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September 04, 2007
Is this why newspapers are dying?
It’s really not big news anymore. Newspaper advertising was down by about 10% in the second quarter. Online advertising within newspapers was up by about 8.5%. But that’s not a virtual offset. Online revenue makes up about 7% of overall newspaper advertising revenue, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
So overall newspaper revenue continues to decline. The fallout continues in the newsroom, where fewer journalists are left to write about a more complicated world.
Sure, there are bloggers. Just like this one. But the majority of them have an agenda. They’re not bound by the conventions of accuracy, fairness, balance. Much less the relentless pursuit of the truth.
How did it happen, that the traditional journalism world, called semi-perjoratively Mainstream Media in the blogosphere, lost its indispensibility?
As a former journalist, I’m wistful for the days when newspapers were loathed on both sides of the partisan divide, but still trusted.
Today, as I read in newspapers about the success of the surge in Iraq, I just scratch my head and wonder about the complicity of Mainstream Media with Bush. They did it in 2002 and 2003, when they swallowed whole the Bush-Cheney fiction about weapons of mass destruction.
Is this a replay?
Is this lack of jouranlistic skepticism at least one big reason why readers don’t trust Mainstream Media anymore?
Posted Sep 4 2007 @ 06:49 AM