[SmithL]

Well, he did ask nicely.

[warsaw44]

ping

[Larry Lucido]

So what's an old editor dude to do?

Be ethical. Report the news without bias. Conduct honest investigative reporting. Run thoughtful editorials. Don't insult the intelligence of your readers. Don't undermine the values and traditions of the local community.

Or go the way of the dinosaur.

[JoJo Gunn]

The ASNE and the SPJ are one and the same. Let 'em rot.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/780879/posts

[SteveMcKing]

The newspaper industry has killed more trees than anyone on earth, and recycling is not a perfect art. There's still waste and, of course, delivery costs to the environment by their constant trucking.

Glad to see these old hypocrites go.

[beckett]

Newspapers must function more as discussion leaders...

Haha! Discussion leaders! This has always been a part of the problem. No one asked them to lead. They were not elected to lead. They annointed themselves as "leaders of discussion." But now, thanks to the digital revolution and the concurrent democritization of printed (digitized) opinion, the precious inky oil they once annointed themselves with has lost its potency.

[TheForceOfOne]

Hello, NY Slimes,
I would like to cancel my subscription. I was under the impression your paper was Horse porn because everyone kept referring to your to you as a horses a$$.

[Nick Danger]

I don't know what to tell this guy. I don't think they have a future. I haven't picked up a paper newspaper in years.

The average newspaper in the United States consists of the same Associated Press stories that I can read the day before on the Internet, the local random acts of violence — which I never really cared about anyway — and news of which local politicians have their hand in the till. That, and a bunch of ads.

When you live where I live, and frigging Marion Barry is on your city council, you don't even have to read the paper to know who has his hand in the till. So I have no use for them.

Safeway now sends me the coupons in my email. The other store even has a web site where I can order stuff and they'll deliver it for five bucks.

I really have no clue how a local newspaper can be made to survive. They already slept through having eBay and Craig's List make the classifieds obsolete — what have they got left?

[Bernard Marx]

Well, he did ask nicely.

Yes he did...and I'm working on a response. Reference bump.

[lil varmint]

I'm sure there was a lot of hand wringing at the horse and buggy convention too when those nasty horseless carriages began to be embraced by the public at large. But, what the heck do I know about obsolete technology? Anyone want to buy my Smith-Corona typewriter I used in college? It beeps every time you misspell a word.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Cosmic justice.

The liberal infestation at newspapers has been a major support system for dumbed-down public education in America.

The fruit of that quest has become a functionally illiterate crop of young people who not only will not, they CANNOT, read a newspaper.

Newspapers have been the architects of their own destruction.

[whereasandsoforth]

"Well, he did ask nicely."

And I think we should be civil in return. He sounds genuinely confused So I suggest: How about turning your presses into plows. Digging up dirt is what you do best. It doesn't matter if its true or not. Its the smell of scandal that gets Inkies all worked up. Especially if it buries a conservative in the process. Keep on feeding the notion that the normal is abnormal and the abnormal is normal. Inkies love that in a newspaper. Keep ignoring the fact that 88% of the population is Christian oriented. You don't need to cater to that 88% to stay afloat. Inkies love a nice fringe to make things pretty. And last, keep on moving your attitude toward the "one world order" way of thinking. There is nothing worse than that boxed in feeling you get when you have to try and support and report on the community you are actually trying to serve. True Inkies will understand your frustration.

[hemogoblin]

more and more consumers under age 35 are finding the traditional daily paper irrelevant to the lives.

Well the copy editors are bailing out anyway.

I work in newspapers (copy ed), and where I am now, the sense of futility is palpable. Nobody talks about anything but design, as if the colors, fonts and page packages are the only thing readers care about. As if readers view the paper from three feet away and never actually read the words.

Why do they do this? Because it's easy. It avoids the actual problem, which is that the newsroom is hopelessly out of touch and incapable of performing the "community journalism" it's always gushing about.

Most of our middle managers (well, not me ;-) ) live just to get away from real work altogether and attend their next design conference, or, ideally, get a full-time pontificating job at a place like the Poynter Institute, where they won't have to work at all.

Meanwhile the words of the paper consist of high-school level writing, wire copy that doesn't even know how outrageously biased it is, snotty leftist columnists snorting away, 1A "analysis" pieces trying to lie, spin and shape perceptions.

The old dudes are right to throw up their hands. Only I'm not an old dude. I'm 40. And it's the left that's to blame. They've effed up newspapers just like they've effed up publishing, art, Hollywood, schools, universities ...

Newspapers need conservative journalists more than anything. But they're all on the Web, it seems like ... End of Rant.

[Milhous]

Newspapers must function more as discussion leaders

Actually, newspapers must tell me something profitable that I don't already know.

[Col Freeper]

In that spirit, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you see for the future of newspapers. Shoot me an e-mail at editor@knews.com. This old dude needs help.

It's very simple. Open your leftist ears and listen to the thunderous volume of people who have been telling you, for years, to do one of the two following things:

1. Stop your left wing biased reporting, or;

2. Stop pretending that you're objective and notify readers on page one of your publication that you have been, and always will be, a left wing biased newspaper.

You are the one who is losing your readership through your own actions.

Bottom line, stop whining, buck up, be a man.

[lawgirl]

To me, there is nothing they can do. I have not picked up a newspaper in about 5 years, and I don't intend on ever picking one up again. Why pay for news that I already read about on Free Republic 3 days ago?

FWIW, I am 30.

[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 (i.e. The Baby Boomers) 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.  

[LibertyRocks]

The only reason I buy a paper anymore is for the coupons and sales ads! And then, it's only on Sunday! I get all my news on the 'net (and much better quality I might add.) Newspaper "reporters and journalists" pretty much make me sick nowadays with the way they "report".

[TXBSAFH]

I have no use for the dead tree legacy media. Other then shipping material, that is.

[ken21]

when i was a kid there was a morning paper and an afternoon paper in most cities of any size. the former was union, the latter the "bankers'" paper.

no one expected the truth in either, but the truth might be guessed at by reading both and triangulating the issues.

then, in the last several decades corporations bought out the vast majority of american newspapers.

they turned their editorial pages over to college-educated liberals and feminists.

the more control that these corporations gained, the more newspapers became less trusted and lost circulation.

newspapers have only themselves to blame. as feminists feminized newspapers with more home decor, diet, medical fads, ad infintum--all at the expense of hard news,

these papers lost circulation.

[secretagent]

Newspapers have better pixel density, for now.