The problem with newspapers...
...(and I'm a former newspaper editor and publisher) is that you folks think we can't detect when your news columns are being used to foist your agenda on us.We're much smarter than you think we are, and that you think we're dumb merely reveals your arrogance. So, while we are not necessarily cheering your demise, we're snickering because you're getting what's coming to you.
We see you bashing conservatives, while liberals committing similar sins go un-commented upon. We're not stupid. We know that you are the "deciders" about what's news and what's swept under the rug. You tell us often enough.
So, we've moved on. Opinions are a dime a dozen. I can find myriad voices online to feed me my opinion back to me. If you think I'm going to pay money for yours, you're sadly mistaken. Your just one voice amongst thousands of them out there. Why should I pay good money for your opinion?
You also forgot that half your advertisers are conservatives who have decided maybe they don't want to fund your little Democrat Party Propoganda sheet any longer, and so they've found other more creative ways to spend their ad budgets.
If you tell people to f*ck off enough times, they eventually will, taking their ad revenue with them.
Good luck in your retirement. I suspect that if it took you this long to finally detect the desire amongst your few remaining subscribers for "just the facts" that it's far too late to save you.
A tingle went up my leg reading that. :)
What's a 'newspaper'?
didn't the frogs call it the 'filth estate" ?
anyone know ?
or am i hallucinating here ?
didn't the frogs call it the 'filth estate" ?
anyone know ?
or am i hallucinating here ?
I stopped watching CBC National news when Peter Mansbridge informed me '...that CBC not only reports the news, but tells me what it means to me"! My response was 'No Peter you tell me the news and I'll tell me what it means to me." The rise of 'journalism' schools has coincided with inane reporting styles and way too many journalists chasing the relatively few stories that actually warrant a professional perspective. Unfortunately most of the graduates of journalism schools have no real knowledge of the world beyond what was taught to them at journalism school. Wouldn't it be nice to have journalists who actually understand issues in the post-secondary education system, or could explain how a mutual fund works, or understands that the stock market only represents companies that are publicly traded and so mis-represents what is going on the many small to mid-sized companies held by individuals and which comprise the majority of business and employment opportunities this country.
How many people remember reading bloggers point out how out of balance the real estate market was in 2003 through 2005 only to see newspapers parrot the spin of real-estate boards?
How many people have read an article in a newspaper and decided to google the subject and found mistakes made by the journalist within a couple of minutes of research?
Its not just the political bias that is killing newspapers ... The fact that the newspapers seem to be the last to know there is a problem and to report on it, and the research that goes into their articles is amazingly pathetic is killing these papers though.
I can never let a story about the decline of the newspapers go by without commenting on their never ending love affair with the greenies. Everybody has heard the term "dead tree media". Advertisers know that the key to a good ad is to leave a positive impression and they hope you will associate their name with the product that is advertised. Well the newspaper stories about global warming and overflowing landfills make people associate newspapers with devastated forests and piles of trash. That bundle of newspapers you haul out to the curb is the single largest source of residential trash in the country. If you believe in AGW, what is the single easiest significant thing you can give up?
Go Green!! Go SDA!!!
*****Unfortunately most of the graduates of journalism schools have no real knowledge of the world beyond what was taught to them at journalism school.******
posted by Maureen
sadly this applies to too many "taught subjects" in schools
when I hired people I always aimed for those with the lowest possible education for the postion to be filled, as it took less time to "untrain" them , and retrain them as needed
Most of what they print are just their opinions. They need to go back to giving us all the facts and letting us form our own opinons.
I believe that the demise of newspapers has two components. Firstly most of the journalism schools are operated by left thinking individuals. The graduates are similarly indoctrinated. Secondly most reporters aspire to be commentators and their reporting is intentionally slanted to reflect their opinion.
Seriously thinking about cancelling my 40 plus years as a subscriber to the Leader Post in Regina. Had enough of their garbage.
Never a good word to say about anyone other than their parties - liberals or NDP.
I haven't bought a newspaper in over twenty years. I get most of my news from radio and in recent years on the net as well.
I used to snicker when I first started to hear about the demise of the news clowns. Now I am in full belly laugh mode.
The MSM is about news is about them. I regard them as disgusting unelected Leftst politicians.
Was channel flipping one day when the Libby thing was going on, one of the alphabet channels had on two yappers stroking each other over their cleverness of covering this 'very important' story and one of them saying giddily 'this is journalism finest hour'.
I have not bothered with any in TV news in years and any subsequent brief peeks just keeps reaffirming my choice, (With the except if a person of interest is being interviewed by Fox.)
No more newspapers, no magazines either.
A lot less junk mail as well, funny that, eh.
Since I got my iPhone in august ( the best 200 dollars I ever spent er except for that hooker in vancouver fifteen years ago...) I have become convinced that it is now likely that newspapers will indeed go the way of the buggy whip. When I do byhappenstance read something in one I find myself wanting to go to their webpage and read further or comment pro or con on it.
It also seems likely that television as it is currently formatted with news programming embedded in it will largely lose the news much as theaters lost their news of the world shorts once television sets became common.
Ps- the final delivery device will be something between an iPhone and a kibble perhaps an iPhone sized thing that slides or folds out into something closer I size to a kibble.
