Mark Steyn, perhaps the finest obit writer of his time, notices an obit for a family of New England newspapers that have recently taken holiday to that great trash can beyond. Speaking as a newspaper writer, one fairly concerned with the current state of the industry; yet one contrite in knowing the limitations and actions that led to this point; I’m quite aware of the “death of democracy” handwringing that comes and goes with each new bankruptcy. So is Steyn, who is beginning to feel nauseous from it all.
What other industry conflates itself with the very legitimacy of the state? If you’re insisting on your indispensability even as millions dispense with you, you’re the one with the problem.
It is part of the problem. Small town newspapers will be hard to replace in the community. No one to watch the powers that be or the powers that aren’t. But those papers find themselves in that predicament due to management and content issues caused by the companies that own them. It’s easy to make money in a monopoly, once that disappeared, all those geniuses were left gazing into a future with no print and, well, no future. Those towns will suffer in the meantime until someone finds a model on that works and is profitable. Until then, citizen journalism, here we come. It’s a fate papers wrote themselves years ago.
Steyn believes his target editorial, found here, was appropriate in more ways than one.
To be both pompous and inarticulate is a fitting tribute to American newspapering in its death throes.
Print
Digg
StumbleUpon
del.icio.us
Facebook
Yahoo! Buzz
Twitter
Google Bookmarks
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
MSN Reporter
MySpace
Orkut
Ping.fm
Reddit
RSS
Slashdot
Technorati
Tumblr
Webnews.de
“Pride goeth before destruction,and a haughty spirit before a fall…Proverbs 16:18
I for one am delighted to see fish wrappers like the LA Slime,the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation,the Boston Glob,and the Seattle Slime-Unitelligentcer fall under the bus….hopefully our local North Korean rag,the Memphis Commercial Appeal,will quickly follow.
They seem intent on using the same type coffin nails to doom themselves as did “Air America!”
What’s that rag in Vegas,Fritz?
The Las Vegas Sun. It is wholly owned by the Las Vegas Review Journal, which is relatively conservative. Problem being The Sun can pretty much do what they want. When it went under some years past, it was bought by the RJ with the stipulation that The Sun would have a daily section of their own, including, sadly, an op-ed section. So The Sun still gets to spew their bile daily for the libs in the area that like that crap.
As far as weekly rags, we’ve got the Phoenix New Times out here. Just to give you some idea of where their political stance lies, they also run the L.A. Weekly and S.F. Weekly, and they bought the Village Voice a few years ago. Most of their cover art in recent months has depicted the Border Patrol and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office as weapon-wielding thugs (and one actually crossed the forbidden line into implying that our sheriff is a Nazi).
Man, that’s a great quote!
But you know, I don’t know anyone under sixty who still gets their news from a newspaper.
I wouldn’t wipe my ass with the newsprint we get in Memphis…
The one I read is the Washington Times and the WSJ. The rest can go to hell. We would not be in the utter dismal predicament we are in if these bastards did their jobs. But instead they all took turns giving the left reach arounds. Now they are taking it in the shorts and they still don’t get it.
I find myself almost always out of the loop here in the greater LA area. We have a newspaper, but no TV coverage since LA dominates and I don’t have time to read the newspaper. I pick up the occasional one at work, but every time I’ve taken the paper I usually run over it as I back up out of the driveway — and ours is a pretty decent paper overall.