Los Angeles Times cutting 74 positions

If there was a la carte cable pricing, all the news networks would go under in about a week.

 

If people separately paid for cable channels, 75% would be out of business. Who is paying for a constant loop of Impractical Jokers?

 

It's how PBS and NPR function, and they do some of the best journalism around.

 

Expecting to replicate the NPR/PBS model on a much grander scale is folly.

Very little of their funding comes from CPB, but anytime they report something critical of the GOO, calls for defunding begin. Imagine that on a larger scale?

I’ve always thought Internet providers should contribute in some way. An idea I had was that there is a small tax (couple bucks a month) on every user to support media, somewhat in a BBC license fee model. How that gets distributed is the question.

Edit: Meant to type GOP, but I like it better that way.

 

TBH, those reruns alone have more value than all but maybe two RSNs.

 

Also broken, but maybe not as badly, is the sense of community that might prompt residents to keep paying for local news.

If you know your neighbors and value your community as more than a place to fire up social media when you’re not working during those 1.5 years before moving for another job, it’s a lot more likely you will care about local news.

 

I can't reply for some reason.

Australia has some law that requires social media to pay media companies.
Australia pressured Google and Facebook to pay for journalism. Is America next?.

 

In theory, there's a way forward for local newspaper pay models that involves constantly examining - twice a year, four times a year - what readers will subscribe for, swarming to that, adjusting accordingly and having a reporter staff that functions that way.

In reality, it's hard to build that model. Writers are creatures of habit who like burrowing into their beats and, over time - because this is almost always what happens - getting institutionalized to the beat, worrying more about the institution you cover - and what it thinks - than the readers. Journalists - especially on the news side - tend to have a tenuous relationship with readers. Disdain if we're honest. And so responsiveness to their tastes tends to be slow and incomplete, to the point where - and we have analytics to prove it - there are virtually no readers, which might be how some local news journalists want it.

I think the non-profit model appeals to news-side journalists because they'd generally like to be free of the public; bankrolled by a few invested rich people, making a living wage, working on stories of personal interest, once a week preferably. I know people who do it. They're pretty happy.

 

C-Span would be first

 

I don’t think there’s any way to build — or in most cases, rebuild — local news and sports coverage without engaging with and personally interacting with the people in the community you cover. Desimating information from high atop an inaccessible, non-profit mountain would be like scattering seeds on rocky or weed covered ground. It won’t take root.

I returned to the reporting side a couple years ago and while there are definitely some bumpy and frustrating moments when you interact with readers and residents in the community you cover, ideally those are the people you work for. And amazingly, some of them (almost all of them older folks) still appreciate it.

 

I haven't seen a newspaper in a movie or show, or even one used as a cheap prop on talking-head political shows like Morning Joe.

I spent about five weeks in a rest home being near my mother and I didn't see one newspaper around there either.

Remember when the idiot-clown Kornheiser said years and years ago that the print business was not dying, but already dead, and everyone here took umbrage? Pepperidge Farms does.

 

My wife works in a rehabilitation facility populated mostly by older patients, and I’m not sure which is more depressing: the lack of newspapers being read or the amount of TVs with FOX News constantly blaring in the background.