Journalism isn't Dead, but Newspapers are
indiaBPOking
South Orange, NJ Friday, December 11, 2009 By Alan Caruba
As frequent readers of my commentaries know, I began my working life
as a journalist. This, of course, ruined me for honest work!
As a result, I migrated into public relations, a craft or trade that
likes to think of itself as a profession, but other than medicine, why
would one want to be thought of in the same way as lawyers?
Nowadays, every endeavor with its own trade association calls itself a
profession. All one needs is a Code of Ethics that its members can
ignore and, voila, you're a professional.
Journalists think of themselves as professionals and they too have a
Code of Ethics as put forth by the Society of Professional
Journalists. Let it be noted that I have been and still am a SPJ
member for more than twenty-five years and, for much of that time, I
also subscribed to Editor & Publisher, a publication that has been
around for 108 years.
E&P died on Thursday. It was shut down by its parent company, Nielsen,
along with The Hollywood Reporter.
If anything signals a near-death experience for print journalism; that
is to say, the process by which the combined talent and efforts of
reporters, columnists, photographers, and editors produced a daily
portrait of a city, a state, the nation and the world, the loss of
Editor & Publisher pretty much says "the times they are a-changing"
I am willing to bet that weeklies will survive because people want
news specific to the town in which they live.
Journalism as the collection and reporting of news is not dead. One
can go to any number of Internet sites that provide or aggregate news
and opinions for proof of that. In fact, it may be increasing.
You will search long and hard for conservative opinion in the
mainstream press. Other than Charles Krauthammer and George Will, it
is scant when measured against their liberal counterparts, but they
and many other conservative commentators thrive on the Internet.
Broadcast journalism, even in tough times, is surviving, but at the
local level it is driven by the motto, "If it bleeds, it leads" This
is why the 6 o'clock news is mostly shootings, fires, and comparable
(and dependable) mayhem.
Most of the rest resembles at its best the Fox News Channel, followed
far behind by others so partisan it is ugly. I predict that the
decline of print journalism will bode well for Bloomberg News, and
anything owned by Rupert Murdoch, such as The Wall Street Journal and
Fox! The government funded Public Broadcast Networks will survive
because they are not dependent on advertising.
At this point, if the Associated Press closed its doors, I would not
miss its endless churning of distorted news that looks like it was
written in a carnival fun house.
So far this year, 105 newspapers have shut their doors. The number of
jobs associated with print journalism is estimated between 10,000 and
40,000, with the top number being most likely. And don't forget all
those folks who ran the presses and the drivers who delivered the
papers.
In the first quarter of this year, ad sales declined by 30%. Most
classified advertising long ago had migrated to Craig's List,
Monster.com, and dozens of comparable Internet outlets.
Consider some of the newspapers that are no more; Tucson Citizen,
Rocky Mountain News, Baltimore Examiner, Kentucky Post, Cincinnati
Post, Albuquerque Tribune, and even the San Juan Star, to name but a
few.
Get ready to bury a whole bunch more including the Philadelphia Daily
News, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Detroit
News, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun Times, the San Francisco
Chronicle, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the New York Daily News;
also on death watch, Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report.
I fully understand the economics behind the closings that have
occurred and that will continue. I think, however, that other factors
have been a work for a very long time.
It is their arrogance.
It is their capitulation to leftist political ideology.
It is their abandonment of accuracy and balance.
The pages of too many newspapers and news magazines scream BIAS.
This was evident with Editor & Publisher that, at least a decade ago
or longer, became little more than a leftist rag. Its editors and
commentators were ideologues so far out of touch with the events of
the real world that the magazine's demise mirrors the general decline
of print journalism.
For myself, I am waiting for The New York Times to tank and take with
it some of the worst practitioners of journalism to ever gather in a
single city room. Columnists, Paul Krugman and Thomas L. Friedman, are
award-winning, clueless ignoramuses. The Times in recent years has
specialized in revealing government secrets vital to the greatest
enemy of freedom, the fascists that want to impose Islam on the
world.
I don't care how many Pulitzer Prizes the Times has garnered. The
nation is filled with newspapers whose display cases are filled with
awards, but which are dead or dying because they forgot to print the
TRUTH.
Alan Caruba
o7xu.plyx
read, articles are poorly written, with esotheric heading.
Too bad.
Salutations.
"indiaBPOking" <indiab...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8d6cb601-f9f5-4781...@u18g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
Day Brown
> I fully understand the economics behind the closings that have
> occurred and that will continue. I think, however, that other factors
> have been a work for a very long time.
>
> It is their arrogance.
>
> It is their capitulation to leftist political ideology.
>
> It is their abandonment of accuracy and balance.
before, they didnt find anything at my place, but arrested Bill. The
Tampa Tribune posted his photo and the headline about a middle school
teacher arrested for drugs.
I wrote them, explaining we didnt know the previous tenant was a cocaine
dealer, and the charges against Bill were dropped. They refused to print
the truth, preferring the hype for the 'war on drugs'.
So, I went to the USF college underground newspaper, and they printed
the truth. And the paper's office was searched, and trashed out a week
later.
Taking this as a sign I should move, I soon was writing for an
underground New Orleans newspaper about the realities of the war on
drugs. LEO searched the newspaper office. We cleaned up the mess and
kept on printing, and LEO came and searched it again. And in fact, while
I lived in New Orleans, they searched my home 5 times in 5 years.
One time, they arrested me for drugs guests dropped on the floor when
LEO busted in on a Halloween party. The judge threw that case out.
And again, in 1998, LEO searched my barn in Searcy county. I was not
there, my house there had burned down. But the chemicals and equipment I
had to process legal herbs were seized in what the Marshall Mountain
Wave called "The biggest Crank lab in NW Arkansas".
This time, I didnt write, but went to the newspaper office to speak to
the editor in person. Who would not print the truth. So, I used my PC
printer to run off a few hundred copies that I distributed to country
stores around the county and to church parking lots on Sunday.
If newspapers and journalists had the balls to print the truth, they
mite not be loosing an audience. The editor of the Van Buren County
Democrat understands the problem, and will be put on the spot if my
medical marijuana case ever goes to trial. Everyone knows the truth will
be printed here and elsewhere online.
The USA has its own Berlin Wall, the "war on drugs", which has cadres of
informers going around looking into people's lives and property, and
then going to a judge to testify without you ever knowing who it is, or
being able to challenge the lies they tell about you. As I've been
saying online for years, the war on drugs goes on because they dont want
to win it, but milk it. Its being run like a speed trap to enrich
lawyers. This is not a LEFT WING CONSPIRACY.