Posted on 09/25/2006 1:14:10 PM PDT by abb
It seems hopeless. How can the newspaper industry survive the Internet? On the one hand, newspapers are expected to supply their content free on the Web. On the other hand, their most profitable advertising--classifieds--is being lost to sites like Craigslist. And display advertising is close behind. Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports.
Ten years ago, it was a challenge for websites to get people to spend time for pleasure in front of a computer screen. "Your problem will be solved actuarially," a computer-sciences professor assured a group of Web pioneers, and sure enough, it was. Now the problem is to get people under 50 or so to pick up a newspaper. Damp or encased in plastic bags, or both, and planted in the bushes outside where it's cold, full of news that is cold too because it has been sitting around for hours, the home-delivered newspaper is an archaic object. Who needs it? You can sit down at your laptop and enjoy that same newspaper or any other newspaper in the world. Or you can skip the newspapers and go to some site that makes the news more entertaining or politically simpatico. And where do these wannabes get most of their information? From newspapers, of course. But that is mere irony. It doesn't pay the cost of a Baghdad bureau.
Newspaper angst is now focused on the Los Angeles Times, where I was editorial and opinion editor in 2004 and '05. Long the industry's leading example of needless excellence, the Times has had bureaus around the world, a huge Washington staff and so on.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Ping
Not unless they boot out the liberals.
Ummm .. but reporting the truth, the whole truth and not the liberal agends bs they've been shoving down our throats ??
Bwahahahaha!
Future? Only as "sales" advertising distributors...........
It seems he is saying that writing news wrap in opinion is good unless the news wrapped in opinion does not agree with his opinion. Shoosh, all that talk of standards of news reporting to arrive at the final summation, we should do like the Brits and that will save newspapers? I did notice he was kissing up to both the Guardian, Washington Post and NY Times. Methinks little Mikey wants a new job.
He's just trying to give an excuse for his own pitiful record at the LAT. Basically, he's assuming that the whole industry is going to hell, and therefore it's not his fault.
Of course, those two ideas are not mutually exclusive.
Yeah, I think you are right, but he does seem mightly smarmy towards the Guardian, WaPo, and NYT. Loved his analysis that the NYT and WaPo don't care about making money. I am sure the stockholders have realized this.
Ow, my brain-meats.
I grew up addicted to newspapers and gave up on them because I didn't have the time and because I started getting news from other sources. I haven't read one regularly for years. I recently bought a trial subscription to one of the Chicago papers, mainly to help out the kid who said he was in a competition for a scholarship and, just as this article says, I wind up seeing all kinds of news that I already knew about. That, plus the decidedly leftward slant (the front-page story on the arts section yesterday was "Where Are All the Butch Dykes?" in TV and movies) makes me question whether I'll continue the subscription past the trial period.
I do enjoy several small-town newpapers in my area for local news, and I do enjoy the feel and smell and relaxtion of sitting down with a newspaper. I like to read the Sunday paper straight through. I can't imagine doing that online.
I don't like seeing the decline of newspapers. But I don't see how it's avoidable considering the product many newpaper publishers put out.
Ow! My head! Again! Tell me, why should I give even a quarter of a damn about a Baghdad bureau if the journalists you put there are either beholden to the Saddam regime or dedicated to demoralizing the United States?
Not if they continue to lie to and insult their customer base on a daily basis, no, they cant survive.
Thanks for asking!
1) Stop Lying.
2) Stop pimping Socialism.
Bottom line is, if I have a choice of paying 50 cents every day and 2 bucks on Sunday to read opinions or 25 bucks a year as a contribution to FR to read opinions, I would rather be here.
Plus, it is more accurate than the MSM.
OMG, "standards and passports." "Standards"? What "standards"? I started laughing at this point and just couldn't stop.
Exactly right. They need to figure that out. One thing I've noticed is all kinds of stuff in the papers that I know for a fact aren't true. Of course, you run into that on other media too. Plus how poorly a lot of the articles are written.
It's amusing to hear the dinosaurs bellow of their excellence as the tar oozes squelchily up around their ankles...
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