'"Stony Brook proposes to hire 50 laid-off journalists to teach "news literacy"'
http://www.mediagiraffe.org/stonybrook
In other news, 50 laid-off buggy whip makers hired to teach "transport literacy"
From http://www.mediagiraffe.org/stonybrook
> Stony Brook University unveiled on Friday a proposal to hire 50 laid-off journalists to undergo training this summer and join dozens of U.S. university campuses in the fall to teach "news literacy" to non-journalism majors.
College Students need classes on how to read a newspaper?
> Sanford J. Ungar, president of Coucher College says the need is how to teach students to be critical thinkers with a skeptical approach to the news. "This is a healthy coming together of the worlds of journalism and higher education that has been needed for some time."
Journalists teaching critical thinking?
Now THATS funny, I don't care who you are!
I was in the grocery store the other day and the Red Star was trying to sell discounted subscriptions. When I told the fellow that I wouldn't have a subscription if it was free he at least had the courage to ask why. I told him that I didn't want to be exposed to the left wing liberal bias. He just shrugged as if he had heard that many times before. We need to keep telling them and voting with our wallets.
I have been a subscriber to the National Post SInce day 1 and a newspaper fan since I started delivering the Globe and Mail 30 odd years ago.
I think a huge part of the problem with the "dead tree media" is journalism schools. Not many of the old timers had more than a high school education. Of course until the 70's and 80's hardly anyone had more than a high school education and the world worked quite well. The only reason I still read the National Post is that it is a convenient format to carry to my coffee and lunch breaks at work.
The reason for the demise of newspapers is similar to that of why the CBC is floundering: poor dears.
Hubris. If both media had listened to the voices of many of us who have been telling them for over 30 years that they were going off the rails, always veering leftward, they might have more than just a few subscribers/viewers left.
The arrogant, pig-headed double standard of our media "pundits" is one of the main reasons, if not THE main reason, why so many of us have said NO THANKS to our print media and to the CBC. They've never been listening and, thumbing their noses at us, have continued to churn out their lib-left pap favouring their chums and their political bias.
For the most part, I'm-Peter-Mansbridge-and-You're-not and his ilk have brought about the downward slide of their industry through blind arrogance.
Cry me a river.
If we get rid of the CBC, how will we find our next Governor General?
I was let go from my photography/graphic-artist position at a BC paper last Tuesday.
After 17 years, me and other people are out the door.
I can only speak for myself, but I feel a depressingly, heavy weight removed from my soul.
Looking forward.
Good luck, Rednik. At least you know where you stand and that you have to move onto something with, perhaps, more integrity.
It's very sad that so many print media employees have lost/will be losing their jobs, in large part because too many editors haven't been tuned in to where "the average Canadian" is and have kept trying to social engineer us to their leftist viewpoint and agenda.
Increasing numbers of us are refusing to pay for being bamboozled.
http://www.lfpress.com/perl-bin/publish.cgi?x=blogs&s=blogs&s_blog_id=15&search=blogs
Putting this here, not sure where else to put it. Give Berton a piece of your mind.
AUL BERTON: We're getting it from both sides (as usual) for a story we published Wednesday.
The story was by Randy Richmond and headlined, "Controversial right-wing blogger invited to speak at London event," with the subhead, "HUMAN RIGHTS: Some members of the city's Jewish community have brought in speakers critical of anti-hate laws."
Some say we shouldn't be giving people like Kathy Shaidle any publicity. Others say the story was a smear job.
We quoted Warren Kinsella, author of Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, as saying,"Any group that associates with or defends her is diminished by her."
I wasn't here last week, but the suggestion for the story came from a reader, who rightly (I think) decided this was something Londoners should know about -- i.e., that this kind of person was invited to speak within our midst.
She (and others) will be speaking about the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Canada's anti-hate laws, and freedom of expression.
It's a favourite topic in the blogosphere (as you know), and a useful debate for the community.
The question today is whether the story was part of a "smear campaign," as some have suggested, or whether we should have done it at all, as others have charged.
As we've managed to annoy both groups, I can only assume (again) that we're doing our jobs well, that it was not a smear job, and that it was warranted. (And the fact Mark Steyn has apparently decided to blog about Randy Richmond can only be good for lfpress.com. I'd link to it but I'm sure most of you are well aware of where to find him.)
For our part, it would be unthinkable for us not to do the story just because we might find Shaidle's views unpleasant (to say the least). The more people who know about events like this, whether to support it or take steps to fight it, the better. If you don't believe that, you don't believe in democracy.
To do anything but tell readers what is going on in this region, good or bad, is not responsible from a journalistic standpoint, from a business standpoint, never mind our duty to society.
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Let him know how you feel about the smear job done on Kathy Shaidle by Kinsella and Warmen's proxy, Randy Richmond.
"If you tell people to f*ck off enough times, they eventually will..."
And, then... there's me! Tee-hee!
Nice to see that the same old partisan rhetoric still reigns, here, at SDA. After all, you people wouldn't have any reason to exist, if you didn't have some imaginary political foe to rail against.
The 'us-against-them' stragety of the elitists sure works well among the sheeple, doesn't it?
Oh well... after a tough day on the paint rack or the forklift, a little partisan feuding works out the kinks pretty well, eh wot?
See ya! Watch out for them Moozelums, now!
Thanks for the kind words batb.
Over the years I did "convert" a few reporters to use logic, instead of rehashing the talking points of the left.
I did fight the good fight.