By SN
Monday March 16, 2009
Washington Post – Kathleen Parker – Sunday, March 15, 2009:
The biggest challenge facing America’s struggling newspaper industry may not be the high cost of newsprint or lost ad revenue, but ignorance stoked by drive-by punditry.
Yes, Dittoheads, you heard it right.
Drive-by pundits, to spin off of Rush Limbaugh’s “drive-by media,” are non-journalists who have been demonizing the media for the past 20 years or so and who blame the current news crisis on bias.
Unfortunately, the chorus of media bashing from certain quarters has succeeded in convincing many Americans that they don’t need newspapers. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press recently found that fewer than half of Americans — 43 percent — say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot.” Only 33 percent say they would miss the local paper if it were no longer available.
Constant criticism of the “elite media” is comical to most reporters, whose paychecks wouldn’t cover Limbaugh’s annual dry cleaning bill. The truly elite media are the people most Americans have never heard of — the daily-grind reporters who turn out for city council and school board meetings. Or the investigative teams who chase leads for months to expose abuse or corruption.
Rush Limpo is an idiot. A rich idiot, but an idiot, nonetheless.
Bobbo,
A serious question. I like you, BUT, I just can’t see why you insist on having a battle of wits with such an unarmed foe. Don’t you realize how bad you are making poor ‘tempt feel. Man, this is just BAD.
Leave him alone and pick on someone your own intellect for a change.
😉
OK, it’s official. I’m really sick and tired of stories about Rush Limbaugh.
New Orleans
1. We used to have two daily papers now we have one.
2. Times Picayune has dropped one of the two pages of syndicated comic strips.
3. Times Picayune dropped one of the two op-ed pages on Mondays.
Most of this due to declining advertising revenue.
IMHO it has some of the best in-depth investigative reporting in the country.
I would hate to see it go.
Newspapers have been declining for decades.
100 years ago every city had at least two paper. One was always Republican and the other Democrat. Other papers would support one or the other as well as some special interest such as Tammany Hall. Most people would read two three, or four papers every day.
To gain readers, publishers would try to outdo each other. The remnants of that practice are still seen in supermarket tabloids.
Slowly, the smaller papers would die off from a lack of readers and usually a lack of advertisers. Today, only New York has more than two papers and Chicago has two. All other cities only have one paper and maybe a few specialized rags.
As first radio and later television continued to make inroads, more and more people got their news from broadcasts. And the newspaper business continued to decline. It was mostly the poor quality papers that died, the extremist and special interest papers. As broadcast news continued to grab even more people, papers started depending upon advertising revenue over subscription sales.
Now we have 57 channels with nothing on. The news is packaged into soundbites with more discussion and arguing over the content. Broadcast News departments are too squeezed by the competition to hire in depth reporters. It is cheaper to hire half a dozen talking heads to bloviate over what some Senator said than one investigative reporter to dig out a story.
And then the internet came along. Now we have broadcast and cable news suffering and newspapers dieing. And no one is doing any reporting any more.
#7, guilty,
I do not fear Boss Limpdick. Call it disdain.
I have no time for people that like to invent crap in order to increase their ditto head audience.
#33–Fusion==you came close. I’ll just remind you of what you know, and almost did post: its not really a battle of wits now is it?
Always an invitation to do better. Some mules need a bat to the head before they are ready for learning.
Mostly, I disagree beneath my weight class so that I’ll be ready for the next time you and I find ourselves on opposite sides of a question. A mind rape so to speak.
If Rush Limbaugh is the cause for the demise of the blindly liberal newspapers… all I can say is: bravo sir, well done.
Contempt said “Good point. Now the pressing question is – are these TV news channels really news channels with lots of commercials or commercial channels filled with bits of news?”
I’m leaning towards commercial channels filled with bits of news.
Frankly, I get better information here, than from TV news these days, and I get to read some really good piss’n matches between you guys…
I stopped buying newspapers after noticing that many Sunday editions come out on Saturday afternoons. Why pay $2 for Friday news, Saturday morning at best, on Sunday.
