February 28, 2009
Will you miss newspapers? And can we blame realtors and homebuilders for killing them?
I blame bad reporters, like Rolodex-of-Realtors Catherine Reagor at the Arizona Republic, who caused America to lose trust in its media.
I blame realtors and homebuilders for seducing the papers with billions in fraud-fueled ad dollars.
I blame the corporate media for allowing itself to be corrupted by the REIC.
I blame newspapermen for being stupid businesspeople, not understanding that the best newsstand price for their product is FREE, and for not understanding the internet, craigslist or blogs.
I blame newspaper editors for focusing on car crashes, fires and silly little local celebs, while ignoring the corruption in their own back yards.
I blame our increasingly dumbed down society, who refuse to read newspapers but love their reality tv.
In the end, I won't miss local newspapers. They sucked anyway. And you can get your local goings-on from the blogs and other websites.
I would miss the nationals, in a big, big, big way. The IHT, the WSJ, the NYT, the WashPost and especially the FT - the greatest newspaper in the world. And hell, I'd even miss the mind-candy USA Today. Always had a sweet spot for that rag.
But the Arizona Republic? The Rocky Mountain News? The Seattle PI?
Nah.
Good luck to the (good) reporters out there. If you get a chance to report again, remember that when your country needed you, you failed, and you left your job up to a ragtag group of unpaid bloggers.
Try to do better next time.
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Unemployment Rate at 10.1% in California.
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=cC3v6z2Jk_c
Please don't tell my mom I work for a newspaper.
She thinks I'm a piano player in a whorehouse.
"...I blame newspaper editors for...ignoring the corruption..."
While crowing about what a vital role they play in our society.
They completely sold us out, because they had to.
Still, the subversives trickled out tidbits; once we realized how to tease them out:
1) Ignore headline/opening paragraphs
2) Scrutinize latter paragraphs for tangential yet important facts
3) Compile, verify, and correlate those facts to re-construct the job that MSM is unable to do because of the threat to themselves.
We know what they're up against.
What are home builders doing these day.
http://www.mydesert.com/article
/20090201/NEWS0801/902010334
/-1/newsfront
Crime rate likely to rise with jobless rate
The murder/suicide of a Los Angeles family, which authorities say may have been triggered by the loss of jobs by both parents and significant debt.
While some thieves may choose to rob businesses, others may try to steal property they can sell for money.
The current economy has given people, including existing criminals, a source for such items, Guitron said.
Foreclosed homes are becoming easy targets for criminals who are looking for materials, like copper wiring, that can be sold for cash.
“(Homes are) more vulnerable because no one's there,” Guitron said.
I agree 100%, Keith. The local paper has gone the way of the local news. Paid for by idiots, presented by idiots, consumed by idiots.
Actually, older readers who are intellegent (Hi, Mom!), are like the frog in the boiling pot of water. If they had read today's paper in 1980, they would have thrown it away in disgust. But they have been dumbed down slowly and oh, so effectively.
.
I HOPE THE LA TIMES AND THE NEW YORK TIMES GO DOWN IN FLAMES. WHO NEEDS THAT PRAVDA CRAP.
.
No I won't miss them at all. They all kowtow to the corrupt clowns in DC. If the newspapers did their job and told the truth we would have had a revolution in this country by now.
Take 9/11 for example. Everybody with an internet connection and the ability to do research online knows that 9/11 was an inside job. We don't need some chump at the LA Times to do the research for us when we can watch the video of the freefall collapse of all three towers and watch the testimony of survivors describing the bombs going off in the buildings.
you will not get the local government reports when the local press goes under and will get ripped off by the new generation of
"insiders" called fascists, with controls in zonings and plannings.
Can you see the signs all around you? tic tic tic...
Wal-Mart employee sets himself on fire, dies
Suburban Chicago officials say a Wal-Mart employee has died after setting himself on fire outside the store where he worked. 58-year-old Larry Graziano of Carol Stream used lighter fluid to set himself on fire late Thursday.
Graziano told police he "couldn't take it anymore." Police say bystanders tried to help, but Graziano fought them off.
Graziano was a 7-year employee who worked nights stocking shelves.
I was a newspaper reporter in my former career. Mostly small-town papers, finally at a rural town bureau of the Tampa Tribune. I considered myself a good reporter, because my aim was to bust the crooked arses of the local politicians.
