RACK the demise of newspapers ...

[RadioFan]

Yeah, as if.

From the National Review. Last time I checked, this was a conservative publication.

Check your reading glasses, tards.

Since when is destruction of an industry, not to mention people's livelihoods, good for America?

Since Obama became president?

Good luck arguing this one.

Btw, tell me what business model will replace newspapers. TIA.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Btw, tell me what business model will replace newspapers. TIA.

Scurrilous, unsubstantiated blogs from mouthbreathing fly-over mongoloids, with enough "Support The Troops" magnets on their SUV's to withstand a roadside bomb.

Obama is a secret Muslim.

[BSmack]

In the future there will be fewer, but better newspapers.

[Wolfman]

In the future there will be fewer, but "progressive" newspapers.
FTFY

BTW---I for one do not want news on dead trees to go away. Crossword puzzles from the NY Times
are a daily pastime for me. Nothing beats solving them in ball point pen on newsprint.

[Smackie Chan]

Honest journalism is stone dead and has been for years.

Did it ever live? What year do you peg its demise? Journalism has always been slanted.

[indyfrisco]

Crossword puzzles from the NY Times are a daily pastime for me. Nothing beats solving them in ball point pen on newsprint.

You make a compelling argument to never retire.

[Tom In VA]

Never waste a good crisis is what I always say and this crisis is as good as any. This is another example of how free market capitalism has failed us. Agenda driven blogs and radio programs will need to be reigned in as well. We need a one stop shop for all of America's information needs. The Truth will be distributed in paper, radio, and electronic format. There will be provisions for blogs and forums so we can tap into the mind of everyday Americans.

Sincerely,
Rahm Emmanuel.

[Wolfman]

"Indy Frisco" is so on top of the T1B blogosphere that he is unaware that I am gainfully employed as a science lab technician at Edison State College. Would you be happier if I did Sudoku puzzles ??

[indyfrisco]

"Indy Frisco" is so on top of the T1B blogosphere that he is unaware that I am gainfully employed as a science lab technician at Edison State College. Would you be happier if I did Sudoku puzzles ??

Thanks for correcting me. I don't :rts: .

You make a compelling reason to save so I CAN retire.

Then again, you at least have solved the mystery of why you

T
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LIKE

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[Left Seater]

The story linked by Radio makes some very good points. Newspapers provide an excellent source of local news that you often will not find anywhere else. Who is going to sit and report on a city council meeting or county planning board or appraisal district hearing? The problem is often times these reporters think themselves as columnists. Others find it acceptable to leave out certain facts in order to sway your opinion.

In this the newspaper is no different than TV media though.

I don't read the paper for opinions. I don't give a rat's ass who the editorial board is supporting in an election. I don't care to know their opinion about the new zoning proposals. I don't care where they stand on abortion or the decisions of President Hussein or those of W. I also don't want to know what the readers are thinking via their letters. Just give me the facts, period. I will decide my own opinion and position from said facts.

As 88 said much of the info in my morning paper is outdated. The next time I read the sports page will be the first in quite some time. Only slightly more often do I read the front section. Instead I read the local section and the business section. Our local fishwrap has excellent coverage of the energy business and I can't find all that info in nearly the time it takes to read that section.

My suggestions to save the newspapers would be to do away with all op/ed, letters to the ed, columnists, and just stip it down to bare facts. Editors can then spend their time checking more factual info and to make sure both sides have been presented equally.

[War Wagon]

I like having a KC Star newspaper in my driveway every morning that I pick up before going to work. I've been a subscriber all my life and would miss that paper were it not there. Sure, I can get that info elsewhere, but it's not the same as having a paper in your hands. I go straight to the sports page, then later flip thru national and local news.

As for the cost of about $12 a month, we more than save that clipping coupons from the Sunday edition.

[Moving Sale]

I don't have the answer to the problem

Who says there is a problem?

2nd.

[Mister Bushice]

Rack

I
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D
Y

[H4ever]

Crossword puzzles from the NY Times are a daily pastime for me. Nothing beats solving them in ball point pen on newsprint.