My local paper is so pathetic. Eighty percent is reprints from other papers. I witnessed a horrible car accident in front of the local mall and gave up looking for any reporting on it after 4 days of nothing.
#7 for the win
The print media are murdering the forests. They should have stopped a long time ago according to their own dogma.
#30 Little Spinner Bobbo
>>I said the media was worthless for not criticizing congress and you call me hitler for not realizing that the problem was congress.
You said media did not excoriate Congress for not impeaching Bush. A big difference since you are really complaining that the media is not performing as your personal hit squad.
As always you twist meanings to meet your needs and this time you have stooped to rewriting yourself. Pathetic.
Rush’s listeners aren’t the type who read newspapers anyway. Most of them don’t have the brains to figure out for themselves whether an AP article is biased or not. They need someone to tell them, and Rush filled the void.
But Rush has perpetuated the myth that the media hates conservatives and pushes an agenda. If you really believe that, spend a day in the newsroom of any paper or mid-market TV news office. You’ll be cured of that crap right away.
maybe if they actually reported real news
and not some crap that sat in the Spin-O-Tron
for a week after being pulled through the assholes of a dozen ceo’s and coated with political lemming juice, -they might have
had a chance.
only reason they’re running this blame the rush story is to keep people from seeing the latest poles that are well..not that favorable for the messiah..
talk about desperate.
-s
-s
#43 Hmyers
Ditto
If Rush keeps smoking those nasty, cancer causing and air polluting cigars, we won’t be bothered by him much longer. He’s Darwining himself.
Rush killed the newspapers.
“Mission Accomplished!!”
# 49 Floyd said, “He’s Darwining himself.”
Yep, just George Burns did.
#34- QB -“OK, it’s official. I’m really sick and tired of stories about Rush Limbaugh.”
FTW!
I don’t see this article as blaming Rush at all. This is just another reporter bitter about the end of the printed newspaper. They seem to be focusing so much on why no one buys a paper, instead of trying to find the new medium.
The hunger for news is still strong and some would say even stronger than ever. You just have to use a different plate to serve it on.
#41, Alphie,
When the LA Times withheld the video of Obama and Ayers at a Islamic get together …
I agree. Print newspapers should publish all the videos their still photographers take.
Although in fairness, shouldn’t FOX SPEWS also have shown, or at least reported, that video of Dick Cheney and George Bush fucking each other in the ass? Or what about the one of Dick Cheney in the WH basement, giggling with glee as they water boarded some prisoners just for him? We know they have the tapes, why can’t they show them?
But one thing I will acknowledge about the LATimes, and almost all major newspapers, they will admit when they made a mistake. Rags like the right wing nut NY Post, don’t know what responsibility and honesty are.
John Dvorak’s latest article is about the death of newspapers, and so is Bill Simmons’ latest podcast. Go to espn.com, and check out part 2 of his interview with Chuck Klosterman. Simmons blames the unions for the death of newspapers.
#60 What to hear the latest? China, in order to buy into the global warming hoax treaty, wants foreign importers to pay for all its “carbon offsets”. Our spineless Admin will probably go along. LOL
# 62 Alfred1 said, “Hopefully the Supreme court will hold him back…”
I don’t know. When the SC nailed FDR for trying unconstitutional crap & treasonous behavior, he just packed the Court until he was able to screw the country.
#56, Debbie Schlussel isn’t credible at all.
She regularly reports about how she went undercover at a mosque, and somehow everytime she’s there, a hatefest breaks out, whether it’s Lewis Farrakhan, Keith Ellison, or Obama, or anyone else.
The tape in question is from 2003 and Obama supposedly praises Rashid Khalidi. The LA Times won’t release the tape on the grounds that they had an agreement with their source not to do so.
I wonder how many other sources can get that type of agreement?
# 65 GetSmart said, “Hint: The LARGE part of the curve, where the I.Q. readings are represented by two digit numbers.”
Hey, at least it’s one digit higher than O’Mama fans…
I won’t be sorry to see the newspapers fold. The sooner the better.
Letting newspapers fold moves us faster towards a future with the newest technology. Why are you against this? There is clearly no harm in seeing newspapers fold. Think of all the jobs to come from next paradigm in news!