I did things like "paper-trailing" the travel expenses of the local school superintendent in one community and discovered he spent $27,000 of the district's money for travel to conferences over three years, and was absent from the area doing that on 20% of his work days. That cost him his job in the next election. I wrote a lot of stories about how the head of the county commission in this one place was getting work for his surveying business from a big phosphate mine that was seeking permits to do a huge open-pit operation, and the commissioner was voting to approve the mine -- a clear conflict of interest. That cost him HIS job at the next election.
Small stuff in small communities, admittedly. But that's what the nuts and bolts of grass-roots journalism is about. My aim was always to make the bastards think "Should I do this? What if that son of a bitch on the newspaper finds out?"
And you know what being a hard-nosed, honest reporter got me? SACKED! I was always in trouble for stirring up too much shit. When I'd write something that stirred up powerful local people, they'd complain to the publisher. They'd threaten to pull advertising. And I'd get reassigned to another beat, or just fired. Meanwhile, the slack reporters who just accepted the official line -- and there's lots of those -- sailed on through. I finally got sick of being periodically unemployed and retrained myself, at my expense, to be a nurse.
To all the right-wingers who think the media is liberal, here's news -- the media are conservative businesses. Businesses don't like to rock the boat. They might make a show, but when it comes to upsetting the power structure, they don't want to. The conservative attitude comes right from the rich men at the top.
That's why I'm not sad to see newspapers going down. F@ck those conservative rags for not telling the truth and getting after the corruption hard enough. The blogosphere is a long way from perfect, but the truth is in here. You just have to separate it from all the bullshit.
There is a scene just like this in the 5th season of HBO's hit series THE WIRE. If you have not seen this show you should buy the complete set today. It trully is the best TV drama ever produced.
RayNLA
Didn't the internet kill newspapers? I never buy a paper anymore. Why should I lug that thing around, deal with spreading it out on my lap and getting that cheap ink all over me, when I can just read all this crap cleanly and neatly and easily on my computer or BlackBerry? TV killed radio and the internet killed newspapers. It's called progress. Get over it and move on.
And ditto on The Wire. Brilliant stuff.
I read three or four papers a day and I read them in paper form, and NO, I don't want to change.
Just like 'Kindle". The day I can no longer read a book that's not on paper is the day there is no joy in book reading.
Same with iTunes - I love my iPod but miss the days of putting on a full CD. Looking at the covers. Reading the liner notes.
All this tech is great, but in some ways, it's not progress.
I'm off now - gonna go pick up the Saturday papers and spread them out at the cafe.
F*ck the internet for some things.
Up until recently the dying newspapers had two solid sources of income. Auto and Real Estate ads. Yup, the bitches pressured the papers to write happy talk.
Hey Bukko, interesting comment there.
My dad who is 77 says it's a shame there are no more great radio shows like when he was a kid. The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, etc, he misses them all. He says tv just isn't as good, because radio forced the listener to imagine the action and allowed you to let your mind work to come up with the picture instead of being fed by the tv image. I just shake my head when he starts that. I guess our children will do the same when we reminisce about reading newspapers.
I'm gonna miss them a lot. NOT !
Recently dumped the USA Today and I do miss it. Kept the local rag by Gannett. It is my morning ritual. When the delivery isn’t there my morning goes haywire. I’m trying to wean myself. They are helping.
The local has downsized to a 15 minute read at best. Along with less quantity, there has been a significant decrease in quality. My news “pamphlet” is now rife with typos, bad grammar, and confusing half stories. When ripping off an e-mail to editor recently about 3 typos within 3 inches on the State page, I received a 2-word e-mail response: “What page?”. All righty then. The Florida Today NP is not long for this world.
"...you know what being a hard-nosed, honest reporter got me? SACKED!...
...they'd complain to the publisher. They'd threaten to pull advertising...
Or just put in a call direct to the cops on their special call-off-the-dogs hotline.
...The blogosphere is a long way from perfect, but the truth is in here. You just have to separate it from all the bullshit..."
Yes. My favorite canard: "can't be true because it's on the Internet"...
Heh. Fox, WSJ, whitehouse.gov are all on here too.
"...tv just isn't as good, because radio forced the listener to imagine the action...I just shake my head..."
Disagree; one's own imagination is quite vivid. I liken it to the disappointment of seeing a movie of a favorite book.
