined businesses to throw money at the problem instead of changing their ways.

Anytime, I meet anyone working with an auto dealership, I ask them why they fund the newspapers which run hundreds of articles each year about Global Warming and how bad autos are.

This is a great waste of their dwindling resources. May they spend more money each day, trying to deny the reality that is kicking their butt each day.

[martin_fierro]

"I am muthaf**kin' sick and tired of all the muthaf**kin' doom and gloom reports out there about the death of this muthaf**kin' industry," said Earl Cox

[Grampa Dave]

Sounds like some CEO's I have known and heard about when their companies started their downward spirals. All they did was to warn their employees not to complain nor get depressed about their sinking businesses.

[Milhous]

It is not the image of decline, it is decline of the image.

Well said!

[Milhous]

Instead, they produce socialist agitprop and wonder why people don't buy it.

My hometown fishwrap throws the occasional Coulter column topside right on their opinion page then tries to call it even. On the facing page they offer a Mallard toon right side of their Doonsbury toon. Other than that you get border to border hippie chick pie wagons they call "women" moonbat crazy flailing away at whipping boys topped off with a Lukovichesque toon in the center.

I'm going to miss old Molly Ivins. Instead of actually reading her screeds you could simply count her use of the word Bush to get a fairly good metric of the current state of her Bush Derangement Syndrome.

[Milhous]

And it's not just the newspaper business either, it's the entire liberal media and all it's ramifications, especially network news:

A copy-and-paste from my home page illustrates one guy with relatively meager assets using a website to effectively compete against big media's television news industry and its vast infrastructure costing billions of dollars per year to maintain.

---

Congratulations Matt Drudge!

A third wave powerhouse in a second wave world.


Election night numbers:

ABC	9,670,000
NBC	7,000,000
CBS	6,310,000
FOXNEWS	3,050,000
CNN	2,963,000
DrudgeReport	2,300,000
MSNBC	1,926,000

Anyone With A Modem Can Report On The World

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Evening News Viewership, All Networks

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It's not your father's media

...Consumers of news now understand that, as Eastland says, "News is a thing made, a product, and that media with certain beliefs and values once made the news and then presented it in authoritative terms, as though beyond criticism. Thus did Walter Cronkite famously end his newscasts, 'And that's the way it is.' That way, period."

When, after the misreported Tet offensive of 1968 (a U.S. military victory described as a crushing defeat), Cronkite declared Vietnam a "stalemate," he spoke, as Mindich says, to "a captive audience." Nearly 80 percent of television sets in use at the dinner hour were tuned to one of the three network newscasts, and Cronkite had the largest share.

If that had been the broadcast marketplace in 2004, John Kerry would be president: The three networks reported the Swift boat veterans attacks on Kerry only after coverage of the attacks by cable news and talk radio forced Kerry to respond. The networks were very interested in charges pertaining to a Vietnam-era story about George W. Bush's alleged dereliction of National Guard duties -- until bloggers, another manifestation of new, small and nimble media, shredded it.

What’s broadcast?

December 1st, 2006
Read More: Exploding TV

What’s the point of broadcast TV anymore? Eighty-eight percent of Americans receive TV via cable or satellite. And now, of course, there are more ways to get video: the internet, mobile, and soon mobile satellite. Our kids have no idea what the difference between a broadcast and a cable channel is. Soon, they won’t have any idea what the difference between cable and internet TV is. And before you know it, they won’t know the difference between professional and amateur TV.

So do we tear down the broadcast towers? Not yet. But very soon, the cost benefit of owning that license and equipment will fall to nearly nil (one wonders when delivering via wi-fi mesh networks in cities and satelllite in boonies will become more effective and profitable — perhaps even now). Local TV licenses used to be money machines; now they’re shrinking. Viewership for networks of those stations continues to fall year after year, of course. The barrier to entry to making and now distributing TV is gone. Radio is arguably in better shape so long as we drive and satellite and radio-via-phone grow to critical mass, joining the iPod. And the radio business sucks.

What’s the point of broadcast? What’s the power of it? There’s far more perceived value to broadcast — by us older folks — than there is real value anymore. The business and regulatory attention given to broadcast is overblown. So what happens to broadcast? Does it matter?

[bray]

In related news: Germany has launched a new line of Hindenbergs...

Pray for W and Our Troops

[Milhous]

FWIW my Ford dealership desperately needs to forget about socialistic marketing campaigns and relearn the basics of customer service before its too late.

[Milhous]

LOL.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

I do have to argue with the title "Dinosaur Media DeathWatch".

Yes the MSM is facing extinction but this idea lets them off the hook. Not one theory of dino extinction proposes that it was self inflicted, as it is with our current old media due to their death embrace of leftism.

I know history will falsely blame the Internet for their demise but we need it out there as much as possible that the MSM chose this course, but more important knew how to avoid their downfall and showed nothing but arrogance as a solution.

[Grampa Dave]

Our local fishwrap has two big front page alarms re global warming.

Yet, the auto ads used up two sections of newspapers, and the realty ads another two sections.

If the auto industry stopped advertising with those who want to do away or restrict autos, the fishwraps would be in real trouble.

[Gritty]

[Milhous]

And what remains of the dinosaur media will bitterly hate and oppose it, then try to ignore it. Then finally they will curse the public for preferring it.

"Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is violently opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident." -Arthur Schopenhauer