[madinmadtown]

In some ways this self-destructive behavior on the part of the old media is so outrageous that one has to wonder if it isn't orchestrated. As Newspeak raises its cover price to a dollar more than Time, and as the article points out was not bought at the lower price, it is suicide....an intentional death so that there will be only one national newsmagazine left. US News is now essentially an on-line only entity. Time will be the only national news magazine. A totalitarian regime would be proud of that accomplishment.
We conservatives are happy to see the death of our foes in the liberal news, but there is another side to this and it is that we are left with a single news model such as Pravda. “Truth” will be very Orwellian, not that it hasn't already occurred in the old main stream news. The fact that there has not been real competition between Newsweek and Time for at least a decade is something that should have alarmed us a long time ago. The free market model that used to exist between those two rival magazines kept them vital. While in the last twenty years, conservatives have left their active readership, they have continued to support them marginally by taking advantage of the professional subscriptions and leaving them as afterthoughts in waiting rooms and lobbies, partly out of tradition (conservatives will do that}.
My larger point is that we are rapidly seeing an even smaller number of options available for news. Obama’s destruction of the automobile industry in America will be devastating on smalltown newspapers which have relied heavily on car dealerships for revenue. Small towns are looking at the closure of car dealerships as a crisis because in some places the taxes on the sale of autos has been the main source of funding for their towns.
The Internet has given us a great compilation of the news, but many of the sites are not news gathering resources. They are sites where news is compiled, not reported. There is a difference. And while Newspeak has itself not been a source of news for at least a decade, its demise should give us some reason for pause.

[maica]

<<< My larger point is that we are rapidly seeing an even smaller number of options available for news. >>>

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This is very disturbing. Yesterday, a man told me that he had been terrified that Bush was planning to take away his Social Security check. This was an otherwise intelligent professional person who obviously believed what he read in the Baltimore SUN and heard on NPR.

I don’t spend too much time around people who place their highest priority on ‘social justice’ so I was not prepared for his comment, which came out of the blue. I hope my face did not register my shock and surprise when he said this.

We have to find a way to reach these people with some actual facts.