I'm wondering if there is any correlation between newspaper sales plummeting and literacy rates.

There have been many studies that have found the public system is producing semi-literate graduates.

Maybe it's just easier to watch TV or use the net to get news video....less yucky reading.

I wonder if there is a corresponding drop in paperback/book sales?

I'd be surprised if there isn't because we haven't produced any Steinbecks or Faulkners for 2 generations now.

....a 14.8% collapse in revenues from the three principal classified advertising categories – auto, real estate and recruitment.

Craigslist, Monster(and the other job bulletin boards), and, changes coming because of challenges to the real estate Multi-List monopoly are going to further eat into ad revenues. Face it, the classifieds can be duplicated elsewhere.

We were forced to pay for ten consecutive days of ads in our local paper when we sold a car last year when we only wanted weekend day ads last year. What a rip off. I have no sympathy.

My brother has been working in the production end of the Calgary Herald for over twenty years. When Calgary’s population was about 600,000 they produced about 180,000 copies on a Friday. Last week with a city population of over a million they produced less than 110,000 copies.
The Herald now makes its money by being a fancy wrapper for Future Shop flyers.

I wonder if newspaper circulation will suddenly go the way of other “old technology”. First slowly decreasing sales, then significantly measurable declines, then down to next to nothing in less than three years. From buggy whips to Betamax, it’s happened before.

"After six straight quarters of accelerating declines, newspaper print advertising sales in the first half of this year fell to the lowest level in a decade..."

This during an EXCELLENT economy, let us not forget to emphasize.

As it says in the article, magazines still have great advertising numbers. Its newspapers that are dying.

At one time I took the Calgary Herald, The Calgary Sun and the National Post. I dropped the Herald first because it was a ton of wasted paper each day and the left wing bias was so strong it was making my stomach ache. The National Post was a very good paper when Black owned it then started to turn red, they dropped Steyn and many other good columnists and when Christie Blatchford went so did I.I know they are trying to get a more balanced veiw now but I have found all I need on the net. The Sun was a nice quick read in the early morning but they couldn't help but keep changing the format til now they truly are a rag. Why would i bother with the MSm when I can get all the news I want from the net?

Of course there are a number of problems that the news manufacturers have to deal with.
*I do have to say this, have not seen a young person reading newspaper in a long time, maybe not where I am or go.
*What they print as an opinion is designed to get you notice the rant, most of it is just silly musings of people who happen to have word processor and work for a news manufacturer.
*Even reporting news, they can’t stay away from letting the reader how wise they are and how dumb the reader is, they have to let the reader know that this and that politician is no good because they don’t like he/she, or the other way around or an natural event is good or bad according to a political opinion, rather than ‘shit happens’, pardon the expression.
*A lot of stuff related to health, do this or you will die, don’t do this or you will die. Even being close to seniorship, don’t care about the stuff, waste of paper space.
*Sport pages have been taken over by smart ass people who think they are clever and funny, nothing wrong with that if that’s your sand castle, rather than reporting a sporting event.
* I suspect that most of the population just turn on the tube and forget about the print, you see that requires certain amount of thought, comprehension and formation of context. On the tube it is already chewed, digested and regurgitated, all you have to do just listen and move on, in comparison it can be said that it is akin to pornography, without the sex.
*Or maybe none of the above.

That dino is dead jim and the liberal left-wing news media is dying a slow but deserved death for too many lies

CBCpravda ran an ad in the Herald this morning.

your tax dollars at rest.

W.L. Mac, in the interests of full disclosure I must admit to having never read anything by Steinbeck or Faulkner. ~:D

However I do have about half a ton of science fiction paperbacks here at Chez Phantom. I know its got to be at least that because I've moved the friggin' things about 15 times in the last 20 years, and the pile keeps growing. Books are both blessing and curse.

Newspapers I find marginally useful for painting, they slip under doors nicely when a drop sheet won't fit. Beyond that, I use that newfangled interweb thingy.

Phantom,

Great points, I prefer science fiction too. The fiction in the news papers is quite boring misleading and dangerous to freedom.

"W.L. Mac, in the interests of full disclosure I must admit to having never read anything by Steinbeck or Faulkner."

Well they aren't to every one's taste...however they were held to be the most influential authors of their generation and were deemed by the public school boards to exemplified western culture's literary creativity.

My point was that I probably would not have read them either but they were mandatory reading when I went to school...along with other classic authors.

I am glad I read them and this encouraged me to read more.

By contrast, I see what my daughter had in her high school English class and I was worried she would be fully literate let alone conscious of western culture's literary heritage....it does not surprise me there are no great novelists/writers in the past 2 generations..it also explains the low brow scribbling we get in the media.

The last even semi literate writers came from the 60s which produced HS Thompson and Tom Wolfe, since that time the publishing biz has spewed out mostly self help manuals for losers, psycho babble opus, political gibberish or cheap pulp fiction....gone are the works of literature,,,we gravitate to writing "screenplays" and seeing the movie industry as the ascending cultural art form.

