Archive for the ‘newspapers’ Category

Newspapers Pass the Hat

March 24, 2008

With the crisis in American newspaper publishing, it’s time to look how bringing readers the news, often seen as a public service, can be funded.

The current advertising-and-subscription model is failing.  Most publications (save only the Wall Street Journal and a few others) put essentially the entire newspaper on line for free, so they don’t get that 50 cents a day per reader.  As for advertising, oy vey. 

The problem is that other models don’t work that well either.  When the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) sends me letters begging for a donation, I send back the postage-paid form with three words written on it “Sell some ads!”  As in KCET’s appeals for donations to ‘public’ television, my attitude is ‘Let Exxon pay for it’, in the same way that Archer Daniels Midland buys benign coverage on NPR.

Eric Alterman notes another contribution-funded effort.  ”ProPublica, funded by the liberal billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler and headed by the former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, hopes to provide the mainstream media with the investigative reporting that so many have chosen to forgo.” Most newspapers and other outlets would probably look at such offerings as contributed (ie, free) articles, filler on the order of “New Restaurant Offers Intriguing Entrees”.

Government funding is another, even worse option.  At best, it will deliver a Voice of America or BBC, a hotbed of bias.  At worst, Pravda or the Chinese news agency, delivering articles on the ‘merciless rioters’ of the Tibet uprising–and not delivering this.

So like it or not, market capitalism, as Churchill said of democracy, the worst of all systems  except for all others, will probably come up with a solution to deliver the news.

Posted in Archer-Daniels-Midland, BBC, NPR, ProPublica, Tibet-uprising, death-of-newspapers, newspapers | No Comments »

Give Rupert Murdoch a Break

June 18, 2007

The editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal, plus sundry other journalists, are running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  Their fear?  That Rupert Murdoch, publisher and destroyer of worlds, will take over the Journal with his stained hands.

 They bleat he’ll dumb it down and change its editorial mission.  Which is what–to make the world safe for capitalism?  Then the Journal should be applauding Murdoch’s $60 a share offer.

Murdoch has a history, they say, of using his media empire to advance his own causes and line his pocket.

No shit, Sherlock!  What does a publisher do?  Yellow journalism was Joseph Pulitzer, who got a prize named after him, and William Randolph Hearst, who got an empire, battling in a gutter war for circulation–and to see who could get the U.S. into the Spanish American war first.

Murdoch focuses his chirpy Fox News, smarmy New York Post and the rest on sensationalism and celebrities.  He likes to sell papers and make money. 

As they say, the new Golden Rule is the one who has the gold, makes the rules.  The Wall Street Journal may not like it–but hey, that’s capitalism.

So give me–and Rupert–a break.

Posted in Fox-News, New-York-Post, Wall-Street-Journal, newspapers, yellow-journalism | 1 Comment »

From the SF Chronicle to Chrysler: Dislocation at Internet Speed

May 23, 2007

The San Francisco Chronicle is making one of the biggest newsroom cuts yet; 25%, writes a Chronicle reporter(!)  Eighty reporters, photographers, copy editors and others will be laid off.

“Analysts predicted the reductions at The Chronicle could have repercussions for readers. While an increasing number of people get news from online aggregators such as Google News and Yahoo, those stories are most often originally reported by print journalists. “

Then there’s the news website in Pasadena, that has unrepentently (and to great publicity) outsourced its city council coverage to India to reporters paid $7500 a year.

While I have sympathy for those cutback or outsourced, I’m not going to cry crocodile tears.  As my Dad told me more than 30 years ago, you’ll never see pro-labor sentiment in a newspaper because they’re an employer.  As the last person I know who owns three American cars, (a Ford, a Lincoln and a Jeep) where were these people and their publications in terms of supporting U.S. industries?

Still, it’s tough times, and for a communications person, the whirling scythe dumps more competitors into the pool.

Posted in Ford, Journalism, Public Relations, Publishing, death-of-newspapers, newspapers, sf-chronicle | No Comments »

Journalism’s Problems: Sampling the Conventional Wisdom

May 17, 2007

The Los Angeles Times has been running a long and windy  ’dust-up’ on the state of journalism today.

It’s debated/written by two professors (Robert W. McChesney, professor of communication at the University of Illinois, Glenn Harlan Reynolds,  professor of law at the University of Tennessee) and reads like it.  And it’s preaching to the choir, newspaper readers, rather than the unchurched, the thousands who’ve abandoned newspapers lately.

McChesney illustrates some issues well, describing ”the sharp decline over the past two decades in the number of working journalists covering stories at the local level, and the sharp decline in the number of journalists over the same period covering the world for U.S. news media.”

“This contributes to a journalism where we are more dependent upon those in power to tell us what is happening, and our journalists have become more inclined to accept what they say at face value.”  Then there’s “the commercialization of news and the softening of news standards to include celebrity fluff and trivia. This gives the illusion of controversy while never antagonizing anyone in power.” 

Yup–every TV channel has a “trouble shooter” who takes on dirty restaurants and , but never McDonald’s or Exxon.  But someone has to pay to put on the news, and if it’s not the angry taxpayers as in Britain, it’s McDonald’s and Exxon.

Both men have some interesting insights, but like most journalists, they’re long on asking questions, short on answers.

Posted in Journalism, death-of-newspapers, newspapers | No Comments »