Posted on 02/26/2009 7:58:18 AM PST by SmithL
A couple of years ago, when speaking to a local group, I mentioned that The Chronicle was losing money. A couple in the back of the room rudely applauded. How thrilled those two must have felt when - if - they learned of Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega's announcement Tuesday that the Hearst Corp. will implement "significant" workforce cuts. If the cuts don't pay off, then the Hearst Corp. will "offer the newspaper for sale or close it altogether."
Bloggers and e-mailers are crowing. If The Chronicle is shuttered, they'll be dancing a jig.
Many conservatives feel a warm glow at the possible demise of an institution that they believe to be failing because of liberal bias. On the far left, that same glow will satisfy those who think newspapers are not liberal enough.
As for those who only read their news online, here's a news flash: News stories do not sprout up like Jack's bean stalk on the Internet. To produce news, you need professionals who understand the standards needed to research, report and write on what happened. If newspapers die, reliable information dries up.
Reduced ad revenue and falling newspaper circulation mean that there will be fewer people to cover the same number of stories. In the middle of an economic crisis and President Obama's federal spending bonanza, there will be fewer watchdogs to guard the shop.
So to those of you who argue that the demise of liberal newspapers (The Chronicle in particular) is deserved, I offer a caveat: Be careful what you wish for.
Remember the ugly consequences of San Francisco's sanctuary city policy for juvenile offenders, who were sent abroad instead of to jail? Or Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' failure to tackle crime in Oaktown? Or reports on corporate bonuses for execs at bailed-out banks? Imagine....
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Local newspapers went away a long time ago. Much of the content comes from AP or other wireservices and syndicated content.
Local television went away before local radio did.
Much of media is nationally owned.
Just because it has your city above the fold doesn’t make it local or unbiased.
You have to go to a town of 20,000 people if you want to read a local paper. And there isn’t much news in that either.
Police blotters are not news.
It’s like how they say there will be no artists or musicians if the government doesn’t give them $40,000 grants.
Debra is terrified that she will one day have to find some meaningful work. Being the token Conservative at the Chronicle is like being the only submissive at a bondage party.
In 2000, I took my family to the FL Supreme Court to show my support for (soon-to-be) President Bush. There were hundreds of "pro-Bush" folks to three (yes, three) Gorons. Who do you think that every reporter and camera was focused on?
My daughter, who was 10 at the time, slipped into one of Yahoo's web photos by standing between the legs of one of the Gorons with her sign....
I could live with simple liberal bias in the news. What I cannot tolerate is the liberal MSM monkey-wrenching honest conservatives like Palin and Jindal while shilling for corrupt Dem hacks like Obama and Biden. So that is why I cheer their demise - they have become blatant propaganda arms of the Dems.
The drive-bys pretended to not know who "Joe the Plumber" was during the debate as well.
He'd been discussed on Rush Limbaugh's radio show and other programs earlier in the week. There were tens of millions in America who knew who he was.
The media then set out (with shadow government Democrats in public service jobs) to dig up dirt (illegally) on "Joe" rather than address the issue of Obama's marxist plan or why the media didn't cover it earlier.
There were some who tried to spin in (in the immediate hours after the debate) that Joe the Plumber was a fictional person, like "Joe Sixpack" or the people that Biden called his "good friend".
NO LOSS
“As every conservative pundit knows, there is a special credibility that comes with being able to say, “as the New York Times reported,” or “as the Washington Post reported.””
So, the liberal reporters from the New York Times or the Washington Post are credible and honest without an agenda? I ain’t buying it. These liberals papers can go down the tube.
Deborah, find a lifeboat.
Meanwhile some of us hope to help underwrite good reportage with a little project in the works.
http://www.adactivist.com/
Our Mission is to shift ad buys
FROM: politically-correct media
TO: truth-telling media.
Awwwwwwww....how dare they show resistance or disapproval.
Ms Saunders is fighting for her plush economic life so anything she writes on the subject is by definition self-serving.
Well, I agree. It will be a sad day when the news outfits go out of business. But they have no one to blame but themselves.
Most of them appear unsalvageable. History suggests that when institutions go bad, beyond a certain turning point, then there is no real prospect of turning them around and saving them. The only realistic solution is to let them die, and new ones eventually spring up to take their place.
This was the case over the centuries with Catholic religious orders. When an order lost its sense of mission, grew fat and materialistic, and ceased to follow the spirit of its founders, then it would eventually die, and a reformed religious orders would take it’s place. This happened repeatedly to the Benedictines, the Franciscans, the Carthusians. You can see it happening today in the Church in America, where many religious orders of monks and almost all the religious orders of nuns have self-destructed. But new orders can be seen rising to take their places, with plenty of new postulants.
The news organizations have to go. The journalism schools have to go. Probably most of the colleges have to go. Then maybe we can get new outfits who know how to do their jobs.
This is, of course, most uncomfortable for news junkiies who have to live through such periods, or sensible faculty who have to live among insane colleagues.
Don't forget the pre-born babies!
Excellent analysis.
I agree. I think newspapers provide a valuable service even though I rarely agree with their editorial positions. I would hate to lose our daily paper The Santa Barbara News-Press.
Dear Saundra:
The editorial page should be somewhere in the middle of the paper. It should not be the front page.
Or rather, there will be fewer cheerleaders to promote Zero's latest agenda.
Maybe you could explain why that is so.
She assumes:
1. That nothing will emerge to replace the SF Chronicle should it go under.
2. That the SF Chronicle was doing more good than harm.
Both assumptions are false (imho).
Whenever there is a vacum, something emergest to fill it. We’ve already seen the changes for national news, but local news is just on the cusp. Do I know what will emerge? No, but I know something will. Local news delivery is going to look very different 20 years from now than it does today. There is no point yearning for the past and monolithic print newspapers. Those days are already gone. The only people that don’t see it are the ones in the newspaper business.
I would also argue that the SF Chronicle does more harm than it does good. By presenting biased reporting under the guise of being unbiased, it fools too many people. This is a case where the bad outweighs the good.
Oops, that should be “Dear Debra”!
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