You make a compelling argument to never retire.

Bwahaha! I bet there are plenty of Depends Undergarments getting moist from other sources than urinary tracts during a rousing game of Sunday bingo at the senior centers all across the country! No offense Wolfman....it's the destiny of everyone!

[Wolfman]

No it's not. You are just buying into the mind set of the uninformed.
Wish I could see you at my age--but maybe you won't make it ????
Hope you do not have crappy DNA that says you will die of a heart attack around age 50--
or get cancer around age 60. Seriously.
Speaking of DNA---anyone know about Mike the Lab Rat ?? He has not been here in quite a while.
Bri ??

[H4ever]

No it's not. You are just buying into the mind set of the uninformed.
Wish I could see you at my age--but maybe you won't make it ????
Hope you do not have crappy DNA that says you will die of a heart attack around age 50--
or get cancer around age 60. Seriously.
Speaking of DNA---anyone know about Mike the Lab Rat ?? He has not been here in quite a while.
Bri ??

Getting old.....that's the destiny I was referring to. When I turned 30, it was then I thought "Holy shit!" "In ten years I will be 40 years old!" Huge awakening and a sense of mortality for me....I wasn't going to be young forever.

As for good genetics...My Grandfather recently passed at the ripe-old age of 96. Man was still smoking Pall Malls and drinking a half pint of Kessler a week up until he went to bed and never woke up. My Great-Grandmother lived to be 104....said a positive attitude and bayer aspirin kept her young. All on my father's side.

Now on my mother's side.,....people die anywhere from 55 to 95. I guess it's the luck of the draw, a blood-thinner of some sort, and a positive attitude that'll keep you alive and well.

So drink plenty of beer and pop an aspirin a day!

[RadioFan]

The problem is often times these reporters think themselves as columnists.

That's where editors come in, bro. :wink:

In this the newspaper is no different than TV media though.

Complete horseshit.

Have you watched local TV news lately?

Outside of "breaking news," i.e. a fire or a shooting ... 90 percent of what they "report" comes from the local newspaper.

Oh, and during sweeps period, "breaking news" also comes from the local newspaper: i.e. "We're here LIVE, on the scene giving you an update, to a story we first told you about earlier today. (after reading today's newspaper). The city council may be deadlocked on whether community gardens should be allowed. Some fear, there could be marijuana grown in the proposed community gardens, which has councilors concerned."

Yeah. Check out the live shot of the reporter in the dark. Could be next to city hall, the courthouse, or any other public place in which there is absolutely NOTHING going on, except for "breaking news" during sweeps period.

The next one is in May, btw.

[RadioFan]

The demise of the newspaper industry is technology driven for the most part, and content driven to a lesser extent.

Have you been to a newspaper Web site, recently? Breaking news is constantly updated. Content is what it's about.

You honestly think TV or radio would have any "content" without the local newspaper, who has the staff to cover city council/planning commission/fill-in-blank here - meetings, not to metion the fact the both Fox News and CNN are constantly quoting from the AP, when something big happens?

"We've just gotten word ... the AP is reporting." The Associated Press is sort of a news commune. AP has members. Those members submit stories. Guess who most of those members are? Hint: It isn't fucking TV nor radio.

Just a little 101, bro.

[Moving Sale]

If it is going to survive, it needs to find a new way to generate income.

Or we could just go 88braincells upside their ass, scrape the 'free market' and knock down all the buildings they are headquartered in.

All over the map much you stupid, anti-American fuckstick?

[Left Seater]

Radio,

I believe you missed my point on comparing TV and newspaper REPORTERS. Could be that I didn't make it clear enough.

My point was that TV and newspapers both have reporters giving us their opinion is supposed "news" stories. That and they also both tend to leave out important facts in order to sway your opinion.

Perfect example exposed by a radio newsman of all things.

