Posted on 04/03/2009 7:13:03 AM PDT by abb
The newspaper industry is turning upside down. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle are among the papers that have ceased daily publication or announced in recent months that they may have to stop publishing. Not long ago, Tribune Co., owner of the Baltimore Sun, filed for bankruptcy.
None of this bodes well for our democracy. Our country depends on an open and free press to monitor what happens in our communities so that Americans can make sound judgments about their lives and leaders. Thomas Jefferson, a man who was frequently vilified by newspapers, summed it up best when he said: "If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter."
Like Jefferson, I believe that a well-informed public is the core of our democracy. How can we forget the role newspapers played in uncovering the Watergate and Enron scandals or the AIG bonus debacle? News stories, reported by journalists, often bring to public attention decisions and actions that affect all of us. While the world has increasingly fast access to news, one fact remains unchanged: When it comes to original, in-depth reporting that records and exposes actions, issues and opportunities in our communities, nothing has replaced newspapers. Most, if not all, sources of journalistic information, from Google to broadcast news or punditry, gain their original material from the laborious and expensive work of experienced newspaper reporters diligently working their beats over the course of years. Not hours, years.
The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that a typical metropolitan paper runs 70 stories a day, counting the national, local and business sections. In contrast, a half-hour of television news includes only 10 to 12 stories.
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(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I have a plan. How about the SCOTUS extending freedom of the press to media no matter how it is produces and disseminated. The origninal intent of the US Constitution was to protect media from the government. SCOTUS should have done this when radio was invented.
I think I hear David Geffen might be interested buy LA Times he waiting for the market go rock bottom buy it cheap LOL!
The LA Times is “worth” zip, zilch, nada. The only value it has is the buildings, land, furniture and fixtures.
That’s it.
Imagine if they were objective and stopped being an extension of the democRAT party they might gain some of their readers back. As it stands now, most of us here won’t even use the major US daily’s to wrap fish.
Yeah I been to LA Times building as a kid long long time ago on field trip it is niceee that only thing valuable about it
There...fixed it.
It is just what you guys deserve, you lying bastards in the Press.
You lied so much and so consistently that you undermined your own credibility.
It's like crapping yourself and looking around for someone to blame.
Adios, lying, condescending, smug, prissy journalism major maggots.
Coming soon: A Federal Media Tax.
D'accord.
The new Media. however, is scarcely a superior alternative in that every thing that we read, post, foreword, and share, is completely available to the scoundrels who dwell in and control this new media without soul.
Privacy was forever gone even before this old media self induced abomination that shall also result in its very destruction. I will enjoy the demise of the Boston Globe and others of its sort even as my own freedoms are recklessly traversed by my ignorant neighbors, and the local Cable Company.
I simply want to swear out loud, but instead, I can revel in the the fact, the notion, that I will not be compelled to indulge this atrocity forever.
We do not live forever, but we can make a difference to those who follow.
Our so called Representatives are fueling a fire that will inevitably burn Posterity to a degree that will be unmatched by failure of progeny that has before been known.
At the least, my children will not be able to legitimately blame me for the sheitestorm that is coming.
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