Posted on 02/27/2009 7:04:03 AM PST by Redbob
DENVER – Questions about the future of the Rocky Mountain News had become so common, the newspaper's staff put up a handwritten paper sign on the news desk that said, "We don't know."
On Thursday, someone wrote over it in heavy black marker: "Now we know."
Colorado's oldest newspaper, which launched in Denver in 1859, printed its last edition Friday, leaving The Denver Post as the only daily newspaper in town.
Since 2001, the News has shared business operations with The Denver Post in a joint operating agreement between Scripps and The Post's owner, MediaNews Group Inc.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
It’s humorous to see FReepers celebrating side-by-side with liberals, isn’t it?
Yes, it’s true that conservative papers fall faster than liberal ones, but there are some out there still.
And besides, you don’t even have to worry about whether the person is actually an expert on the web, whereas if you have a journalist check into it, you might not be able to find a claim that supports your preconceived idea.
And we know, just really *know* that nothing posted has ever been wrong. And those who claim to have contacts all really *do* have contacts. No need for any well developed network of reporters and sources.
Oh, riiiiiight.
Just as we know that journalists never, ever make stuff up out of whole cloth and get it by their editors.
That whole Jason Blair thing — that was just the white man keepin’ a brotha down, ya dig it?
And the Stephen Glass thing? So yesterday to insist on actual facts.
Nobody said they don’t, but it’s funny how those are known cases, yet the blogosphere gets things wrong daily.
It’s not a free press. They’re too cowardly, pompous, and self-absorbed to tell the truth.
So do newspapers. I can go through any major newspaper, any day of the week, and find several errors of fact. The more numbers in an article, the higher the probability that I’m going to find an error of fact in it.
Newspapers labor under this delusion that hiring liberal arts majors with j-school degrees gives them an edge on reporting facts. No, it doesn’t. At best, it gives them an edge on style, perhaps grammar and maybe spelling. It leaves them utterly devoid of any experience in an increasingly technical world to judge their facts for credibility.
The simple fact is this: Newspapers have been living a lie for decades - since the early 70’s at the very least. The first and biggest lie they have been peddling is that they’re “professionals.” No, they’re not. They might be highly educated in that they have graduate degrees in “journalism” but they’re not professionals. A profession is one where there are a) standards of ethical and legal behavior, b) a state board that issues both credentials and penalties, c) legal liability for malpractice.
Point (c) is the most important. When a professional commits malpractice, you, the wronged public, can come after them for damages.
Lawyers, doctors, surveyors, licensed engineers, CPA’s etc — these are professions.
Journalists are not professionals. Trying to take a journalist to court for malpractice is only slightly less difficult than carrying water in a sieve.
But then on top of this, newspapers lied to not only their customers and the targets of their stories, they lied to the people paying the bills: There have been several high profile cases of newspapers lying about their circulation numbers (see, numbers figure prominently again) to their advertisers. This is akin to shooting themselves in their own guts with a small caliber weapon. It didn’t kill them immediately, but it set the stage for them to die a slow, painful death.
So yes, people in blog-land might well get things wrong. The trouble with newspapers is that they set themselves up on a terrifically high perch, and then failed to deliver. The blogosphere sets itself up on no high perch - it is caveat lector in the truest sense.
But unlike with newspapers, you can find people who deliver very high quality content for free or a moderate charge, who know their stuff very, very well in a highly technical subject area - something you will never find at a newspaper where they’re employing dolts with liberal arts degrees to scribble about stuff which they deliberately avoided studying in college. I can’t find a single newspaper in this country that can get a story right about computer security problems. Not one. I can’t tell you how many times when I worked in Silly Valley that I ran out of patience with reporters in the computer press for their idiotic errors of basic facts - after I’d spent a couple hours with them to make sure that they “got it” — they’d still get it wrong.
I can’t find a general circulation newspaper in an urban area that EVER gets a story right about agriculture in the US. And now that Obama is seized with his penchant for a “smart grid” — good grief, the dribble I’m seeing in the papers about the power transmission grid could fill a manure lagoon.
I seldom find accurate any newspaper report of a non-sporting event I have attended.
This is true. It used to be, if you wanted to know how much you'd lost on GE, you needed to buy a paper and put on your reading glasses and scan those financial pages for the listing. Now, you just type GE into Google. Night and day.
"Freedom of the press" is a quaint figure of speech. What matters is freedom of expression, no matter what the channel.
Every time a print publication closes its doors, we lose an outlet to criticize and keep government in check.