The news media is just a bunch of clown-puppets, under total control by big money.
In fact, they have enabled big money to stay in power. Without media control the Fed would have been gone long ago.
The news media and the banksters are our worse enemy.
Joe M.
Look for the Arizona Reepublic to go the same way. They all follow the same standard "wha happened Lucy!" moment when it is staring them right in the face.
They stopped reporting the news. They stopped going after corruption. They stopped doing investigative reporting. They stopped doing all the things that made newspapers successfull.
Now the Republic, always a conservative piece of shit rag, has straddled the fence on calling out anyone for anything, be it the craven developers that run this fucked up city, or the cities that spend millions on museums or other shit (Scottsdale you here?), or going after the money that we subsidize developers with be it a stadium or shopping center.
I picked up the Republic forthe first time in almost a year, and could not believe they even have sunk lower in their standards. The thing is on it's last legs.
Don't blame us for not reading newspaper owners, you just don't want to report anything worth reading, or expose anything because your corporate masters will not allow it.
I don't make up the facts, I just report em.
Just desserts to a news model that has raped this country and kept the wool over the populations eyes. Now that the fat is out of the was the true propaganda machines will kick into high gear . Get ready sheeple you are about to be really really fleeced.
California is reporting 10% unemployement. What that means is that the real rate is probably 30% or higher.
Do we really need newspapers? The TV does a much better job of spreading the Corporate blah blah blah....Socialism is bad for rich people.....blah blah blah around than the papers do.
Without the newspapers, who will pay the reporters to cover the news? Without news, what will the bloggers talk about?
Personal Vote
WORST DAILY 'NEWS'PAPER EVER PRINTED:
THE HAPLESS AND DISGRACED
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
Laughingstock. Should be scuttled today, Right Now, all personnel fired or arrested with prejudice.
Shit. No other description fits.
"Bukko_in_Australia said...
I was a newspaper reporter in my former career."
Figures. Once worthless and useless, Always.
But thanks for the short story anyway asshole.
Reading one's news on the net would be fine--totally good enough, but for the bad name the internet has due to those not in the know thinking it is only for wackos, pornos, and youth hunting pedos. It is great for conspiracy information, but again the wackos sites ruin that even.
I suggest a website such as: thisnewsistherealthing-really.com then you could take that news as the truth. Yeah when pigs fly.
Newspapers wrote their own obituary when they rolled over for Bush in the days before the Iraq War. They continued to feed us lies and propaganda in the following years. Once the trust is gone -- you are finished.
As one of the supposedly "older folks"(56) there is nothing new under the sun here. The press has never reported the truth. Ever. Just look back a little in time to the political assasinations of the 60's, Vietnam, Watergate etc. You get the picture.
How much Bush stenography and war porn did the RMN publish in 2002-03? How long did they cover up the murderous lies and war crimes?
Karma is a bitch. F*ck them.
Same goes for the NYT, WaPo, FT, and ESPECIALLY the WSJ. Calling them whores would be an insult to a noble profession.
It will be a shame when they take McClatchey down with them.
I read a lot of newspapers - on the web. I won't miss them a bit. They haven't reported the real news for a long time, and I could care less what Paris Hilton is up to.
hard to do your job when you are beholden to advertisers. Even harder to do you job when fcc relaxes ownership rules. even harder when the new boss has an agenda(ie that of the new boss) who forces out all the "liberals". lets pray all you american hero bloggers never accept big advertising, bc it will be the death knell of free speech. the interwebz- enjoy it while you still can...
Bukko_in_Australia said...
I was a newspaper reporter in my former career."
Figures. Once worthless and useless, Always.
But thanks for the short story anyway asshole.
Kindly click here to regain your lost manners. They're up there somewhere.
"...WORST DAILY 'NEWSPAPER EVER PRINTED:
THE HAPLESS AND DISGRACED SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS..."
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch.
Actions have consequences: you let us down, we abandon you.
So hard to understand, Mr. Editor? Especially when you publish stuff like "suicide: two gunshot wounds to the head."
"...The press has never reported the truth. Ever. Just look back a little in time..."
Agreed. The big difference is that now we can compare notes and bypass them. Witness the decline.
We believed it about Jeanne Palfrey, too.
NOT.
