Tag: Newspaper

Print Only

We all know that the daily newspaper is going the way of the dodo….

My local daily has shutdown and the building is up for sale….it is printed in limited edition of 4 to 6 pages and done so about 100 mikes away and shipped in…..of course there is the on-line edition.

I am an old fart and enjoy holding a book and enjoying the smell and the experience…..the same for a newspaper….there is some satisfying about the physical aspect of a newspaper.

That brings us to the new paper on the market….it is Ralph Nader’s baby…..The Capitol Hill Citizen….

Speaking of reading, the new pilot issue of Ralph Nader’s print only newspaper, Capitol Hill Citizen, is fresh off the press. This terrific 40-page issue features some familiar writers, including Carol Miller, Jefferson Morley, Russell Mokhiber, Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon and, of course, Ralph, himself. Here’s the backpage…

You can order a copy here.

If you enjoy the satisfaction of holding your reading material….then maybe check out this as a possible enjoyment that maybe missing in your reading life these.

Enjoy your Sunday…..Be well and be safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Getting The News Out

A Saturday and I would like to talk about local newspapers….they seem to be dying…..

That got to thinking about when I saw the local newspaper office that is close to my home…..

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Now it is for sale…the building that is……

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The Sun-Herald was our local paper it had won a Pulitzer (I believe) for its investigative journalism and now it is gone (not completely but mostly) it is small and printed in a city 90 miles away and shipped down to be delivered.

This is why I started thinking about local news…..and how the internet has helped them die a slow death……

Blame revenue siphoned by online competition, cost-cutting ownership, a death spiral in quality, sheer disinterest among readers or reasons peculiar to given locales for that development. While national outlets worry about a president who calls the press an enemy of the people, many Americans no longer have someone watching the city council for them, chronicling the soccer exploits of their children or reporting on the kindly neighbor who died of cancer.

Local journalism is dying in plain sight.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/10/town-by-town-local-journalism-is-dying-in-plain-sight.html

Can local newspapers ever make a comeback?

They were all broken not by national chains but by local newspapers — the Flint Journal, the Storm Lake Times, and the Charleston Gazette-Mail, respectively. Indeed, researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Notre Dame have found evidence that wasteful spending by local governments increases when there is no local newspaper to hold them accountable.

And that is not the only way in which local newspapers have had an impact.

A recent study by Duke University researchers found that local newspapers significantly outperformed local TV, radio, and online-only outlets in producing news stories that are original, local, or address a critical information need.

Can Local Newspapers Make a Comeback?

I think if they do make some sort of comeback it will be in the form of partisan crap….all balance will be gone….it would follow the way that broadcast news has been taken over by tribal corporations.

It is sad but my local newspaper will be gone and never to return in my lifetime.

What about your town or area….how are the newspapers doing?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Our Cracker Jack Media

I know I have railed on and on about the media and how it handles different stories….some of us think the media has a liberal bias and then there are others that think it is some sort of mind control by the government……belief what you will….but the facts seem to support that their main function is to protect those of us that are most worthy…..the corporations.  There is very little independent news anymore, it all has a bias.

Would you like an example of why I make such a claim?

Gladly.

This past weekend an airliner from Malaysia was on route to Beijing when it disappeared off radar and all contact was gone…..I am a news geek so I was looking at breaking news that might be worthy of a post on IST…..and I got the news of the missing plane….I immediately went to the different news channels fr more info…..every channel I visited had the same early report……”the plane is a Boeing 777 which has a sterling safety record….and then it would go on about the flight plan and people and such……the media made damn sure to inject the safety record into its early reports.

The media was giving Boeing some cover knowing that their will most likely be a run on lawsuits soon.  They want to blame terrorists or pilot error….it may well be the case but at the time NO one knew for sure …..but the 777 has a sterling safety record.

I have been suspicious of the media since corporations were allowed to own them…..I saw the news as a entertainment weapon not a informative weapon.

I agree with Nate silver….for those who are not political wonks and do not know who Silver is let me help…..Silver was the most accurate predicter of the 2010 election…not just prez but he chose almost all the races that were being run across the country….but now that you know Silver here is what he has to say about op-ed writers……

The graph consists of qualitative and quantitative evaluations of prospective candidates. “The bottom two quadrants belong to the dregs of American journalism: on the left, sportswriters who cherry-pick statistics without thinking through them, and on the right, op-ed columnists,” TIME revealed.

“That’s the crap quadrant,” Silver said. “Two-thirds of the op-ed columnists at America’s major newspapers are worthless.”

I would expand it to a lot of the on-air personalities as well…..looks like some saw this coming before it arrived….I believe it was Antonio Gramsci that said….”media will drive the hegemony of the wealthy”….sorry that is a paraphrase….his analysis was spot on and it is getting worse by the year….

The Daily Agitator

For a couple of years now I have been writing posts entitled Daily Agitator…these were post about things that just pissed me off in general…..but I have taken another step….I now have an on-line newspaper by that title…The Daily Agitator and I hope that my friends here will read it from time to time…..after a couple of days of tweaking…I think it is set……(he said with fingers crossed)…..

http://bit.ly/vZ4aRV
“Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.”  Susan B. Anthony

“Agitate! Agitate! Ought to be the motto of every reformer. Agitation is the opposite of stagnation – the one is life, the other death.”   Ernestine Rose

My early days on the “New Left”, that would be the 60’s and 70’s, I have been an agitator….I even use to go by the name of Maximus Agitatus……..to this day there are still a few that still call me Max…….so it was a natural thing for me to start my paper and call it “The Daily Agitator”…..I do so enjoy making people mad….when they are mad they look for details to refute whatever it is that I have said to piss them off…..when they do that….they learn….and that is what I wanted the entire time…….

Please stop by and read and if you like it then please tweet it to others…..Info Ink and I would appreciate the help….Thanx, my friends…….