Peter Preston (London Observer): The writing's on the wall, er, the web

[Jack Rabbit]

EDITED to fix tag

From the London Observer (Sunday supplement of the Guardian Unlimited)
Dated Sunday May 22

The writing's on the wall, or rather the web
By Peter Preston

There are times, times of profound upheaval, when one change seems to fit with another - then, suddenly, to change everything. This may be just such a time: and here are some of the changes, piling in, that make it so. Good news or bad news? News about news, anyway.

First, newspaper circulations; not in Britain for a change, but America, where one developing factor - the rise of the internet - is a year or two further advanced. So, the Baltimore Sun is down 11.5 per cent year on year. That's worse than any British national daily. The Los Angeles Times has lost 6.4 per cent, the Chicago Tribune some 6.6 per cent, the Cleveland Plain Dealer 5.2 per cent.

Add in the Miami Herald (down 3.7 per cent), the Washington Post (2.6 per cent) and the San Francisco Chronicle (7 per cent) and what have you got? An average decline across 814 US dailies of almost 2 per cent, and 7 out of 10 papers catching a chill.

And that's bad news for news on paper itself, because the biggest sufferers are also giant area monopolies. Their readers aren't drifting off to a rival, because such rivals barely exist. (Indeed, some competitive papers, such as USA Today, are fractionally up.) No, the defectors are packing up and moving out of newsprint: to broadcasting in tiny measure (though radio and TV news are losing customers, too) but overwhelmingly to the net.

Read more.

[JDPriestly]

1. The decrease is not due to the internet

It's due to the failure of these newspapers to print the news fairly and completely. They are all, without exception, slanted rightwards. The L.A. Times' editorial page is sometimes somewhat balanced, and the letters to the editor reflect the progressive/liberal views of the majority of LA Times readers. But, the LA Times' reporting is all too often borrowed and barely rehashed from news services like Reuters and AP and others and reflects their right-wing bias. The LA Times ignores or misses too many important stories.

[Southsideirish]

2. True. I don't believe anything I read or see in mainstream media.

Print, TV or online.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. I agree

Preston only gets it half right for that reason. While he's mentioning The New York Times, he ought to mention how Judith Miller ran those stories about Saddam's biochemical arsenal in the fall and winter of 2002.

Mr. Preston should probably be aware that I read his piece because I turned to the British press years ago after feeling the the American mainstream media was no longer going to give American citizens to the news they need to make informed decisions.

[Eloriel]

5. Write the author! n/t

[murielkane]

6. Their worst problem is that they're boring

When I was a kid, I subscribed to the New York Times through my high school, picked up a copy before classes every day, read it from start to finish, and then worked on the crossword puzzle. I expected that by doing this, I would find out things I didn't already know. I believed that reading the Times kept me on the leading edge of everything that was going on in the world. If there were references in the stories that went beyond my level of knowledge, I struggled to understand them. I was proud of being able to read a grownup paper and felt it made me part of the grownup world.

How long has it been since that was true? These days, I already know most of what's in the paper before they print it. What's more, I know what they've left out and what they've gotten wrong. And it's not just because I'm older and wiser. The entire world moves faster these days, and the newspapers just can't keep up. Most of the time, they're yesterday's news.

Their deliberate stuffiness -- someone pointed out the other day that the Times is still calling everyone "Mr." -- doesn't help. Neither does their fake objectivity, vaguely rooted in some pre-quantum physics 19th century philosophy of knowledge. And most of the raw information they used to provide -- from stock market quotations to baseball averages -- is far more easily and usefully done online.

There may conceivably still be a function for dead tree news to serve, but if there is, it's going to be something far more modest and probably far more localized than in the recent past.

[firefox]

4. I intentionally do not buy newspapers

I have bought maybe 7 newspapers in the last three years and that was mostly for coupons to my favorite restaurant. I am insulted by their coverage of the news and if those of us that used to read them everyday boycott until something worthy appears, we will break them and their advertisers. It is like I did not eat potato chips for over 10 years because of transfats. Now they have come out with potato chips and other chips that boast of zero transfats because there is a market that will not eat whatever the conglomerates put in a can/bag.

They give them away at shopping centers here trying to find someone that will basically pay for delivery and let the newspapers have some circulation for advertisers. The second to last time this happened the guy asked me why I did not buy a subscription at such prices. I said it is propaganda for the machine and I would not pick it up if they delivered for free. I saw him the next day at a new store and would not even take a free copy of that day's paper.

If you want to find reality you have to read from the Internet.