Fast food, pop politics, instant cultural gratification and a nation of shallow thinkers.

The print media show it.

Have to agree - even a lot of the authors that make it to the best seller list are almost unreadable, in my opinion. Who puts them on the best seller list, I wonder sometimes?

My daughter-in-law is a graduate of a university school of journalism and presently holds a responsible position of editor of a trade publication. I recently made reference to Thomas Hardy's works. She had never heard of him.

My wife used to chastise me for not showing enough interest in reading books my the great authors. I pointed out to her that I do a lot of reading, but I prefer non-fiction, science, and si-fi. I never did spend a lot of time reading. I don't think that sitting for hours reading about other people's lives necessarily makes you a whole person.

Life has many facets and interests. Reading specific classics is just one of them. I think it is more important at this time in history that people learn to employ critical thinking to apply to whatever they read, hear or see. That is where our educational system is failing.

We live in a society and in a time where there is so much to avaiable to do and so little time. We have to do what we like to do and not necessarily what others think we should. If there are not great authors appearing anymore, then perhaps that time has passed and we are producing other great minds that are doing other things in other disciplines such as medicine and physics.

Where authors from the past could take you to other places in your mind, our current great minds are making it possible to actually go there ... you know ...places like Mars and beyond. These brilliant people have given us technology that only 20 years ago was science fiction.

The fact that there are not new great book writers makes those earlier master even more important. That's not a bad thing either. We have not produced any Rembrandts or Leonardos lately either. We did produce Bill Gates and Stephen Jobs to name two who have done some pretty profound stuff.

"Newspaper reader" is an insult, denoting a reader of superficial writing. Let us hope those who are abandoning or not taking up newspapers are turning to something worthwhile instead, and not merely becoming "TV watchers" in place of "newspaper readers."

Great works of literature endure because they have universal moral messages that transcends time and fashion. The great authors weren't little narcissists dealing out their half-baked victim or lame worldview stories. So much of the shallow garbage that passes for fiction now is crafted to get a book deal with Hollywood. Oprah has had a hand in dumbing down the quality too. Books get hyped and promoted as a product. Dumbing down is inevitable.

The movies have been degraded too, a walk through Blockbusters says it all. After you watch today's, most of them leave your mind in 15 minutes. You were entertained without much effort or art.

I think people are increasingly unsatisfied and tired of all of the sludge that confronts us from the seamlessly combined, more irrelevant, entertainment/news/publishing conglomerates.

The garbage on school reading lists is pathetic and colleges don't have great book courses. Instead, it's agenda literature at the hands of some angry politicized lackey.

I'm betting that as the internet evolves more people will use it to filter out the garbage and find havens for quality in things that interest them. Here's a site I found as an example:

http://www.2blowhards.com/

Suec, like Margaret Atwood? Eeeeewwwww....

I'd comment further, but I have a flathead dangling from a chain in my driveway. :)

Hey, any of you guys know if its safe to put a Ford flathead on a standard engine stand? I'm looking at it here, I have my doubts...

The major media are in decline because of their 'dumbing-down' policy ---- gone tabloid n' all.

They were always pathetic ---- just shows more now in the Internet era.

The "Intellectuals" (misnomer) are loosing the effectiveness of the media tool --- had been useful for fear-mongering, fostering gov't dependency, hyping regulations, welcoming new taxes and demanding subsidies for the unneccessary.

The 'we-know-crowd' has moveded on to the public school system, universities, the UN and NGOs.

...i'm a lumberjack and i'm ok...

*blink*

Oh sorry!

Was auditioning for a newspaper job.

Hey Phantom (sorry folks who will call this part off-topic but I'll get to the thread in a second), I have 6-71 Blown SBC on 1000lb. engine stand. No problem (but I'm a coward so I cheated and made a little support for the front out of 2x2's)

As far as book reading goes, if you stick to people who know how to use the (in my case) English language, then the worst you can do is expand your vocabulary. It really doesn't matter what type of book you read - just read one by someone who spins an intelligent tale (fiction or non) and exercises the mind. If you have to keep a dictionary handy to help you understand the odd word, so be it. A little extra knowledge or the ability to convey that knowledge efficiently is a good thing!

JIMMY HOFFAS illitarate son is now saying that the GOP is dead yeah thats comming from the leader of one of the nations most corupt labor unions with its hands in the mafia and where is his papa they still have not found him. Maybe he is in the fender of his new car or the foundation of their HQs

Literature isn't read and journalism isn't readable.

I recently moved and have been flooded with calls from seemingly every newspaper within a couple of hundred miles trying to get me to subscribe. The smaller papers are willing to give it to you for free for 2 weeks, while the larger papers are only offering deep discounts. When I turn them down, every one, the salesman inevitably asks, "Then where are you getting your news from?"