End Of The Newspapers
The Media Death Spiral
"The circulation figures for the top 25 dailies in the US are out, and they're horrifying. The median decline is well into the teens; only the Wall Street Journal gained (very slightly).
I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren't there. At some point, industries enter a death spiral: too few consumers raises their average costs, meaning they eventually have to pass price increases onto their customers. That drives more customers away. Rinse and repeat . . .
For twenty years, newspapers have been trying to slow the process with increasingly desperate cost cutting, but almost all are at the end of that rope; they can't cut their newsroom or production staff any further and still put out a newspaper. There just aren't enough customers who are willing to pay for their product what it costs to produce it."
Electronic transmissions are driving them out of business, sure, but newspapers all across the country stopped being relevant and independent a long time ago. They sold out to the bottom line by being 75% ad circulars and syndicated everything else. News content was only to draw attention to the advertisements. People are also sick and tired of news media simply being the propaganda arm of the government, stenographers with amnesia just parroting what the government wants us to know. Timid newspapers, not wanting to offend any readers, relied on the safe environment of bland pack journalism fluffed out with totally irrelevent junk all designed to steer readers to the ads. No wonder they're collapsing.
"The circulation figures for the top 25 dailies in the US are out, and they're horrifying. The median decline is well into the teens; only the Wall Street Journal gained (very slightly).
I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren't there. At some point, industries enter a death spiral: too few consumers raises their average costs, meaning they eventually have to pass price increases onto their customers. That drives more customers away. Rinse and repeat . . .
For twenty years, newspapers have been trying to slow the process with increasingly desperate cost cutting, but almost all are at the end of that rope; they can't cut their newsroom or production staff any further and still put out a newspaper. There just aren't enough customers who are willing to pay for their product what it costs to produce it."
Electronic transmissions are driving them out of business, sure, but newspapers all across the country stopped being relevant and independent a long time ago. They sold out to the bottom line by being 75% ad circulars and syndicated everything else. News content was only to draw attention to the advertisements. People are also sick and tired of news media simply being the propaganda arm of the government, stenographers with amnesia just parroting what the government wants us to know. Timid newspapers, not wanting to offend any readers, relied on the safe environment of bland pack journalism fluffed out with totally irrelevent junk all designed to steer readers to the ads. No wonder they're collapsing.
posted by patootie at 6:42 AM
5 Comments:
well if that doesn't kill them off this certainly will:
http://irish4palestine.blogspot.com/2009/10/media-censorship-israels-latest-plan.html
'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers'
Henry VI
At this point Irish I think the jig is up, they can threaten all they want and they won't get anywhere fast. It's probably like the hundreth monkey syndrome where enough people have wised up to their antics, or possibly The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and most people are sick and tired of them.
If newspapers cave in, they'll get what's coming to them.
Canada is breathing a big sigh of relief with the long hoped for demise of The National Post. This is a newspaper that was devised with the sole purpose of propagandizing for Zionism. To think that it could pose as a "national newspaper" made most Canadians gag....but inspite of the abysmally low readership...the paper seemed to have bottomless pockets. Perhaps it was the end of the Madoff ponsy scheme, perhaps it was the death of Picower at the bottom of his pool last week. Who knows what was the final blow but the NP is dead! Dead, Dead, DEAD!
We HOPE....unless like a Zombie, it will rise from the dead with the secreted infusions of....you guessed it! Canadian Tax Dollars!
gc
What a sickening rag. I remember the "Iran makes jews wear badges" bullshit.
Any ideas about what might replace it all? I mean, I got to thinking, could some kind of cheap electronic gizmo that updates news for a nickel a day replace it, so long as it doesn't try to sell us the same corporate/government propaganda BS?
The IPOD, for example?
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