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Posted on 12/27/2008 11:43:59 AM PST by shoptalk
When my colleague at the Newark Star-Ledger John Farmer started off in journalism more than five decades ago, things were very different. After covering a political event, he'd hop on the campaign bus, pull out a typewriter, and start banging out copy. As the bus would pull into a town, he'd ball up a finished page and toss it out the window. There a runner would scoop it up and rush it off to a telegraph station where it would be blasted back to the home office.
At the time, reporters thought this method was high-tech. Now, thanks to the Internet, a writer can file a story instantly from anywhere. It's incredibly convenient, but that same technology is killing old-fashioned newspapers. Some tell us that that's a good thing. I disagree and believe that the public will miss us once we're gone.
Mr. Farmer, who is now the Star-Ledger's editorial page editor, retold his experience of the old days a short while ago at a wake of sorts for departing colleagues. The paper has been losing money and might have had to shut its doors sometime early next year. So the drivers' and mailers' unions made contract concessions, and about 150 nonunion editorial staff took buyouts as part of an effort by the publisher to save the paper.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Local government meetings are on cable.
To the extent that some employees of the MSM are real journalists that is true.
I am one who believes that we need the MSM, just employees or real journalists, as long as the Internet provides access to all kinds.
No more limited to just the local rag, IOW.
Thus we can find the "rest of the story" and we can find spiked stories.
The bloggers, et al are a great resource for learning the "rest of the story" and finding spiked stories.
Let's see...
That clip came from an editorial board meeting with Obama and editors of the San Francisco Chronicle. Those journalists sure did a good job spreading that bit of news around by themselves, didn't they?
Almost as good as the Los Angeles Times did with the video of Obama and Ayers at the dinner for Khalidi.
What good are your journalists if all they do is bury the news that they originate?
-PJ
Hope the bankruptcies are fun!
They are. Then bloggers take and YouTube the egregious BS and voila`, the powers that be HATE them.
Gone with the Linotype and the penny paper.
You will be missed by the DNC but nobody else.
Pray for W, America and Our Freedom Fighters
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Take Mr. Mulshine's example of the tedium of sitting through a municipal government meeting. Some folks actually care about issues debated/voted upon and can inform their local community through the inter-web thingy without waiting for the dozing "journalist" to file his story.
Some non-journalists are actually experts in certain areas and don't need to use the dead tree media's work product as a springboard for informed discussion.
“Journalists” forget that the purpose of a newspaper is to sell ads. The ads are placed on the pages before the stories are.
And most newspapers simply copy off the AP and Reuters wires to fill their column inches.
I’ll miss the flash-bulb cameras! ROFL
Excuse me Mr. MULEshine,
There are no “real journalists”, or very few of them for sure. FR is where I can scan worldwide news, gather some facts or keep it narrowly focused depending on my interest of the day, it’s got them all beat IMO.
Sure, I’d love to be able to hold a real paper in my hands and read, something satisfying about that as I dislike squinting at a screen, scrolling through an article but it sure beats the propaganda mills regardless.
In our rural Texas area we have a couple of weeklys that hit on the local town councils and issues as well as the annual Christmas parades and nice buck deer taken by locals, thank you very much.
America, the once-proud nation, certainly will NOT.
Good freaking riddance.
“Soon, newspapers won’t be able to do it either.”
They already don’t. Maybe that is why no one is subscribing to them anymore and they are bankrupt.
Many employees of the print and broadcast media have business cards or resumes that cite “journalist” as their job title. There is a vast, vast difference between that and the biased, op-ed hack that has taken over so many positions. I just want fair-handed treatment when I read an article. ‘nuf said?
I guess I should read the article, but Paul Mulshine just turns me off. He is a local, and there was a time that I had respect for him. But — in the past few years he has become just plain contrary, with a negative slant on everything.
Maybe he thinks that people will read his words if only to get a rise out of his opinions, but it doesn’t work with me. Mulshine? Ho-hum.
Yep. He’s longing for the day when only the liberally educated elites could shape public opinion.
Waaaaa! My 15 minutes of fame is almost up.
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