The print (and old media in general) are infested with libtards. They are cheerleaders for government. Their financial failure is to be welcomed. It is simply proof they don't matter.
Sad day for Colorado. Let’s hope the Chicago presses keep running, because we need them.
To hell with Chicago!
All reporters find it hard to write a story under deadline on a subject foreign to their training or education. They are, indeed, prone to condensing and summarizing way too much. They shorten and tweak quotes into misquotes far too often. They routinely stray way beyond what an editor would ever have allowed even 20 years ago. And, yes, some of them make their stories up. I won't defend any of this. It really isn't journalism. In this way, bloggers are only better in that they don't claim to be accurate, honest reporters of news but sort of an amalgam of scandal-sheet expose' and "hard rumor".
Most daily papers sold on the streets of America go for under $.50. Blogs and post sites are free (after you've paid your ISP). Economically not much different from a users POV. But if a newspaper's staff is even trying to live up to it's credo it's a far better bargin and a tragedy when it's gone!
Editors were told awhile ago to feature gay couples in the newspaper and on page 5 gay weddings.People stopped buying the papers.
You’re right - a good editor can make or break a paper. Most editors today are in the business of breaking papers.
I think we need look no further than the NY Times to see an example of a paper that was literally broken by a bad editor. Jason Blair got through because he was the teacher’s pet for an executive editor with a white guilt complex, Howell Raines. It can be argued that the Times has never really recovered from this scandal - Blair was nothing if not prodigious in his output, and the fabrications went back quite a ways, showing that the NYT had a huge breakdown in editorial review and cross-checking.
The central problem with “journalism” as it became post-Vietnam is that editors, as well as reporters, had an agenda, a goal towards which they wanted to slant everything in the paper, either good or bad, aka “advocacy journalism.” That they did this was undeniable. The bias is so prevalent that it hits you from the moment you pick up any urban paper and unfold it.
Kids going into journalism today want to “change the world” and all this other high-minded horsecrap, rather than merely report “just the facts, ma’am.” They all have been taught since they were weaned off their mommy’s boobs that Woodward and Bernstein are the standard to which they should aspire - ie, bring down those in power. Merely aspiring to always have the facts, names, dates and figures in their story correct, true and accurate is too low and quotidian a goal for these over-achievers, you see.
Trouble is, they only want to do this to one political party - the other party, they give a free pass.
The public was going to suffer only so much of this, and this last election cycle was the press’ last hurrah. The press knew that their ad revenues were down, that they were suffering from circulation collapse, etc. Rather than redouble their efforts to appeal to a wider audience or win back their disaffected readers, they merely decided to double down on the traits that got them to where they are today, and they proceeded to dig their own graves, from the owners on down to their scribblers and editors.
Now it is our job as citizens to toss them in and push their dirt in on top of them. Then we who actually make this country productive should kick back, pop open a six pack, drink it with relish and then, in our own leisure, piddle upon the graves of these these pompous pecksniffs and solopsistic sophists.
Something else will arise in their place. Information wants to be free, people want information, etc. I’m not worried that we’re going to live in the dark in ignorance. If anything, with newspapers out of the way, we might see a lot more facts become widely known...
You mean something like this?
(GRIN)
It does fall under the category of the ancient Chinese proverb “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”
You are speaking as if you are a journalist. Honorable profession if you are fair and balanced. You know the truth.
You can’t blame conservatives for their Schadenfreude. They conspired against us to push their liberal agenda from the editorial section onto the front page and the headlines. They gleefully advocated taking our money and freedom.
You will excuse us as we laugh our asses off and cheer their demise. I’m not proud of myself. Schadenfreude is not healthy.
But I’m human.
There might be one: Investor’s Business Daily.
I don’t consider even the WSJ conservative, not for quite a while.
So, the RMN is no more... I’m surprised, but not surprised all at the same time. I must also admit a small sense of victory seeing as a I put together a protest of this paper 9 years ago... I wonder how those jerk reporters I spoke with are feeling now...
Their biased reporting no doubt contributed to its demise, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit. I guess printing outright false statements on important issues like elections gets old and people won’t continue to support such self-satisfaction on the part of reporters forever! The Denver Post [and all other biased rags calling themselves newspapers nowadays should take note...].
That said, I do feel sorry for the RMN [Denver Newspaper Agency] staffers who do NOT make ANY editorial decisions, and are just working to get by — at least those who won’t be absorbed into the Denver Post’s Staff. It is hard to be out of work in a place like Denver - particularly if their training is in the media (where else are you going to work???).
I blame 0bama.
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