Houston TV station x and newspaper both run with a story about a dog keeping a neighborhood in fear. The dog follows anyone walking along the perimeter of its fence and barks and attempts to jump over the fence. Twice, it got out of its back yard and now the neighbors are afraid of going outside or getting in their cars etc. We all are lead to the understanding that the dog might someday bite or even kill someone.

A few days later the radio guy goes to the house not to report on the story, but to offer to the owners a place where the dog can go to get some training and time away from the situation. Turns out he works with a local shelter and they do behavior modification work with certain dogs. When the guy pulls up he sees kids poking the dog with sticks thru the fence. He watches them pull a board in the fence to one side so they can mess with the dog. He runs them off and attempts to talk to the owner, but they are not home. He returns the next day and is invited inside to speak with the owner. While he is there and looking out the back door he sees different kids shooting at the dog with a BB gun.

Dude ends up running a story on the local news radio about how the dog isn't the problem and it is in fact the kids who are the issue. Lots of back and forth follow and then real facts come to light about the TV and newspaper stories. Turns out the TV bitch had the kids poke at the dog before cameras rolled to get the dog upset for better footage. The newspaper story was written by a guy who only interviewed the TV reporter and never set foot on the property.

That is where my comments came from.

Just saying get all opinions out of my newspaper and local TV news. That and give the full story not one the report wants us to hear or thinks will get us worked up.

[RadioFan]

88, thanks.

Btw, your local paper is in a top 10 list, bro.

Lefty ...

Stop listening to the "news" part of the radio and stop watching the goddamn local TV news. They are the worst. They steal the most sensational stories from the local paper, then "BREAK" news with it, on a daily basis.

The entire point of my posting the opinion piece that I did was to ask the question:

Who's going to fill the void?

Newspapers pay people to sit through endless city-council and land-use-planning and legislative-committee hearings, enduring the sausage-making process that is modern government. These reporters tell readers what’s going on and — when they’re at their journalistic best — what it all means. They take the trouble to analyze court decisions and search government records and decipher regulatory filings and pore through leaks from public-spirited civil servants.

They don’t get every story right, and they’re often captives of their sources. But even reporters who are lazy or incompetent or hopelessly compromised provide an irreplaceable service. They keep self-government possible, perhaps even manageable, at a time when the state is growing ever larger and more difficult to understand.

Local TV? Radio? Bloggers?

Please.

Oh, and mvscal, do you really think less oversight of government is a good thing?

Dumbfuck.

Good night, and good luck.

[RadioFan]

Honest journalism is stone dead and has been for years.

Not quite.

It's still kicking and has a pulse.

[Screw_Michigan]

The entire point of my posting the opinion piece that I did was to ask the question:

Who's going to fill the void?

RACK RF. David Simon wonders the same thing:

In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the Police

By David Simon
Sunday, March 1, 2009; B01



BALTIMORE In the halcyon days when American newspapers were feared rather than pitied, I had the pleasure of reporting on crime in the prodigiously criminal environs of Baltimore. The city was a wonderland of chaos, dirt and miscalculation, and loyal adversaries were many. Among them, I could count police commanders who felt it was their duty to demonstrate that crime never occurred in their precincts, desk sergeants who believed that they had a right to arrest and detain citizens without reporting it and, of course, homicide detectives and patrolmen who, when it suited them, argued convincingly that to provide the basic details of any incident might lead to the escape of some heinous felon. Everyone had very good reasons for why nearly every fact about a crime should go unreported.

In response to such flummery, I had in my wallet, next to my Baltimore Sun press pass, a business card for Chief Judge Robert F. Sweeney of the Maryland District Court, with his home phone number on the back. When confronted with a desk sergeant or police spokesman convinced that the public had no right to know who had shot whom in the 1400 block of North Bentalou Street, I would dial the judge.

And then I would stand, secretly delighted, as yet another police officer learned not only the fundamentals of Maryland's public information law, but the fact that as custodian of public records, he needed to kick out the face sheet of any incident report and open his arrest log to immediate inspection. There are civil penalties for refusing to do so, the judge would assure him. And as chief judge of the District Court, he would declare, I may well invoke said penalties if you go further down this path.

