The Biggest Threat To Newspapers is Newspapers

[Joanne98]

Journalistic solipsism requires that outside phenomena be treated with clinical detachment but those within the industry be screamed with lights and sirens. For instance, enormous nationwide job losses are dispassionately reported but high double digit layoffs in a newsroom are greeted with bold, caps, updates and overheated rhetoric. It also explains the myopia over what troubles the industry. We are in a recession, so it seems obvious that newspapers would be in the doldrums too. Yet the internet is the focus of their ire. Why? Nothing is on the scene now that wasn't around five years ago. If the economy tanks then looking at your online operations should be part of weathering the storm, but why make it the primary focus?

In typically self-centered fashion news organizations only focused on the web's "information wants to be free" ethos and expanded competition now that they are feeling its effects. It is nothing that travel agents, computer programmers and real estate agents have not already experienced. But newspapers observed changes in those industries without understanding their eventual impact on them. In fact, for all the distaste they have for bloggers, the latter have spent more time pondering it. Some, like Allison Hantschel (aka Athenae of First Draft) have a foot in both worlds. She has been posting over and over again for months about how newspapers' wounds are largely self inflicted; that, for example, they consider a 16.7 percent profit margin cause for layoffs. (Ask someone in the airline or retail industries if they could make do with that.) As she points out:

If there was no Internet, if Craigslist disappeared tomorrow, if nobody ever blogged again, the greed, shortsightedness and selfishness that looks at a 40 percent profit margin and cries poverty - as was the case at some Gannett newspaper properties this year - would still smother newspaper journalism eventually.

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/5298

[Demeter]

1. Amen! I Could Write a Book on How to Destroy Yourself for Newspaper Owners

Because that's what it's been--suicide by cupidity and stupidity.

The papers have debased their product, treated their customers with contempt, abused their labor, union or not, salaried or contract, and never, ever competed to do the best they could, since Ronald Reagan proclaimed Morning in America. It is shameful that after the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, the entire industry collapsed into Monica 24/7, made-up stories about made-up scandals, and serving as official stenographers for the GOP. They threw away their laurels and rolled in the mud of sensationalism, sex, drugs, rock and roll, white girls gone missing and other trash. Hard news was just too hard!

The papers sold out to the highest bidder. Now those new owners are shutting the papers down entirely, since their declining market share is insufficient to lead the sheeple.

[Jade Fox]

2. From the article: "The Iraq war utterly destroyed the credibility".......

of not just the newspaper industry but news outlets in general."

That's right. People turned to the internet to find the truth.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended for the professional journalism of Knight-Ridder,

I hope they continue to do good work.:thumbsup:

"The biggest problem is with the hard news though. Frank Rich issued this caution on Sunday: "without their enterprise, to take a few representative recent examples, we would not have known about the wretched conditions for our veterans at Walter Reed, the government’s warrantless wiretapping, the scams at Enron or steroids in baseball. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end we will get what we pay for." But as Walter Pincus points out many investigative pieces are done with an eye on winning journalism awards, not serving the public interest. Even worse than indulgent reporting is that which is flatly wrong. The Iraq war utterly destroyed the credibility of not just the newspaper industry but news outlets in general. Every organization not named Knight-Ridder was more interested in working sources for access than independent reporting. The Bush administration was able to create links in the public's mind between Iraq and 9/11 only - ONLY - because outlets refused to challenge the self-interested spin of government officials."

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.

[bemildred]

4. I will pay for useful information.

I will not pay for advertising, propaganda, and useless information. That, unfortunately, is what newspapers offer these days.