Slashdot Mirror
Are Newspapers Doomed?
Ponca City, We love you writes "James Surowiecki has an interesting article in the New Yorker that crystalizes the problems facing print newspapers today and explains why we may soon be seeing more major newspapers filing for bankruptcy, as the Tribune Company did last week. 'There's no mystery as to the source of all the trouble: advertising revenue has dried up,' writes Surowiecki, but the 'peculiar fact about the current crisis is that even as big papers have become less profitable they've arguably become more popular,' with the blogosphere piggybacking on traditional journalism's content. Surowiecki imagines many possible futures for newspapers, from becoming foundation-run nonprofits to relying on reader donations to deep-pocketed patrons. 'For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime — intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on — and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can't last. Soon enough, we're going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.'"
Go ahead and tax people for it and give the papers away.
Would a government-owned news reporting company be more biased than what we have now? Is the BBC worse than CNN or FOX News?
From the article:
>>>Papers now seem to be the equivalent of the railroads at the start of the twentieth century--a once-great business eclipsed by a new technology.
And the government solution to this was Amtrak, a centralized monopoly over passenger rail that sucks billions out of taxpayer wallets. Government will likely do the same with newspapers and introduce an "Ampaper" to keep alive an industry that should disappear and be replaced with online reporting.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I used to subscribe to papers, but I cancelled them all because they are all liberal rags. I don't need people preaching to me all the time, so I just said see ya later. I can't count how many right leaning people have cancelled the NYT, Washpost, etc, or just don't even buy them. I guess that strategy to move left and pick up the liberal masses has a problem. Liberals don't want to pay for much, not even their own workers, and so, liberal papers are failing. On the other hand, if I do reasonably well, I will probably pony up the extra money and subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. The web site is excellent, the writing is good, and i hear things about industry leaders and doers, rather than the progressives who seem to want to tear it all down.
This is my sig.