Tribune Prepares for Bankruptcy Filing

Wall Street Journal Online ^ | 7 December 2008 | N/A

[GOPGuide]

What percentage of LATimes employees could be laid off if Zell files for Chapter 11? 50%?

[abb]

I don’t know how it will work out exactly. But the way revenues are declining at ALL newspapers, it isn’t too long before many won’t have the money to put out a dead tree paper.

[abb]

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/12/07/tribune-possible-bankruptcy
Circle of Zell

[PapaBear3625]

If one company owns that many news assets, I now understand why they all say the same thing on their broadcasts. Unreal to have that much media power wrapped up in one company. No wonder there is no investigative reporting anymore.

The purpose of investigative reporting is to distinguish your paper and give it a competitive advantage in attracting readers. If there's only one paper, there's no need to do anything other than paste together what comes across the AP news feed.

[sam_paine]

There's a serious downside here. Less is not more as this study from the UK shows.

I think BGHater, TruthBeforeAll, and Black Veil make good points. Failing American press is only being replaced by more anti-American and foreign conduits.

The [news] aggregators offer the bizarre spectacle of readers offered dozens of links to entirely irrelevant media outlets for every story. For a breaking story in China, for example, readers may be offered links to the likes of the Arizona Republic, KRQE Television (New Mexico), and the Calgary Sun.

Most of these local and regional news outlets, of course, will be providing the same news agency coverage and offer readers no unique coverage of the story.

This leaves us with a picture of an online news world (in the English language) where only four organisations do extensive international reporting (Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC) a few others do some international reporting (CNN, MSN, New York Times, Guardian and a few other large newspaper and broadcasters), and most do no original international reporting. It makes the news aggregation industry appear a bit inane – why not just link to the four companies filing original reports from around the world and ignore the rest? That is not an acceptable solution, of course, either in terms of the marketing priorities of the aggregators, or for the global public sphere.

This research indicates that discourse on international events of consequence within the global public sphere is substantially determined by the production practices and institutional priorities of two information services – Reuters and the Associated Press.32

[bray]

Ironic that the ones who have done the most damage to Capitalism are the first victims of their own success.

Pray for W and our Troops

[Libloather]

CHICAGO CUBS www.Cubs.com

The Cubbies are going under? (But we already knew that - didn't we?)

[abb]

I do not agree with this analysis. Newspapers, tv networks, wire services and radio have never been anything more than information distribution systems. They always thought they “owned” the news but the internet has exposed that fallacy. All they ever had was a monopoly of the printing presses and microwave relay systems.

Ordinary people are quite capable of informing each other as to what is going on around them, given the tools. The internet is that tool. We do it every day here at FRee Republic.

The invention of movable type re-oriented civilization. In my opinion the internet will do the same.

[AmericanVictory]

All of which are basically proponents of Eurosocialism rather than devoted to reporting the news.

So we have essentially been fighting wars for Eurosocialism, and here we thought we had won the war against Europe’s leading anti-Republican power when we won our independence.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks sam!

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

This is an old bookmark I have retained for years....I’m not even sure you could get to this page today by starting at yahoos main news page (”region/countries” no longer appears as it did)......at any rate it remains functional, and to some extent bypasses the difficulties described in your post....

http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/By_Region/Countries/

[abb]

To expand on what I said upthread, this phenomenon of ordinary people reporting on the world around them without MSM filtration (as Matt Drudge predicted way back in 1998) will not happen overnight. It will be messy, but it will happen.

A couple of years ago I opined that TV networks as we’ve known them all our lives would cease to exist and that TV and the internet would combine. And it is happening right now.

[tanuki]

IMO, a newspaper dying is just opportunity for another to take its place. That’s how the market works. I have faith in the market to fill needs because it is reality-based-unlike most newspapers.

[GOPGuide]

What we need is different news sources like Bloomberg but which just reports raw, cold, data and information, without spin so that blogs competing for eyeballs with other blogs can come to their own conclusions about what the raw data and information mean.

News sources should also serve specialized audiences like Bloomberg serves the financial sector, but instead we could have Bloomberg version for medicine, a Bloomberg for politics, a Bloomberg for science, etc, etc.

[Cheerio]

Tribune Co. is preparing for a possible bankruptcy-protection filing as soon as this week,

Why are they not flying their corporate jets to D.C. with their tin cup in hand. Surely the news of the nation is as important as any old American car manufacturer.

[Stosh]

“So you are the person responsible for all this? (LOL)!!”

Somebody had to do it.

(Just don’t let “Ears” Obama know - he still owes the Trib big-time).

[sam_paine]

Ordinary people are quite capable of informing each other as to what is going on around them, given the tools. ..... We do it every day here at FRee Republic.

I at least share your desire for this "citizen reporter" thing to happen. I do not share your conviction that this is what we see at FR.

The first significant "citizen reporter" phenomenon on the internet, I think you would agree: Matt Drudge.

But Matt does not really do anything but break embargoes and leak other reporting outlets early.

I don't know, but it does not seem that he really has leakers within Reuters and AP....more like Newsweak and Time and NYT etc where he can get scoops on the scoops.

As for FR, I think your argument deserves a better example, as FR reflexively rejects any post that does not have a link to a "reputable source".

But for Allegra in Iraq, jveritas translating things and kristinn posting eyewitness reports on protest events---there would be no original content on FR at all.

Even Buckhead's groundbreaking post was merely a smart derivative catch on a CBS report.

I see HotAir and Powerline and LGF and redstate etc etc are really almost exclusively like FR in that they only comment on and around "legitimate" news articles. Yes, there was some liveblogging at Palin rallies that gave me a better flavor for what was going on. True. Hope to see more of the raw feeds in places I can't get to, and LESS of the commentary/reporter slant on it.

So far, the blogosphere is just like yeast...turns news article suger into alcohol to anesthetize the extreme news consumers in their own juices.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!! If we had responsible and balanced journalists and editors at the NYT, LAT, ChiTrib...then the bloggers would work synergistically. The problem with the Tribune and LAT and NYT is not that they are biased but that they are simply creating less and less credible news.

I think the good "Citizen journalists" of the distributed internet news of the future you describe are extremely vulnerable to credibility concerns. One single farce like the API nonsense could paint all the future internet reporter-mill as dodgy.

[floriduh voter]

The Orlando Satan-alls.

[cfrels]

This reminds me of our "local" newspaper, a pretty good paper for local stuff BUT they had all this AP crap all the time. I spoke with one of the editors and he talked about contracts, associations, blah, blah....

When they endorsed comrad Obama based on "his judgement", I flipped out, cancelled the paper. I took it for 20 years, and I will not take it again, ever.

[GOPGuide]

“I think the good “Citizen journalists” of the distributed internet news of the future you describe are extremely vulnerable to credibility concerns. One single farce like the API nonsense could paint all the future internet reporter-mill as dodgy.”

There will be news journalists, but they will only come about after the establishment propaganda organs like Tribune and the NYTimes go bankrupt.

We need new news institutions and we will get them, just let the free market work and clear out the journalist Marxist deadweight.