The Decline of Newspaper

Newsweek has dropped its “guaranteed” circulation to advertisers by half a million. Time has dropped its expected circulation by 750,000.

While these MSM outlets have declined in readership, the general population has been increasing.

Rupert Murdock, a major newspaper publisher, has proclaimed that “there has never been more hunger for news.” That is true. But we are not getting it from newspapers.

Too often, newspaper articles are inadequately researched or give a biased, one-sided account of the news. The worst papers’ print articles are misleading or completely false. Bloggers and Internet reporters have written countless articles bringing light to both bias and inaccuracies that appear in newspapers. Is this to blame for the fall of newspapers?

Our local newspaper had an editor for many years who routinely reported on school board meetings. He also printed articles submitted by our elected leaders, both state and national, in which they explained how and why they voted on different issues. The paper also included obituaries, court reports and sports along with other local news. People purchased and read it. Now, following a series of short-term editors, half of the paper appears to be dedicated to high school sports with few articles on local news, and readership has declined significantly.

It is time for the “major” newspapers to accept that they cannot compete with the Internet for major, national and international news. We get that faster—and more accurately—on the Internet than is possible for them to print it. Such stories are reported on an hourly basis. But there are many local happenings that people would be interested in reading and, I believe, would purchase newspapers for.

Would legitimately fair-and-balanced reporting help turn things around? As a daily reader of the Wall Street Journal, I often find that the paper is reporting on events that I read about on the Internet the day before. However, their balanced editorial page, presenting thoughtful articles, keeps me reading and purchasing the paper.

What is happening to the newspaper industry? Denver’s Rocky Mountain News is out of business. The Tribune Company, owners of the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Times, declared bankruptcy. Six other metropolitan newspapers and 23 television stations are all owned by the same company—and all have financial problems. The New York Times is in deepening trouble. The Miami Herald has been put up for sale. The list goes on and on.

The New York Times reported that a survey of 500 newspapers across the country revealed a drop in circulation of 4.6 percent. Among the most heavily hit were the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Houston Chronicle, Boston Globe, Newark Star-Ledger, Philadelphia Enquirer, Orange County Register and Detroit News.

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
Vladimir Lenin

“Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.”
Joseph Stalin

“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”
Richard Salant, Former president of CBS News

“The business of journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert;
to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
You know it and I know it and what folly this toasting of an independent press.
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks; they pull the strings and we dance.
Our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
John Swinton, Former Chief of Staff New York Press Club

We in the press like to say we’re honest brokers of information, and it’s just not true.
The press does have an agenda.
Bernard Goldberg, Commentator on CBS 48 Hours television program

“It doesn’t matter what is true; it only matters what people believe is true....You are what the media define you to be.”
Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace

“To hell with the news. I’m no longer interested in news. I’m interested in causes.
We don’t print the truth. We don’t pretend to print the truth.”
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, Former Executive Editor Washington Post

“In a way Obama is standing above the country, above the world. He’s sort of GOD. He’s going to bring all different sides together.”
Evan Thomas, Editor of NewsweAk

“The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.”
“The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it.
It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!”
Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf

http://www.freerepublic.com/~justanobody/

(I fully realize that all sensible, thinking Americans — that’d be conservatives —fully understand this information. I post it only for the brain-dead Obama voters and statists — that’d be liberals — who might have slipped out of their rubber rooms over at DU and are lurking, hacking or generally causing trouble here at FR.)

Recently, I read what probably amounts to the obituary for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. (My wife insists on buying the Sunday edition for the TV guide.) It joins the growing list of print newspapers in deep, deep financial trouble. The LA Times, NY Times, Boston Globe, Cleveland Plain Dealer, etc.

Here’s my horseback analysis of why they’re heading for extinction.

As generally liberal statist propaganda outlets, they have for decades supported a government “education” system (and I used the term very loosely) dominated by the NEA and the idiot bureaucrats running the DOE in Washington. The unions and the NEA have largely hurled the traditional three “Rs” and critical thinking skills under the bus in favor of touchy-feely diversity training, self-esteem building, political correctness, African studies, teaching Hispanic kids in SPANISH instead of teaching them English on day one, social promotions, basket weaving, navel gazing, etc., etc.

I won’t dwell on it here but would, instead, refer you to my personal experience with the government schools here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0lR1KQq2-U

What I cannot grasp is precisely why, after effectively dumbing down the members of the American populace who have traversed the conveyor belt of mediocrity called government schools, the overeducated owners and operators of these newspapers are surprised that this population has lost its interest in READING NEWSPAPERS: Many of them CAN’T read!!

Those folks – especially conservatives who resent the increasingly liberal drivel found in the major papers — who can and DO read things are now getting their information from the Internet or, for those too busy to actually read, from largely conservative talk radio (which helps explain why Algore, Pelosi, Reid, et al feel the need to control both these formats).

Their statist dumbing down has produced huge numbers of voters who lacked the critical thinking skills necessary to determine that their present-voting, slick-talking liar of a candidate had virtually NO management or legislative experience. And the economic illiterates they have elevated to high office in Washington for years have produced a growing economic crisis which has even those with any money left spending it on “luxuries” like food, clothing and shelter. Newspapers and advertising therein are far down the list.

And did I mention that the economic collapse Obama “inherited” has its genesis in Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act? It was then expanded by Clinton and stridently defended by Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters and Barney Frank (who was sleeping with Herb Moses while he held a top spot at – appropriately – Fannie). Only government could turn the dream of home ownership for poor folks into a NIGHTMARE for the rest of us.

Now that they have control of the White House and both houses of Congress, the liberals who run most of the newspapers here SHOULD be on a beach somewhere throwing a huge party. Instead, they are dusting off their resumes. The Editor of the AJC informed us that she was actively seeking to get more conservative/traditional values writers in the pages down there. I’d submit that it’s too little, too late!

Perhaps she’ll write and let us know if that “Hope” and “Change We Can Believe In” thing helps with the job search.

If you just have to have one of those 1,000 new jobs dunning folks for Tim Geithner’s IRS, it couldn’t hurt.

The newspapers started losing readership when they ceased being newspapers and became opinionpapers. Opinion is fine on the op/ed pages, but not elsewhere.

I’ve cancelled all newpaper subscriptions and generally get information online (including podcasts - I highly recommend the Investors Business Daily editorial podcasts and Outloud Opinion). We get TV schedules from a digital channel guide.

We don’t even keep a copy of the yellow pages in our house. They go from the front door to the trash. Instead, we use Superpages, Google maps, and Google. And I’m closing in on 50. My daughters have never even opened the yellow pages and only read newspapers when they or their friends are in them.

Though we’ve dropped the subscriptions to the big dailies, we still receive a couple of local weekly papers that are delivered whether we want them or not, free of charge. This is the new business model for papers. These papers are locally focused (local meaning a single suburb) and wholly funded by advertising. Because they’re weeklies, the focus is on local information not found online and what’s up and coming. Their weekly delivery gives them a longer shelf live, which advertisers like.

This suggests to me that there is a future for weekly newsmagazines, but their editorial slant is killing them. It’s affecting business magazines too. I’ve cancelled Business Week, Fast Company, and Inc because I’m sick of their leftist tripe. They practically give the magazines away, but I don’t want them. One would think a magazine focused on business would be more pro-capitalism.

The daily newspapers and the yellow pages better figure out new business models. Magazines better figure out a new editorial stance.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.