A lament for newspapers going broke

Dr. Veith,

It’s Milton’s 400th birthday today! How are we going to celebrate? Should we read a bit of Areopagitica? Should we contemplate Paradise Lost? Or should we remember the persectued Waldensians by reading “On the Late Massacre at Piemont”? We MUST do something!

Dan

why don’t they just go to congress and ask for a bailout? I mean they must have a few favors they can turn in. I don’t get it. Why file for bankruptcy, that isn’t the American way is it? Doesn’t the government have a duty to protect the journalists?

How about just one newspaper (basically what we have anyway).

We could call it something like….Pravda! Yeah…that’s the ticket…and we’ll force people to read it…

The news will get reported, in some manner, and in a profitable way. But clearly, the era of dropping a printed newspaper in your driveway every morning is coming to an end.

This would have happened regardless. Daily newspapers are a dinosaur in an era of the 24 hour news cycle. But it surely is not a smart business practice to consistently tick off half of your readership base with blatant one-sided reporting. Hopefully, the news organizations that come out of this upheaval will recognize the value of “fair and balanced”, either by actively promoting viewpoint diversity, or by having the news sources openly acknowledge their biases, rather than pretending objectivity.

I do not weep for the newspapers. They have brought this on themselves.

Michael, if the bias isn’t apparent to you, you can visit the LA Times or Minneapolis Red Star-Tribune. :^)

(it’s actually just the “Star-Tribune,” but…)

This saddens me, but the problems could have been avoided if they’d realized that you don’t go deeper into debt to keep things going when your reader base is declining. You restructure. The Times should be renting out large parts of its building, not mortgaging it.

How is the Washington Times doing?

While it is tempting to say that the cause of the coming demise of large newspapers is liberal bias–something BTW Michael Little Boot I think is best seen and appreciated when one is in fact NOT liberal–I suspect the real reason is that people don’t read anymore, at least off-line. The cultural habit of coffee and the morning paper is not so engrained in the habits of people as it once was, alas!

Of course–and on the other hand–the likes of Rush Limbaugh exist solely because the traditional media sources did not supply large numbers of the people with the news they want, or at least the slant they want. As simplistic as this sounds, people actually tend to read the newspaper they agree with. If you can’t find one of those, you stop reading or find one that you do agree with.

Bear in mind that for a few generations now, national news has been narrowly controlled by just a few organizations such as AP, and only local news is written by smalltown newspaper staffs. Reading AP news releases during an election year isn’t even worth it to me anymore. If I want blatant opinion, I can find it anywhere. The internet, for example!

Michael, reality is that the Tribune company is having difficulty greatly because the LA Times has gone so far to the left (especially in their editorial page) that they’ve ticked off left-leaning LA. That’s no small “accomplishment.” Same basic thing with the NY Times, really.

The thing I’d like to see as a conservative is a little more analysis by reporters of “is this quote I’m reporting halfway true?” The best they’re doing these days–at least outside of the editorial pages–is to cite “FactCheck’s” citation of the (liberal) Brookings Institution. Only very rarely do we get a reporter clever enough to realize how the public figure is snowing him.

Daily newspapers are a dinosaur in an era of the 24 hour news cycle.

When I was in grade school, my parents subscribed to the Kansas City Times in the morning, the Kansas City Star and the local town newspaper in afternoon. Now I see little need in even getting a weekend paper.

As for media bias, check out the major newspapers’ reporting of the arrest of Illinois Governor Blagojevich for corruption. Few newspapers report, if any, note anywhere that he was a Democrat, although one I read mentioned the previous (corrupt) IL governor, now in prison, identified as a Republican.

Now check out the same newspapers’ reports of Idaho Senator Larry Craig losing his appeal over an undercover sex sting guilty plea. Yep, “Republican” is identified right up front.

Leftist MSM SOP, even as their presses grind to a halt.

Bike Bubba,

“[R]eality is that the Tribune company is having difficulty greatly because the LA Times has gone so far to the left (especially in their editorial page) that they’ve ticked off left-leaning LA.”

