Posted on 03/15/2009 10:03:55 AM PDT by Zakeet
Earth to Kathleen: Stop being s dumb blond and start writing about something the average person cares about. If you do not, you will not have a newspaper in which to run your column.
Keeping the media strong
Newspapers face major challenges that could slow flow of information
This year’s Sunshine Week, dedicated to the free flow of information in our democratic society, comes with a threat to that flow. These are tough times for newspapers. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News folded recently. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is poised to print its last paper edition. The San Francisco Chronicle is on the bubble. Across America, 33 major newspapers entered bankruptcy in the past 2z ye 1/2 r 1/3 . Some are up for unlikely sale.
If newspapers die, the loss to communities, and to America, would be enormous.
The Buffalo News does not intend to die.
For the record, this paper is in better financial shape than many, if not most, American newspapers. But, like all other printed news publications, we face major challenges in staying healthy and reshaping our journalistic future. There are harsh realities, but we’re working to overcome them. Doing so is important not just to us, but to this community.
While there have been major changes in the way Americans get news, newspapers have been—and still are—on the front lines of news-gathering. Only the major national television networks can field comparable numbers of reporters; Web news sites still mostly aggregate news stories produced by newspapers. The fundamental job of reporting news diminishes with each newspaper closing.
If newspapers decline and their cadres of savvy reporters with decades of experience disperse, the amount of credible and accurate news surviving on the Web and used by bloggers also decreases. News consumers lose the uniquely broad range of news coverage that newspapers now provide either in print or electronically—and local radio and television news loses a resource it relies on, for background information to what the industry calls “rip and read.”
And without the pressure and examination provided today by the strongest state and regional elements of the press, citizens will wind up simply trusting government-run Web sites—which some bloggers cite as an alternative to traditional news—to tell them everything they need to know.
With fewer trained reporters paying attention, more things bad or good will go unheeded. The river of information will be a mile wide—but an inch deep.
That would be bad for communities and bad for the republic, which depends upon an informed electorate. But it is happening. Squeezed not just by the near-depression but by a fundamental change in the way many Americans get their news, the newspaper industry faces a stark challenge: to reinvent itself.
The News has been an important community institution for more than 127 years, and we take the responsibility that entails very seriously. We face the future with some advantages: We carry no huge debt load, don’t pay into a newspaper chain, and we have loyal readers. The News remains the nation’s leading newspaper in terms of the percentage of households reached within its market—and its two local Web sites, buffalonews.com and buffalo.com, are far and away the most viewed media and general sites in this area.
But, like its television and radio counterparts, it faces the challenge of falling advertising revenues in a deepening recession in addition to a cultural readership shift from the printed page to the computer screen. There have been staff reductions and efforts to combine sections for the sake of efficiency. We do not take the future for granted.
Despite the occasional rant by a blogger, those problems are not tied primarily to perceptions of media bias. Papers with liberal or conservative editorial pages alike are threatened, and here at The News our monitoring tells us more people than ever before are reading our paper—although more and more of them are accessing it for free, online. The journalism isn’t broken. The business model is, and we’re working to change it—constantly improving our Web sites and designing specialty publications, for example.
Newspapers basically face challenges tied to the economy in the short run and to changes in reading habits in the only slightly longer run. They need to weather the first, and change to meet the second. Every paper in the country is engaged in both those struggles, trying to reinvent the future while surviving the present. It’s important that newspapers succeed—and keep the daily river of information and analysis flowing.
I sent Parker an email reminding her that liberal news icon Walter Cronkite was - like Limbaugh - a college dropout. Brokaw, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert - they have B.A.’s, just like a lot of the rest of us. Nothing special. Brokaw got his B.A. at the age of 24 from the University of South Dakota after admittedly dropping out of his previous college due to boozing and womanizing.
“are non-journalists “
Thank God Rush and the others are “non-journalists” so we can at least expect the truth without bias. “JOurnalists” are just idiots who couldn’t even so much as get a degree in “education”. Seriously, what knowledge does a journalist have anyway? Science? Engineering? Medical? History? Politics? What? Nothing, that’s what. They are taught to write very short stories and end up getting a brain washing in left-wing politics. That is all.
Drive-by pundits? Oh, how original.
Nobody had ever heard of her until she started lambasting conservatives... while claiming to be one.
Funny, a recent Pew poll shows Rush listeners to be more informed:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/993/who-knows-news-what-you-read-or-view-matters-but-not-your-politics
I got her phone number off a bathroom wall....in a bus station.
She’s not a conservative and never has been, she’s a Trojan Horse and will happily serve that purpose as long as it brings her money and notoriety.
Those Pew results are skewed to make the conservative news sources lower than they really are. If you ADD UP the total correct answers and rank the results that way, instead of ranking them by the number of people who got all the answers correct, Hannity & Colmes comes out #1.
How is the National Enquirer doing? When that paper began reporting cutting edge accurate stories like the John Edwards thing and the Dino's did not.
We all knew they were done.
You can't ignore over 50% of the market and expect to do well.
All most of us want is a product delivered with the facts and without tone.If we want opinion we know where to find it.
I manage to do business with hundreds of customers and not piss off anyone.
Why? We deliver a product that is excellent quality, it delivers as promised and when we screw up we make it right.no matter what the cost.
You can only deliver crap once maybe twice then your done.
We don't care what the writer thinks sorry to say!I don't even care who he is.
Dragnet had it right! Just the facts mam....just the facts!
"Kathleen Parker: After Interviews, Palin Should Bow Out"
Staggering bigotry of Kathleen Parker - UPDATED"
Loves Romney...berates Palin...trashes Rush.
She’s a liberal. Any questions?
Wake up children. How many "RINOs" is it going to take for you to realize that these people are plants? They're moles who have never been conservative but have infiltrated our ranks by acting right and reserving their leftism until they feel safe openly espousing what they have always believed in their hearts. There are 'way too many of them in 'way high places in our party and pundits. Did anyone think that they would confine themselves to infiltrating the Dhimmicrat party and just leave ours alone? Their goal is to take over this country, and they've had ninety years to work on it, and they never give up.
We need to take a page out of that book IMO.
“non-journalists” who stoking “ignorance,””
He He -
IMHO - Journalists = Ignorance. If they aren’t ignorant then they are dishonest individuals perpetrating a fraud.
In my entire life, I never thought I would see journalists voluntarily writing and publishing the type of indoctrination and propoganda that has been reserved for state-owned communications or forced compliance by communists, socialists or dictators.
No we have the worst of the lot, elitists who feel that by withholding stories, burying stories or slanting stories to benefit the people sharing their ideology is more important than telling the truth.
Sad - we have a bunch of Telepropagandists parading as journalists.
No, she saves all her cheap shot work for Palin.
That’s her high school yearbook picture, which is, like, 40 years old.
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