My little local paper, the Frederick News Post, Frederick, MD, just announced suspension of the Monday edition, splitting that day's features between Sunday and Tuesday. It seems like staving off the inevitable, and it makes me sad as I enjoy reading the local news and little features like "100 Years ago Today in Frederick". Though I get the bulk of my news on the internet, I prefer a paper format -- love the smell of the paper and coffee on a lazy Sunday morning in bed. Also handy for the woodstove. Fred Reed has a great column in recent 'American Conservative' on how real newsmen, who dined on steak and bourbon, were replaced by PC sissies from journalism schools who eat salads.
The newspapers and journalists sold their soul to the devil. Got f*cked!
Newspapers became bureaucratic, full of big wigs and political hacks controlling media. Who wants to read Public Relation pieces as news?
Journalists are too lazy to find the true. How many articles have we read on the LA Times about the oh-so victims of the housing bubble, which turned out to be serial conman-flippers crying crocodile tears? It took blogers like OC Renter to expose the truth and do the job that well-paid journalists at the LA Times were too lazy or incompetent to do. Journalists these days think they ought to be entertainers, instead of useful-information enablers.
Are you kidding me? I love my Kindle 1.
>>The local has downsized to a 15 minute read at best. Along with less quantity, there has been a significant decrease in quality. My news “pamphlet” is now rife with typos, bad grammar, and confusing half stories.<<
You must be talking about The Miami Herald.
No no, I love that new format in which Indians in Bombay search stories online to write news for local newspapers in the US. WTF???
They're outsourcing even our local news. I mean, how in the hell an Indian in Bombay would know what to write something really relevant without ever being in my town?
Most of these local newspapers you see around are written in India and then sent here for print.
Tom Friedman must be so proud.
My dad who is 77 says it's a shame there are no more great radio shows like when he was a kid.
I listen to radio all the time. Well, it's called Podcast now. I love Podcasts like:
www.theparacast.com
Check it out.
Newspapers are obsolete. They have been for years.
Remember how sniffly and snotty they were towards bloggers and new media? Remember how they insisted that they -- and only they -- were "responsible journalists?" Remember how they demanded that they have a monopoly on setting the national agenda?
They're toast. Kaput. And who will miss them?
I probably failed History 101 (don't remember), but I believe The Newspaper started, back in -2133 +/- B.C. - as a way to inform the masses of important events, and also as a vehicle to broadcast (and influence) political views.
Why would modern media, regardless of its form, be any different? Why should it be? Turn the channel, don't buy the paper, click that little "X" at the top-right of the blog site.
As much as most of us hate the MSM, in whatever its form, we're acting like whining little babies who have no control over what gets pummeled into our brains.
I personally find it sad (very sad) to see, for example, The Rocky Mountain News become history.
I've been to Colorado only a few times in my life, but even so, I remember the RMN as a quality piece of work.
Regardless of your political affiliation, or none at all (and aren't we all finally figuring out that "are you a donkey, or an elephant?" is complete antiquated irrelevant bullshit??), I'll go out on a limb and suggest that 98% of the Real People Just Like You and Me who worked at the Rocky Mountain News put every ounce of energy into what they love doing -- delivering news -- and they did a DAMN good job of it.
All you who-gives-a-shit-about-anything-having-anything-to-do-with-the-media go crank up your Kindle over a cup of coffee tomorrow morning, and have a Great Time.
Good riddance!!...and about time. The newspapers, for such low revenue businesses, hold way too much sway over people. Most of the papers are full of low-paid left-wingers who editorialize in their coverage. And they don't cover the most pressing issues of the day: privacy, wasteful govt., federalism, property rights, corrupt unions, etc. It's the same thing year after year: health, education, and transportation. Oh, and their bogeyman: so-called global warming (or is it climate change now? they keep changing it on me).
So long Denver. So long SF. So long Boston. And so long to the rest.
May you R.I.P.
"Anonymous said...
Are you kidding me? I love my Kindle 1.
March 1, 2009 1:01 AM"
Try eating it Asshole.
DIE U IGNORANT PIGS
The media is totally bought off by advertisers. The internet is the only good source now, and I don't mean the msm outlets on the internet either.
"...aren't we all finally figuring out that "are you a donkey, or an elephant?" is complete antiquated irrelevant bullshit?..."
About every other post is CHOCK FULL OF IT.
Other than that, bravo.
Music CDs are going the way of the 8 track.
What will I use to line my birdcage?
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