Wow. That’s a bold statement. Do you have any evidence to back up that claim? I work in a library. I can attest that, at least where I’m located, readership of ALL print media is down. I don’t think this trend is local. As you said, to tick off left-leaning L.A., a newspaper would have to be – well, I don’t actually know. How could being TOO liberal make liberals upset? I’d like to know where you’re getting your facts regarding this, not because I’d like to ask you for them and have you come up short, but simply because, as a Californian, it makes no sense to me.

please remember all the “other sources” of our news today.
Cable TV, internet, radio. The newpapers must adapt to obtaining advertising revenue from the Internet and copywriting their articles for maintaining revenue or the will not be around as we once knew them.
adapt or die….unless you can obtain a gov’t bailout.

From my part of the world the papers are rightwing. According to one Murdoch publication( the Government Gazette), we are winning in Iraq and global warming is a leftwing plot to shackle capitalism.
Murdoch news is so far to the right that media at the centre is invariably regarded as leftwing.

I know by some on the far right it is considered liberal, but NPR is surprisingly balanced. In fact, during the 2004 presidential election they were criticized for a supposed liberal bias, only to show they had given more time to Bush than to Kerry. They used that fact to defend themselves, then turned around and apologized for it, saying they strive to give equal time to both sides. The reporters NEVER editorialize because they aren’t allowed to do so, and the commentators do a good job skewering both sides.

Until Katrina the Edwin Edwards Rule applied to President Bush.
I am also bemused by the way Fox news has given a licence to others to become more political.

I do lament the sad shape of our local Orange County Register. This paper was shaped by libertarian R.C. Hoiles who bought it in 1935. It drifted from its roots, but for the last decade, the Opinion section is libertarian again. (I open the Opinion section of the Register and feel like I have a home.) Some of its writers blog here:
http://orangepunch.freedomblogging.com/

In one post, Alan Bock offers his view of how the papers got into dire straits: “I’m fascinated at the eagerness of some people to attach an ideological reason to the newspaper industry’s troubles. Plenty of people on talk radio attribute it to the ‘liberal media’ being out of touch, while more than one commenter on this blog has attributed it to the free-market-oriented Register being out of touch. The explanation is more devastating. We had a surefire business model for about a century and then the Internet and other developments disrupted it. We’ve lost all kinds of classified advertising to Craigslist and all kinds of employment advertising to Monster.com. The big department stores have consolidated and buy many fewer full-page ads. We have worked to establish an Internet presence but because the fixed costs are so low (which in an abstract sense is a good thing for entrepreneurship), we’re competing for ad dollars with people who haven’t had to buy monster printing presses and fleets of trucks, so the ad prices are low and we’re still frantically trying to figure out how to get more Internet ad revenue. And of course the current financial crisis hasn’t exactly helped. I think newspapers will survive in some form but we’re in a rough patch right now. It has everything to do with changing technology and market conditions and almost nothing to do with ideology.”

Thanks for posting that, Rick. Sounds exactly right.

“I am also bemused by the way Fox news has given a licence to others to become more political.”

Then you’re bemused by your own delusion, John. The clymer press has been political in pushing its leftist yellow journalism even before Rupert Murdoch was a twinkle in his father’s eye. In the eyes of the MSM, Fox News’s travesty was in presenting some neoconservative viewpoints for business reasons, and because of that, taking market share from the MSM.

Michael, Hugh Hewitt has a bunch of stuff on the LA Times. Yes, everybody’s dropping, but the LA Times is special in this regard. They’ve had dozens of advertisers dropping them, all kinds of things. There is a point for editorial freedom, and a point for protecting your investment.

Finals start tomorrow at PHC, so I suspect that might have something to do with his absence on the blog today.

Bike Bubba,

Wasn’t able to find much searching Hewitt about the Times. Interesting Hewitt is a conservative, though. Are there any non-partisan people saying the L.A. Times is losing readership due to its left-leaning editorial staff? Did you read what Rick posted above? Even if the Times IS losing readership due to being too liberal, how is that evidence the entire media is leaning to the left?

