Posted on 05/02/2008 11:58:18 AM PDT by freerepublic_or_die
The New York Times once epitomised all that was great about American newspapers; now it symbolises its industry’s deep malaise. The Grey Lady’s circulation is tumbling, down another 3.9% in the latest data from America’s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its advertising revenues are down, too (12.5% lower in March than a year earlier), as is the share price of its owner, the New York Times Company, up from its January low but still over 20% below what it was last July. On Tuesday April 29th Standard & Poor’s cut the firm’s debt rating to one notch above junk.
At the company’s annual meeting a week earlier, its embattled publisher, Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger, attempted to quash rumours that his family is preparing to jettison the firm it has owned since 1896. Carnage is expected soon as dozens of what were once the safest jobs in journalism are axed, since too few of the staff have accepted a generous offer of voluntary redundancy.
Pick almost any American newspaper company and you can tell a similar story. The ABC reported that for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier; for Sunday papers, it was 4.6% lower. Ad revenues are plunging across the board: by 22.3% at Media General, for example. In 2007 total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion, not to be sniffed at, certainly, but a lot less than the peak of $48.7 billion in 2000.
Much of this decline is being blamed on the rise of the internet, which offers free, round-the-clock coverage, and which has provided a new, better home for classified advertising, once the bedrock of most newspapers’ revenue.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/05/marine_putnam_050108w/
Famed boxing writer faked Korean War legacy
By Dan Lamothe - Staff writer
Posted : Friday May 2, 2008 9:44:55 EDT
As a widely admired boxing scribe at Sports Illustrated, the late Pat Putnam was known as someone who could spin a tale with the best, sharing the stories of all-time greats such as Muhammad Ali.
But Putnam didn’t just spin a tale about boxing. His own widely celebrated background as a Marine veteran and former Korean War prisoner of the Chinese — with four Purple Hearts and a Navy Cross — wasn’t true, Marine officials said Thursday.
Putnam, who died in 2005, does not exist in Marine Corps Archival Tapes, a list of Marine veterans that covers Corps history until about 1970. He also does not exist in any Marine medals databases, including one for the Navy Cross, the Corps’ second-highest military honor.
The revelation came just hours before the Boxing Writers Association of America was set to award the Pat Putnam Award at the association’s annual award dinner at the posh Millennium Biltmore Hotel Los Angeles.
The award, launched in 2005, honors perseverance in overcoming adversity. Previous honorees include Ali, honored in 2006 for his struggle with Parkinson’s Disease, and Izzy Burgos, a 2007 recipient who began an amateur boxing career at 12 in 2005.
snip
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Propagandists do not prosper
I agree. The dying papers are trying to blame their woes on the internet, but there are daily newspapers holding their own and some are even showing circulation growth. The key is Content. Here in Canada, the conservative National Post is doing quite well, as are the moderate Sun Media dailies. Meanwhile, the leftist Globe and Mail and Toronto Star are dying.
“Propagandists do not prosper”
For if propaganda doth prosper, none dare calls it propaganda.
(Sorry — couldn’t resist.)
So do the NY Times, the Wash Post and the LA Times.
The venerable ones went extinct decades ago.
“Lady’s circulation is tumbling, down another 3.9% in the latest data from America’s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its advertising revenues are down, too (12.5% lower in March than a year earlier),
I wonder how many people at the times still actually believe that there is something they can do that will turn the numbers around?
The population, especially the young, today is very poorly informed on all matters, especially national and international matters. They don't read much of anything except their call screens.
The “new media” is not utilized, for the most part, for enlightenment. Rather, it is utilized for entertainment and personal applications.
True, that the print media has itself to blame - particularly for ceasing to be a professional medium in which a truthful account of the day's news was sought with integrity and general professionalism.
News became “news analysis” in the 1970’s - reflecting the 60’s generation and the “investigative reporting” spotlight. News "analysis" on the news pages became nothing but opinion - usually skewed.
But anyone who has lived through the era up to the 1970’s knows that Americans used to be avid newspaper readers, that the papers were generally well-written, and that the readers were generally pretty well-informed about what was happening in the world.
The newspaper itself is not at fault, being actually something one can hold, save, and read in the subway. No thinking person should rejoice at the demise of the newspaper - whose obituary may be not as imminent as some think..
Redundancy is a British labor term for being laid off. When you’re laid off your position is redundant, no longer needed. In other words, voluntary redundancy is early retirement.
It isn’t just the liberalism, it is the liberalism combined with the phony veneer of “impartiality.” The big newspapers constantly lay claim to unbiased journalism even as they spin every story to fit their template.
People can see through the self righteous posturing and identify just how biased the MSM is.
News Without Reporters
Unnecessary? Reporters are a dying breed, says Steve Boriss, and that's a good thing. America got along fine without them once before.
by Steve Boriss
One of journalists' recurring put-downs of bloggers is that they are simply recycling someone else's news - that there will always be a need for reporters to produce it. Yet, America had a reporterless past and will likely have a reporterless future. And, news will be better for it.
...
Now, the Internet is eliminating the reporter as middleman by connecting audiences directly with the real sources of news - politicians' offices, PR firms, whistleblowers, think tanks, courts, police departments, and everyone else with a news ax to grind. These entities have always been capable of writing their own stories in a usable form, but have previously needed reporters to get their stories distributed. Nor will we miss investigative reporters, who had always been dangerously untrained in the skills needed to do their job properly (e.g. forensics, law) and often unfairly destroyed the reputations of innocents. Society has many alternative, more responsible ways to right wrongs, and the blogosphere can easily fill this void.
...
(excerpt)
Print is dead. —Dr. Egon Spengler
When Alvin Toffler wrote in The Third Wave back in 1979 that as communications technologies improve, the days of mass media will start to wane. The rise of 60+ channel analog cable TV, 100+ channel digital cable TV, 150+ channel small-dish satellite TV, 80+ channel satellite radio, the public Internet, and lower cost printing has done much seriously erode the influence of the mass media. The breaking of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998 and the Rathergate scandal in 2004 over the Internet is the penultimate proof of how modern communications technologies are frequently outrunning the mainstream media.
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