Delays of even 24 hours? Nope, not acceptable. Requiring written notification from the newspaper? No, the judge would explain. Even ordinary citizens have a right to those reports. And woe to any fool who tried to suggest to His Honor that he would need a 30-day state Public Information Act request for something as basic as a face sheet or an arrest log.

"What do you need the thirty days for?" the judge once asked a police spokesman on speakerphone.

"We may need to redact sensitive information," the spokesman offered.

"You can't redact anything. Do you hear me? Everything in an initial incident report is public. If the report has been filed by the officer, then give it to the reporter tonight or face contempt charges tomorrow."

The late Judge Sweeney, who'd been named to his post in the early 1970s, when newspapers were challenging the Nixonian model of imperial governance, kept this up until 1996, when he retired. I have few heroes left, but he still qualifies.

To be a police reporter in such a climate was to be a prince of the city, and to be a citizen of such a city was to know that you were not residing in a police state. But no longer -- not in Baltimore and, I am guessing, not in any city where print journalism spent the 1980s and '90s taking profits and then, in the decade that followed, impaling itself on the Internet.

In January, a new Baltimore police spokesman -- a refugee from the Bush administration -- came to the incredible conclusion that the city department could decide not to identify those police officers who shot or even killed someone. (Similar policies have been established by several other police departments in the United States as well as by the FBI.)

Anthony Guglielmi, the department's director of public affairs, informed Baltimoreans that, henceforth, Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld would decide unilaterally whether citizens would know the names of those who had used their weapons on civilians. If they did something illegal or unwarranted -- in the commissioner's judgment -- they would be named. Otherwise, the Baltimore department would no longer regard the decision to shoot someone as the sort of responsibility for which officers might be required to stand before the public.

As justification for this change, Bealefeld, in a letter to the City Council, cited 23 threats in 2008 against his officers. Police union officials further wheeled out the example of the only Baltimore police officer killed as an act of revenge for a police-involved shooting -- a 2001 case in which the officer was seen by happenstance in a Dundalk bar, then stalked and murdered.

Bealefeld didn't mention that not one of the 23 threats against officers came in response to any use of lethal force. Nor did he acknowledge that 23 threats against a 3,000-officer force in a year is an entirely routine number; that the number of such threats hasn't grown over the past several years, according to sources within the department.

And union officials were comfortable raising the 2001 case without being forced to acknowledge that the officer in that instance most probably would have been killed had no newspaper ever printed his name; he had testified in open court against the relatives of those who later encountered him at the bar and killed him. So the case has scant relevance to the change in policy.

The commissioner was allowed to stand on half-truths. Why? Because the Baltimore Sun's cadre of police reporters -- the crime beat used to carry four and five different bylines -- has been thinned to the point where no one was checking Bealefeld's statements or those of his surrogates.

On Feb. 17, when a 29-year-old officer responded to a domestic dispute in East Baltimore, ended up fighting for her gun and ultimately shot an unarmed 61-year-old man named Joseph Alfonso Forrest, the Sun reported the incident, during which Forrest died, as a brief item. It did not name the officer, Traci McKissick, or a police sergeant who later arrived at the scene to aid her and who also shot the man.

It didn't identify the pair the next day, either, because the Sun ran no full story on the shooting, as if officers battling for their weapons and unarmed 61-year-old citizens dying by police gunfire are no longer the grist of city journalism. At which point, one old police reporter lost his mind and began making calls.

No, the police spokesman would not identify the officers, and for more than 24 hours he would provide no information on whether either one of them had ever been involved in similar incidents. And that's the rub, of course. Without a name, there's no way for anyone to evaluate an officer's performance independently, to gauge his or her effectiveness and competence, to know whether he or she has shot one person or 10.

