Tag: Printed News

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”

Truth In Journalism

Easter is over……the weekend is over…..back to the mundane stuff that just pisses everybody off…….

For years I have been bitching about the media and how they seldom give the whole story and sometimes even make crap up to drive the news for the next week or so…..I have also bitched about how they allow politicians to give all their talking points and seldom make them answer any true questions on real issues….All cable news seems to be “manufactured news” put out to drive the weekly news cycle……something should be done!

But what could we possibly do to correct this situation?

First of all there is a problem…….The First Amendment does not permit government interference with “the freedom of the press.” What that freedom is, is among the great undefined terms in American jurisprudence. But its enduring strength is that few are willing to take the first step down the slippery slope of determining who is a journalist and who is not, and what constitutes good journalism and what does not. It’s all protected, for good or ill.

And there is the rub…….lying in journalism is kinda protected under the auspices of the Constitution….cool huh?

Beyond the Constitution thing……There is no licensing authority for journalists as there is for lawyers or doctors, but the Society of Professional Journalists puts forth a set of ethical standards, though it has no means to enforce them. First among them is: “Deliberate distortion is never permissible.” It should go without saying, but there it is.

The rest of the standards touch on basic tenets of honesty (don’t fabricate, mislead, deceive, silence opposing views), humanity (show compassion, respect and sensitivity to subjects who have undergone trying or traumatic events), and integrity (avoid conflicts of interest and disclose those that cannot be avoided).

But with the advent of the cable 24 hour news cycle….the professionalism has been lost and replaced with CRAP!  With conspiracies…..with innuendo…..and finally with out right lies……

It isn’t always that politicians deliver a pack of lies when they appear in public, though they may. And it isn’t that there is a lack of information available. Rather we are fed a starvation diet of news that is easily digested but not very nourishing.

What seems to attract the media and delight legions of supporters is a series of flimsy headline articles that play to the sympathies but not the intellects of voters. When it is said that the country should be run more like a business or, in some cases, like what families decide about fiscal matters sitting around the kitchen table we are required to make false choices. Neither the typical business nor the family home are examples that translate readily to national policy, but in the realm of instantaneous news delivery these images are often used to suggest it is possible to return to simpler times and simpler solutions in a world that grows ever more complex.  (from an article written by Ann Davidow for BuzzFlash)

Somewhere, someplace….we can only hope that someday journalist will return to giving the people the facts and nothing but the facts (thanx Joe Friday…good quote) and leave the unfounded editorializing for the editors….one day we will have truth in journalism!

The Media And The Bailout

For years the financial media has been reporting the ups and the downs of the markets, but all in all they kept harping on just how healthy the economy was no matter the fluctuations in the markets. Yes, there were wild swings, but it always seemed to come back to a good bull market. Now the question is, why did not these reporters with their massive contacts within the financial sector not report on the approaching storm? Surely, the reporters have had some minor economic training, at least we would hope so, especially if they were advising people where to put their money and what to watch out for.

None of the media outlets, print and cable, reported on the extent of the crisis that was coming. Was it a huge secret? Please! It is Wall Street, secrets are a dime a dozen and the whole system is a piece of Swiss cheese.

I am old enough to remember the Chrysler bailout in 1979.

A special place of shame must be given to the national media and political elite. In 1979 they raised a hue and cry about the need for Chrysler’s workers to “sacrifice” and extolled the virtues of the free market. Today they offer few such sermons to the financial elite responsible for the current crisis. But they continue to insist, as they did in the days of the Chrysler bailout, that the working class must pay the bills for the failures of American capitalism. The working class is being asked to fork over trillions of dollars—the sum would have been unfathomable in 1979—to bail out a criminal financial aristocracy that has bankrupted American capitalism, and very nearly the state itself.

One possible reason for the lack of coverage of the developing storm was the fact that most of the news organizations are now part of a huge corporate structure, it was not so much so in 1979. So why would an organization that was knee deep in the financial wheeling and dealing actually report the failure of their parent corporation?