Newspapers in Trouble
July 3rd, 2008Newspapers are in trouble, for all sorts of reasons, from cable news to the World Wide Web, other stuff, multi-determined, not exactly new news.
I was reminded of this yet again by my friend Frank Schaeffer’s piece on the Huffington Post on the very same subject.
Newspapers are caught in the middle between the old form of print and, trying to persuade their advertisers to pay the same price for advertising on the World Wide Web.
I happen to read almost all my news online now, because I figure I’m saving a whole lot of trees. My small contribution to going “green.” I got a Sunday paper and felt as if I had felled a forest. No forests felled by reading stuff on my computer.
As Frank Schaeffer points out, the World Wide Web is instant news.
For example I waited for the Newburyport Daily News to report today that, from what I understand, our mayor and the Newburyport City Council got “served” by the landfill owner. Huge story. Huge, huge story. Not in today’s Daily News, that I can find. So if you might not have heard about that possibility, you have now.
And Tom Salemi did an excellent job in writing up in almost real time, the fact that yes, whew, a miracle happened, the Newburyport City Council voted “Yes” to designated a site for the Senior Center at Cushing Park. If you haven’t read it, read it here. And Gillian Swart was on the case too. Good go’n.
And the fact that we are losing newspapers, and newspapers are cutting back like mad, is, at least in the short run, for me, real bad news. Because there is less and less really hard journalism going on. All of this is discussed earlier on the Newburyport Blog, in particular in regards to Bill Moyers’ amazing speech on the subject.
Frank Schaeffer is always fun to read, and I’m glad he’s switched over to the Huffington Post.