It turns out that McKissick -- who is described as physically diminutive -- had had her gun taken from her once before. In 2005, police sources said, she was in the passenger seat of a suspect's car as the suspect, who had not been properly secured, began driving away from the scene. McKissick pulled her gun, the suspect grabbed for it and a shot was fired into the rear seat. Eventually, the suspect got the weapon and threw it out of the car; it was never recovered. Charges were dropped on the suspect, according to his defense attorney, Warren Brown, after Brown alleged in court that McKissick's supervisors had rewritten reports, tailoring and sanitizing her performance.

And so on Feb. 17, the same officer may have again drawn her weapon only to find herself again at risk of losing the gun. The shooting may be good and legally justified, and perhaps McKissick has sufficient training and is a capable street officer. But in the new world of Baltimore, where officers who take life are no longer named or subject to public scrutiny, who can know?

In this instance, the Sun caught up on the story somewhat; I called the editor and vented everything I'd learned about the earlier incident. But had it relied on the unilateral utterances of Baltimore's police officials, the Sun would have been told that McKissick had been involved "in one earlier shooting. She was dragged behind a car by a suspect and she fired one shot, which did not strike anyone. The shooting was ruled justified."

That's the sanitized take that Guglielmi, the police spokesman, offered on the 2005 incident. When I asked him for the date of that event, with paperwork in front of him, he missed it by exactly six months. An honest mistake? Or did he just want to prevent a reporter from looking up public documents at the courthouse? (Attempts to reach McKissick, who remains on administrative leave, were unsuccessful.)

Half-truths, obfuscations and apparent deceit -- these are the wages of a world in which newspapers, their staffs eviscerated, no longer battle at the frontiers of public information. And in a city where officials routinely plead with citizens to trust the police, where witnesses have for years been vulnerable to retaliatory violence, we now have a once-proud department's officers hiding behind anonymity that is not only arguably illegal under existing public information laws, but hypocritical as well.

There is a lot of talk nowadays about what will replace the dinosaur that is the daily newspaper. So-called citizen journalists and bloggers and media pundits have lined up to tell us that newspapers are dying but that the news business will endure, that this moment is less tragic than it is transformational.

Well, sorry, but I didn't trip over any blogger trying to find out McKissick's identity and performance history. Nor were any citizen journalists at the City Council hearing in January when police officials inflated the nature and severity of the threats against officers. And there wasn't anyone working sources in the police department to counterbalance all of the spin or omission.

I didn't trip over a herd of hungry Sun reporters either, but that's the point. In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.

At one point last week, after the department spokesman denied me the face sheet of the shooting report, I tried doing what I used to do: I went to the Southeastern District and demanded the copy on file there.

When the desk officer refused to give it to me, I tried calling the chief judge of the District Court. But Sweeney's replacement no longer handles such business. It's been a while since any reporter asked, apparently. So I tried to explain the Maryland statutes to the shift commander, but so long had it been since a reporter had demanded a public document that he stared at me as if I were an emissary from some lost and utterly alien world.

Which is, sadly enough, exactly true.

[PSUFAN]

Right now, some of my favorite websites are newspaper sites. The New York Times site is one of the best websites on the internet. If you're looking for content and excellent writing, no site has more. Yes, they have made some editorial mistakes in recent years - that changes nothing overall regarding the staggering amount of great writing that they put out there every single day - and now, it's all available FREE.

[Screw_Michigan]

and now, it's all available FREE.

Which is the problem...and the death knell.

[BSmack]

and now, it's all available FREE.

Which is the problem...and the death knell.

Maybe the NY Times could get by with a web subscription plan. But they would be the exception, not the rule. In reality, there are only a few papers in the country that people go to for world and national news. The rest of the papers are purely local rags, that provide nothing of interest to people outside the local area. And those papers are getting killed because they are horribly unprepared for the digital age and the competition for customers from multiple sources for readers.

For example, people who go to the Rochester D&C website are not going because they want international news or an AP news feed. They are going because they want news pertinent to the Rochester area. The problem they have is that, for the most part, the 4 local TV stations do as good a job in covering local news and do not have the overhead of a print operation dragging them down. Not to mention a host of local bloggers So what has happened is that instead of Gannett's D&C paper having a monopoly, they are now competing for the first time with a whole host of other providers who, by sheer accident are in a much, much better position to compete.

