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Decline In US Newspaper Readership Accelerates
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that US newspaper circulation has hit its lowest level in seven decades, as papers across the country lost 10.6 percent of their paying readers from April through September, compared with a year earlier. Online, newspapers are still a success — but only in readership, not in profit. Ads on newspaper Internet sites sell for pennies on the dollar compared with ads in their ink-on-paper cousins. 'Newspapers have ceased to be a mass medium by any stretch of the imagination,' says Alan D. Mutter, a former journalist and cable television executive who now consults and writes a blog called Reflections of a Newsosaur. According to Mutter only 13 percent of Americans, or about 39 million, now buy a daily newspaper, down from 31 percent in 1940. 'Publishers who think their businesses are going to live or die according to the number of bellybuttons they can deliver probably will see their businesses die,' writes Mutter. 'The smart ones will get busy on Plan B, assuming there is a Plan B and it's not already too late.' Almost without exception, the papers that lost the least readers or even gained readership are the nation's smallest daily newspapers which tend to focus almost all of their limited resources on highly local news that is not covered by larger outside organizations and have a lock on local ad markets."
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"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Ya know "objective reporting" is a myth. Prior to 1950 the Philadelphia Inquirer proudly trumpeted that it was pro-Republican. Many papers had the words directly in their names - "The Peoria Democrat".
And I see nothing wrong with that. Newspapers were invented as a way for the owner to express his views. If you didn't like those views, create a competing newspaper. That's what liberty and "free press" means... to say whatever you want to say, even if it's biased towards your own view.
Spot on. Newspapers in the UK and Ireland are still pretty open about what parties they support, they really nail their colours to the mast. If you want to win a British general election, you're on an uphill task if you don't have the tabloid press on your side.
Broadcast media is a bit different though. In the UK and Ireland people expect a certain amount of objectivity in the broadcast media. In the UK political parties cannot buy advertising time on TV, instead they each get the same amount of time allocated for "party political broadcasts" that are usually about ten minutes long before the main nightly news, and that's about it. The power of television is such that in the UK they prefer to make sure it's not open to political influence, which is why British people are a bit shocked when they turn on Fox News or MSNBC and see the blatant editorialising on the air.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Broadcast media is a bit different though. In the UK and Ireland people expect a certain amount of objectivity in the broadcast media. In the UK political parties cannot buy advertising time on TV, instead they each get the same amount of time allocated for "party political broadcasts" that are usually about ten minutes long before the main nightly news, and that's about it. The power of television is such that in the UK they prefer to make sure it's not open to political influence, which is why British people are a bit shocked when they turn on Fox News or MSNBC and see the blatant editorialising on the air.
In Britain you have the BBC. There are other news networks, but the BBC is government funded through licensing (yes, apparently you need a license to have a TV in Britain) and is generally the most popular. As best I can tell the BBC is so politically correct they don't dare run anything that could offend anyone.
Rather than just not being controversial, I would rather just have choices. In America, if I don't like a reporter I change the channel. If I like Fox, I watch Fox, if I like CNN I watch CNN. Bias is only a problem if opposing views are not available. In America we have Fox (right wing), CNN (left wing), and NBC (very left wing). We have national news broadcast , local news subsidiaries, papers, talk radio, and now blogs. If I don't like what someone says on a station, I don't watch them. If I want a different point of view, I watch something biased from the other side. The issue of bias is something that goes way back. America's founders even worried about biased information in papers. They decided it impossible to eliminate all bias when discussing something controversial, so they decided it was best to do the opposite and allow for newspapers to say whatever they want creating so many viewpoints. This was the idea behind the first amendment, allow for a wide variety of opinions.
If you don't like something or don't agree with something, don't watch. I think most people understand that the media is biased.
The Gospel according to lolcat
" ... We did indeed, quietly. ship a shipload of uranium out of Iraq. ..."
Uranium, by itself, is more more a WMD than a lump of aluminum is a fighter jet.
Your source reveals a supply of yellowcake was found in Iraq. It's one of the most common elements on Earth, and there are traces of it in the dirt around your yard.
You can't make a bomb out of yellowcake, in fact you can't even use it as reactor fuel, without a whole lot of elaborate, expensive, and time-consuming processing. After you do that, then you can start to think about more elaborate work to turn it into an WMD.
I somehow magically get no ads without being a subscriber.. not sure how it happened, but one day slashdot told me.. 'you are awesome, want us to disable ads for you?'
As I type this post, on the main page I still have a small box that says "Ads disabled (tick) - thanks for helping make slashdot great"
haven't heard anyone else talk about this feature.. so I don't know how common it is, or if it's one of those unspoken things, but yeah
What about the investigative journalism that revealed the existence of the so-called "torture memos", or the secret CIA prisons, or the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program, or the neglect of injured veterans at the VA?
What about the "investigative" journalism that suddenly brings up quotes from Rush Limbaugh from many years ago that everyone has missed all these years (because he never said them)?
What about the "investigative" journalism that found military papers from the 1970's about George Bush, that were typed up using Word 2003?
How about the way all of these journalists will all suddenly come up with an unusual word to describe someone, like gravatas? It's almost like they all receive their stories from one source.
What you call "investigative journalism", I'd call propaganda. It's amazing how they can be so one-sided in their hatred, and still claim to be independent. How can you believe anything these people say?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.