`Not your father's Oldsmobile' (George Will)

Townhall.com ^ | April 24, 2005 | George Will

[The Great Yazoo]

WASHINGTON -- If you awake before dawn you probably hear a daily sound that may become as anachronistic as the clatter of horses' hooves on urban cobblestones. The sound is the slap of the morning paper on the sidewalk.

65 and older 60 pct. 50-64 52 pct. 30-49 39 pct. 18-29 23 pct.

[bad company]

Oops wrong thread. I was looking for something on ted kennedy.

[The Great Yazoo]

Table should be as follows:
65 and older --- 60 pct.
50-64 --- 52 pct.
30-49 --- 39 pct.
18-29 --- 23 pct.

[The Great Yazoo]

Oops wrong thread. I was looking for something on ted kennedy

LOL

[R. Scott]

Circulation might not be as low if the papers would stick to reporting news, and leave commentary to the editorial page. Even the younger people – 20-somethings- see it if their comments at my favorite watering hole are an indication. Most seem to use the morning paper for the comics, crossword and movie schedules and ignore the “news” sections.
Around 20 years ago the Chicago Tribune bought both our morning and afternoon papers. They soon closed the afternoon paper leaving only the morning paper – which they use to “educate” us poor dumb Southern Redneck Republicans in the Right Way of Thinking.

[martin_fierro]

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.

I take it as part of Cronkite's damnation that he's lived long enough to witness the ramifications of what his bias helped create.

[goldstategop]

Nah. This a welcome development and the media has been asking for it for a long time. Its just about the only business which habitually insults, offends and looks down on its customers as if they needed it more than it needed them. And with their liberal orientation, they're now circling the drain to oblivion. Like with the Oldsmobile brand, they could change but when they finally do, it'll be too late to make a comeback in the affections of the people who read, listen to and watch them.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[VadeRetro]

Basically, the age and the "I-read-a-newspaper-yesterday" percent figure are the same. Nice, simple rule of thumb.

[HankReardon]

I have often hear people say, " I do not follow the news, it's too depressing". I tell them, "that is the desired effect, they want you not paying attention."

[KidGlock]

Of course, this WAS his father's Oldsmobile.

[TXBSAFH]

My wife and I only buy a Sunday dead tree legacy media. We look at the ads and for teh tv schedule. Beyond that it is only cheap packing material.

[rellimpank]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1389705/posts

An amusing part of this was that it appeared a day earlier electronically than in print--

[The Great Yazoo]

Same article different title.
Sorry!

[rellimpank]

--no problem--good ones need to be reposted about every 12-14 hours---gets better exposure--

[whd23]

Bias aside, a big problem with newspapers is that they contain lots of information that may not appeal to every customer. That is to say they are too generalized. For example: if I buy a paper, I end up tossing more than 1/2 of it unread; Sports, "Arts & Leisure," "Help Wanted," "Automobiles", and usually the Business section gets dumped. Sure there are days that I want to leaf through the Automobiles section, but I do my real car shopping on-line.

[Grut]

The future of the big media that the young have abandoned is not certain. But do you remember when an automobile manufacturer, desperately seeking young customers, plaintively promised that its cars were ``not your father's Oldsmobile''? Do you remember Oldsmobiles?

Oof!

[basil]

They carry their media around with them: 79 percent of 8-to-18-year-olds have portable CD, tape or MP3 players. Fifty-five percent have hand-held video game players. Sony's PlayStation Portable, which plays music, games and movies, sold more than 500,000 units in the first two days after its March debut.

I must be awfully dense, but I'm trying to work out why a video game player, etc. is considered part of the media.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Perhaps the correct way to represent a newspaper now is - Yesterday's news reported today.

I look at the ads and read some of the comics.

[rellimpank]

--and what I find most amusing here in the Las Vegas area is that the TV news isn't much better---even the local stuff--

[DoughtyOne]

There is a dynamic that goes wanting in this article. Will touches on it, but doesn't cash in to my way of thinking.

When I was young, I did value the print medium. It was a time when the print media did do investigative reporting. They did it because of their bias, but at least they did it.

Look at the different approaches, the investigations of Nixon vs those of Clinton. With Nixon they scrounged and dug for every paltry clue they could come up with. They even made up fictitious characters and stated they were "Deep Throat". During Clinton's tenure, bonified witnesses were shreded. During Nixon's nobody even demanded who Deep Throat was, much less attacked their character. Thirty plus years down the turnpike, and we still don't know who Deep Throat was, and essentially it doesn't matter.

With the evaporation of credibility, came the evaporation of readership. Will secumbs to the theory that exploding sources of media induced the decline of the print media. I'll buy that to an extent, but if the major paper in my region were unbiased, if it did execute investigative journalism without bias, if it was credible, it would be hitting my doorstep each morning.

It isn't. It doesn't.

People can lay off the decline of the MSM's strangle-hold on the nation as an indication of declining knowledge seeking youth. To an extent that is undoubtedly true. What goes unsaid, is that many of them are quite aware of the bias of the MSM, and just opt out of being lied to.

What this does create though, is an atmosphere where youth can be led astray by lefist propaganda. It has amazed me how some today have bought into the leftist Marxist agenda lock stock and barrel. That is an unfortunate offshoot of remaining MSM influence, and an increasing leftist propaganda effort that captures some young minds and destroys them.

One must recognize though, that the youth are not the only ones affected by this dynamic. Witness a time when the likes of John Kerry could gain a respectable slice of the vote. Even in the 70's, during the hey day of leftist propaganda in the United States, George McGovern was swamped by those who saw him for what he was.

Pitty those in our time didn't see John Kerry as clearly.