If they want to further monetize their websites, they need to provide services that people are willing to pay for. Because the way the most local newspaper websites are right now, I wouldn't pay a red cent to read a one of them. Maybe they should start hosting game servers, or perhaps truly beef up their local news gathering operations to the point where they are offering product that isn't available on 4-5 other free sites. Or create synergistic alliances with local TV or radio stations to share resources. Or offer photofinishing services to go along with birth and wedding announcements. Hey, it all adds up. But charging people for the same old crap that they have already rejected from their doorstep just ain't gonna work.

[RadioFan]

Oh, and mvscal, do you really think less oversight of government is a good thing?

Oh...is that what you think they're doing? Idiot.

You missed the entire fucking point.

From my original post:

Newspapers pay people to sit through endless city-council and land-use-planning and legislative-committee hearings, enduring the sausage-making process that is modern government. These reporters tell readers what’s going on and — when they’re at their journalistic best — what it all means. They take the trouble to analyze court decisions and search government records and decipher regulatory filings and pore through leaks from public-spirited civil servants.

They don’t get every story right, and they’re often captives of their sources. But even reporters who are lazy or incompetent or hopelessly compromised provide an irreplaceable service. They keep self-government possible, perhaps even manageable, at a time when the state is growing ever larger and more difficult to understand.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with their fucked up business model. Are you suggesting we subsidize newspapers?

No, I'm not. At all, dumbfuck.

There does need to be a new business model, however. You are right about that.

Your hero monopolies ('sup Clear Channel and Rupert Murdock) haven't helped.

Clear Channel has sucked the music out of this country and Rupert Murdock has suddenly discovered that newspapers and TV aren't profitable, along with Gannett, Knight Ridder and McClatchy.

Tell me you knew.

Hey, capitalism at its best, right?

Especially when it serves the public interest.


Btw, still waiting for someone to answer on who's going to fill the void, on a local level.

[RadioFan]

Btw: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article. ... SKOG905851

Good luck to TV and radio in the Tulsa market, trying to NOT copy the local newspaper, much less bloggers.

Yeah, newspapers should just go away, because after all, this story is pretty meaningless.

But hey, this stuff just appears, out of thin air, right?

[Diego in Seattle]

Clear Channel has sucked the music out of this country

Really? You mean I don't have an MP3 player in my pocket with over 700 of my favorite tunes

Who knew that Judy Garland recorded that many songs. :?

[Left Seater]

Radio,

I am not trying to say that I want the newspaper to go away. I do think they are going to have to evolve significantly to survive.

My suggestions are to do away with op/ed pieces, columnists, and have a much scaled down national and world coverage. Stick to the local stuff and sports.

[BSmack]

Btw: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article. ... SKOG905851

Good luck to TV and radio in the Tulsa market, trying to NOT copy the local newspaper, much less bloggers.

Yeah, newspapers should just go away, because after all, this story is pretty meaningless.

But hey, this stuff just appears, out of thin air, right?

If newspapers abandon that role, there will be others to take their place. After reading that story, it looks to me like all they did was read the indictment and supporting affidavits and whip out a story. There's no real investigative reporting going on there.

[RadioFan]

After reading that story, it looks to me like all they did was read the indictment and supporting affidavits and whip out a story. There's no real investigative reporting going on there.

It takes TIME to read all the documents, plus to write a news story interpreting wtf is going on.

B, this was just one example. And it was written on deadline, within 3 hours from when we first heard about it.

If you and mvscal honestly think TV and radio could do it ...

1. They would have been doing it already.

2. You are both complete idiots.

Still waiting for someone to answer my question ... when newspapers die, who's going to fill the void?

Oh wait, I suppose this stuff just magically appears, out of thin air, right?

Btw, next week is Sunshine Week. You know, the whole open records thing ...

Fuck it. Let's just operate with a secret government, with no open records.