“There is a point for editorial freedom, and a point for protecting your investment.” I’m not sure what you mean by that. Could you elaborate if you have a little time? No new posts today, as you pointed out.

Michael, exhibit A of media bias; look at the NY Times’ article about Rod Blagojevich’s arrest. Does it tell you what party he is of?

And no, proposition 8 doesn’t demonstrate a huge shift. It rather demonstrates that Jerry Brown changed the wording of the proposal.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/30/BASO121RRI.DTL

One thing that hasn’t changed in decades in California is the shenanigans of Jerry Brown, sad to say, which means that the major societal shift in that state is that sensible people are leaving.

Oh hi, Peter, Cameron told me I could find you at this address and now I see you’re at Gene’s place. Nice to see you again, Gene, and congratulations on Joanna’s pregnancy–I was hoping that image was her child. I, too, remember her from WorldMagBlog.

And nice to see you again, Carl.

I said to my husband this morning when I brought in the paper, “I wonder if we’ll have more than a few sheets after Christmas, once all the gift ads are gone.” Our NYT subsidiary has been shrinking since the beginning of the year. They’ve laid off local reporters and beefed up the AP stories and more and more people cancel their subscriptions in disgust.

I like a paper in my hand, but what I need are local stories. I want to read about the high school volleyball teams, and about issues affecting local farmers and why the city council keeps spending money trying to close off one of the main arteries in town. An internet presence doesn’t address those issues–though the paper keeps telling me I can find more photos on their web site.

I’m 52 and I don’t want to eat breakfast without the paper. But they give me fewer and fewer reasons to read it almost every day. I’m afraid when it’s gone, however, we’ll be living more like the dark ages except we’ll have access to international news.

National news is not going to help me when a wildfire is brewing over the mountains or when a young woman is raped at knife point in my local grocery store with her toddler screaming in the back seat. I want local news.

Donna’s paper was my hometown paper and the one where I did my internship. San Pedro isn’t the same anymore without the News Pilot, and neither will any small towns benefit from losing their coverage.

We’ve been reading this paper for a long time the way the Russians used to read Pravda: from the back to the front, paying close attention to the end of the stories. If you know the point of view of the writers–which comes from reading them–you can sift through anything as long as you gain insight.

Michael @ 43: I agree that this is true. But I object to the writers pretending (or worse yet, denying) that they have a point of view. Let’s have these writers admit their point of view, so you don’t have to read them for a long time to discern that point of view and discount for it in their reporting.

A lot of your dissatisfaction with reporters has to do with the changing nature of their training. Back in the dark ages when I was a reporter, we had to be able to articulate both sides of the story. We didn’t have to agree, but we had to be able to respectfully explain what the issues were from both points of view.

I rarely see that anymore–which is why my family banishes me when they watch the news on TV. I can’t keep myself from shouting, “where’s the other side of the story?” Even if I agree with the reporter.

A good reporter knows s/he has an internal bias. A good writer will ensure his/her reader can’t discern it.

Michelle @ 46: Good point. I don’t think many reporters even know how to find a good conservative source so that they can express articulately the point of view that is most different than their own. When they do decide to present the opposing view, they always go back to the same old sources — Jerry Falwell, until his recent passing, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed, Bill Kristol, etc.

Of course, believing there are only two (“both”) sides to any story is itself a form of bias, one which Republicans and Democrats no doubt enjoy.

Joe (@51), um, Portland? No, I’ve just been busier lately. Much as I love the discussion here, it’s not exactly conducive to getting things done elsewhere. So I’ve been holding back a bit more.

Here where I am, the local paper is the Star Phoenix, with a nice mixture of local, national and international. Then there is the Sun, which is free, with some nice local stories announcements etc. Then, because I live in a small town close to Saskatoon, I get not one, but 2 free weeklies concentrating on local small town news. Is this much different down south in the US? Of course, the bevy of national papers are also available, with slightly localised versions (Globe etc)