The End of Newspapers as we know them

PolitiChill.com ^ | 3-6-09 | Joe Moody

[guinness4strength]

Two months shy of its 150th birthday, the Rocky Mountain News breathes its last.

Elsewhere, the state of Minnesota shifts tax money from retraining manufacturing workers, to helping newspaper staff connect with an online audience.

Before the World Wide Web, I was one of those journalists in training. As fate would have it, the year I graduated in 1993, an invention called the web browser would soon change everything.

While starting my career as a journalist for a pauper’s salary, my brother emails me something that blows my mind. It’s called Netscape Navigator and allows people to share “web pages” with anyone anywhere instantly.

Always the entrepreneur, from my first lemonade stand to selling programs at football games, I immediately see a new world of virgin soil not yet spoiled by the corporate hands of Wall Street or the homogeny of mainstream media.

I stake my claim on a “plot of land” as soon as I can think of a domain name — which is the online address starting with www.

My father isn’t thrilled with the prospect of his son leaving the brick-and-mortar foundation of journalism to set sail on chaotic and untested waters — this new “Wild West.”

I can take only my writing skills and education with me. I set out to navigate the wild seas.

continued... read full article here

[Billthedrill]

It’s called Netscape Navigator and allows people to share “web pages” with anyone anywhere instantly.

Pfft. Yeah, like that's ever gonna catch on.

BTT

[Zakeet]

The end of "Newspapers as we know them" occurred when the media lost the Vietnam war, followed shortly thereafter by two WaPoo hacks who ruined Nixon over a fairly minor (by today's standards) incident. J-schools were flooded by liberal activists, and the inevitable train wreck in credibility followed.

Without balance, media output switches from news to propaganda, and the majority of the buying public just won't pay for this kind of tripe.

[qam1]

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.

[Kansas58]

How about we get someone in Congress to propose a TAX!
A TAX on NEWSPRINT!
Whereas a large portion of every landfill is used for discarded newspapers and
Whereas the production of newspapers causes trees to be cut down, hauled by polluting trucks to polluting paper mills, and hauled from paper mills to publishers and
Whereas the production of newspapers requires toxic ink and solvents and energy wasting machinery and
Whereas the distribution of newspapers requires the use of dirty internal combustion engines Therefore:
Be it resolved that a Newsprint tax, of $1,000.00 per pound, be charged to EVERY newspaper with a daily subscription, within the United States!
________________________________________
We should get some Republican to propose THIS as an amendment to any “cap and trade” or “carbon tax” proposal that comes up!
Maybe we can make it like “Cap and Trade” and use the revenue generated, from this tax on dirty dinosaur newspapers subsidize a tax credit for home computers and digital devices?

[FormerACLUmember]

The end of "Newspapers as we know them" occurred when the media lost the Vietnam war, followed shortly thereafter by two WaPoo hacks who ruined Nixon over a fairly minor (by today's standards) incident. J-schools were flooded by liberal activists, and the inevitable train wreck in credibility followed.

Amen. That and uncritically foisting that totally destructive psychopath Obama to annihilate America.

The demise of the leftist press can't come soon enough.

[NavyCanDo]

For you people looking for work here’s an idea. There must be millions of pet bird owners in North America that will need disposable liners for their cages when there are no more newspapers.
I’m serious, you may want to do a little market research and if there is nothing like that available now, then opportunity knocks.

[piytar]

Yup. The meme is that the web is killing print media. They don’t explain why the WSJ - one of the few papers that isn’t a complete propaganda tool for the left - is still doing well. As with any other inconvenient facts, the leftists just ingore that.

[Lancey Howard]

Good news BUMP!
I want everybody associated with the socialist Democrat newsrooms to lose their jobs, their life savings, their homes, and their families. For what they have done to America, they deserve nothing less.

[abb]

[cookcounty]

Or from Stumped Again http://www.stumpedagain.wordpress.com :

The Rocky Mountain News published its last edition Friday, two months short of its 150th anniversary. The newspaper business is dying for many reasons, but one of them is that they really seem to enjoy sticking their fingers in the eyes of large numbers of potential and former readers.

The Denver Post is considered left-of-center, the Rocky, right-of-center. That’s based on the guys who write the official editorials-—definitely not on how the news itself is written and edited. But a newspaper is a newspaper, not an “editorialpaper.” We read newspapers primarily to get the news, not E.J. Dionne’s opinion.

One could pick up the Post and read some AP story about former Vice President Cheney attending some function, and it reads :

“….former Vice President Cheney, who some say abused his office, spoke today…..”

Or one could pick up the Rocky and read:

“….former Vice President Cheney, who some say abused his office, spoke today…..”

See the difference?

Or how about my recent favorite AP example: ” …Failed Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin… “

The former appeared in hundreds of US newspapers last month. The phrase “…Failed educational reformer Barack Obama…” has never appeared in any newspaper despite his ghastly performance at CAC in Illinois. Insulting conservative readers with screwy left-wing pablum dropped into the middle of news stories, has largely ruined the pleasant newspaper-reading experience for many.

And it isn’t just the wording, it’s the choosing and placement of articles. Jim Geraghty suggests reading newspapers from back to front, in order to get to the more significant news first.

Why did Sarah Palin’s wardrobe require 40 times more coverage than Obama’s only CEO experience—a multimillion dollar disaster?

I’m just stumped again.

[Reeses]

Check out this newspaper cemetery going back over 200 years, where you can see what real journalism was, which in older samples included frequent use of the n-word. Unless you are rich choose the "no price" search option.

[ak267]

Dinosaur Media Death Watch(TM) Ping!!!