If newspapers fall in the forest...

Whenever this subject comes up, I'm reminded of the Batman movie (Batman Returns?) where the Riddler steals the intellect of anyone who watched TV. Our society has really become a grandiose short attention span theatre.

 

Which the design-based crew thinks it takes advantage of.

It's past time to blame anyone outside the newsroom for the failings of newspapers.

 

I gots the mental picture of a floral print moo-moo and pink plastic tightly wound curlers that reveal her slowly balding scalp and the grandkids calling your mother in law "mee-maw..."

 

The quality of TV work has improved?
What market are you in?
If somebody's not getting shot or having a festival, it's not news in my city. What actual reporting they try to do, the reporters are either too dim or overworked to understand the concepts involved. If only my wife would let met turn off that crap, I'd never watch.

 

Once upon a time there were cities served by six, seven, eight daily newspapers.

And this was in a time where there was NO competition (other than radio) for news.

Yet most of these papers eventually died/merged to give us what we have today, cities mostly served by one (and occasionally two) papers.

So . . . is "NY Times to reduce newshole" and "LA Times won't cover hockey on road" all that apocalyptic based on the things that already have happened in print journalism . . . before many of you were even born?

 

Replace handmade robes that she refers to as kimonos for floral print moo-moos. And no curlers. However, there are what appear to be scabs that my wife says are related to her skin condition on her arms and legs. They make her cooking just that much more interesting.

Dyepack may have a point about the blame. It's an external problem, but it's clear that the industry has failed dramatically in finding a solution.

 

Once you cut through the usual Wordhawk translation, this really means:

 

Humanity continues to breed an increasingly dumb product.
It's sort of evolution in reverse.
Because dumb people are more likely to reproduce more often than responsible people, the population continues to get more dumb.
And people like that don't like no readin' stuff.

 

That's a fine, fine point. Perhaps it's that much more important that the industry has finally removed the blinders and recognized that there is a problem. When there were three-paper cities, the ownership could simply sell to the competition and walk off into the sunset. Now, though, there is no competition and few buyers with the cash and the interest. Take Philly as an example. That sale relied upon venture capitalists. Perhaps that's the next step in the cycle, a completion of a 360-degree turn from media empires back to the pre-Hearstian days when newspapers thrived and when profit was simply what the publisher kept at the end of each year.

This is what makes the News-Journal story in Daytona Beach one to follow. If the private family that is the paper's majority owner succeeds in pushing out Cox, which owns a minority share, it could spell the future. Combine it with what's taking place in Philly and a few other cities, and I'd say it could be the future of the business. If the Tribune Co.'s stockholders aren't happy with their dividend checks, fuck 'em. Buy back the shares and sink that profit back into the company.

 

I surely hope privitization is the future of the business.
If the market isn't happy with companies turning 20 percent on their money, the market needs to cease being a factor. Lots of people with big $$ would kill for that kind of return.

 

Yes, VJ, way to cut through the bullshit. We can always count on designers to give it to us straight.

Except when they fuck up egregiously on a daily basis and blame everyone else.

Or when they claim they attract readers when they actually drive them away.

Or when they claim to know anything about journalism.

Other than those exceptions, we can always count on designers for the straight poop. With heavy emphasis on the poop.