Let's just do away with the entire democracy.

You guys are right, it's all a scam anyway.

Sin,

[RadioFan]

Clear Channel has sucked the music out of this country

Really? You mean I don't have an MP3 player in my pocket with over 700 of my favorite tunes and that access to more and different kinds of music than I've ever had in my life isn't only a mouse click away?

Again, you're totally full of shit.

Don't fuck with me, on this one.

I was in San Antonio when Scorpions "Blackout" was No. 5 on the charts, locally, and No. 50 on the charts, nationally, and that was in the late 80s.

The reason you are even able to carry an "MP3 player" is precisely because of Clear Channel.

If you seriously don't think that the technology for you to even have an mp3 player had nothing to do with the RIAA and FM Radio completely sucking (clear channel), then you are a complete idiot.

[RadioFan]

Btw, mvs, where do you get your music?

From the radio?

Let me guess, from the local rock station.

Hey, we can hear the same station, playing the same three songs. ROCK ON.

Aren't monopolies great?


Dumbfuck.

[RadioFan]

Oh, and BSmack:

Tell me this could be done by TV or radio or anyone else:

McAlester prison killing apparent revenge for testimony

Given, a person on trial has a right to face his accuser, but to kill him? That's pretty special.

Look on a map at OKC, Tulsa and McAlester.

Who the fuck do you think is going to do these stories, once the Tulsa World and/or the Oklahoman is dead?

TV? Radio?

Bloggers?

[Goober McTuber]

and now, it's all available FREE.

Which is the problem...and the death knell.

Maybe the NY Times could get by with a web subscription plan. But they would be the exception, not the rule. In reality, there are only a few papers in the country that people go to for world and national news. The rest of the papers are purely local rags, that provide nothing of interest to people outside the local area. And those papers are getting killed because they are horribly unprepared for the digital age and the competition for customers from multiple sources for readers.

For example, people who go to the Rochester D&C website are not going because they want international news or an AP news feed. They are going because they want news pertinent to the Rochester area. The problem they have is that, for the most part, the 4 local TV stations do as good a job in covering local news and do not have the overhead of a print operation dragging them down. Not to mention a host of local bloggers So what has happened is that instead of Gannett's D&C paper having a monopoly, they are now competing for the first time with a whole host of other providers who, by sheer accident are in a much, much better position to compete.

If they want to further monetize their websites, they need to provide services that people are willing to pay for. Because the way the most local newspaper websites are right now, I wouldn't pay a red cent to read a one of them. Maybe they should start hosting game servers, or perhaps truly beef up their local news gathering operations to the point where they are offering product that isn't available on 4-5 other free sites. Or create synergistic alliances with local TV or radio stations to share resources. Or offer photofinishing services to go along with birth and wedding announcements. Hey, it all adds up. But charging people for the same old crap that they have already rejected from their doorstep just ain't gonna work.

Rochester D&C? Sounds like a real abortion of a newspaper.

[BSmack]

Oh, and BSmack: Tell me this could be done by TV or radio or anyone else:

McAlester prison killing apparent revenge for testimony

Given, a person on trial has a right to face his accuser, but to kill him? That's pretty special. Look on a map at OKC, Tulsa and McAlester. Who the fuck do you think is going to do these stories, once the Tulsa World and/or the Oklahoman is dead? TV? Radio? Bloggers?

At least 31 different news organizations have stories about that killing.

http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us ... ter+prison+

Overkill much?

[BSmack]

Rochester D&C? Sounds like a real abortion of a newspaper.

D&C is Rochester slang for Democrat & Chronicle. And yes, it is a total abortion of a newspaper. Their solution to any economic problem is to reduce content to the point where now it is not much more than a glorified Pennysaver.

[Moving Sale]

Nice backpedalling

At least you stick with your Racism. It's the only principle you have. Props I guess.

[Tom In VA]

You are supposed to direct at least one barb to the topic at hand you white flag waving surrender-jockey.

Applying your rules, in this thread.