Posted on 07/13/2007 4:50:48 AM PDT by abb
Why the San Francisco Chronicle is a candidate to exit print
Play with me on this one: Which major American newspaper should be the first to throw up its hands and stop publishing a print product?
It's a question worth asking. This could be the worst year for newspapers since the Great Depression. The double-digit revenue declines long forecast by doomsters have arrived. While nearly all the major papers still post profits, albeit smaller than before, a few prominent ones are losing boatloads. At Hearst Newspapers' San Francisco Chronicle, according to a deposition given by James M. Asher, the company's chief legal and business development officer, losses of $330 million piled up between mid-2000 and September, 2006, better—or should I say worse?—than $1 million a week. During negotiations with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's unions, the owning Block family disclosed that the paper lost $20 million in 2006. Late last year, The Boston Globe was headed for unprofitability as well, according to The Wall Street Journal.
And 2007 does not look materially kinder than 2006 for any of these papers. One senior executive describes the climate like this: "If you told me 24 months ago that revenues would be declining as much as they are today, I'd say you were smoking dope." Print newspapers require maintaining a costly status quo—paper, presses, trucks, and mail rooms—that, if only through rising gas prices, will only get more expensive.
snip
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
ping
“—that, if only through rising gas prices, will only get more expensive.”
And I thought rising gas prices were bad.
If a newspaper goes exclusively online, does that mean it’s “just another blog” that has to compete with often superior writing and analysis?
I have a better question. Does the 1st Amendment still apply? Are Blogs covered by the 1st Amendment? Radio & TV? I understand that there are valid limitations. (Yelling "Movie" in a crowded Firehouse, etc.)
If so, wouldn't you have grounds to challenge the "Fairness Doctrine" on 1st Amendment grounds?
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Very perceptive comment.
My amateur opinion is that only ink on paper is covered by freedom of the press.
Radio and TV use government owned airways so can be legally censored.
Cable TV has a government facilitated monopoly and also commonly uses satallite communications which could be construded as using public airwaves and therefor be subject to legal censorship. I know the government doesn’t yet control Cable, but using the same logic as with radio and TV they could.
And finally using telephone lines could be covered under the same logic as the above paragraph about Cable.
So if you’re concerned about freedom of the press, don’t scrap the printing presses yet.
Also when people like RFK Jr get up and bash corporations as traitors, the left media shouldn't be surprised that they are being abandoned.
Ping for input.
How many "journalists" are going to want to continue writing their tripe if they know they are no longer covered by the 1st Amendment? They could no longer pretend to be "objective." What would that do to their mindset.
Consider if they had to argue that Rush, Free Republic, and Little Green Footballs were 1st Amendment protected just to cover their own sorry rear ends.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
That is my analysis as well - with the caveat that if anyone is allowed to post on the Internet, I am allowed to post on the internet (I would have to make my own site if I were banned from FR, but . . .).That runs counter to the theory that the government can favor its pets known as FCC licensees with the right to broadcast while granting me only the right to listen and the duty to shut up - but it does have the advantage of consistency with Constitutional principle.
IMHO
Here’s my $0.02. Rights are only secure if they’re fought for and defended, by whatever means necessary. Government, by its nature, ALWAYS abridges individual rights. They would long ago abridged the first amendment for newspapers if they could have gotten away with it. Newspapers, to their credit, have vociferously guarded the First Amendment. We should do the same with the internet and the blogosphere.
The “broadcast license” hook that was used by government to censor content is now a legal nullity, in my opinion. Over-the-air “broadcast” will be gone in a few years, to be replaced by internet “narrowcast” over which central government control will be nearly impossible.
The first amendment belongs to those who defend it and use it. We should be on the front lines in that fight.
All just moo.
Yes, we are an ecologically sensitive group us Dinosaur Media Death Watch types.
The First Amendment applies to all "expressive conduct," not just spoken words or squiggly lines on paper. I have some problems with such a broad constructuion (It applies to go go dancers, for example - speaking of broad construction), but that is a different argument.
If so, wouldn't you have grounds to challenge the "Fairness Doctrine" on 1st Amendment grounds?
Absoultely. The fairness doctrine is based upon the idea that the airwaves are a limited precious comodity and therefore the government must ensure that no one viewpoint dominates. This so patently no longer applies - today you can stream data that was broadcast over all the airwaves on any day in 1960 over the same bandwidth occupied by one TV broadcast.
But all of these things are false issues. Without the power to regulate commerce between the states run amok, how is the federal government constitutionally permitted to assert a property right over electromagnetic radiation? The point is that spectrum is not the exclusive right of the federal government and its ownership should be governed like any other real or personal property. It should be owned in fee simple absoulte and bought and sold just like I can sell my house or my car. That being the case - there goes the fairness doctrine for good.
Nickname: Irish
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