Freep cutting 20 newsroom jobs

[pffft]

Until the news generated by "print" journalism is no longer available to you free online, then you'll be crying out for that rock and scrubbing board. What will "Yahoo News" and "Google News' have for you then?

[Patrick]

True journalism is becoming a lost art. Plain and simple. Today, everyone thinks they are a journalist or analyst because they can set up a blog and take other people's data and manipulate in order to get their own point across. The older journalists, and yes, I have heard from the best, feel that recent journalism grads are not stacking up. They are more focused on Twitter than they are on geography and current events.

[Sludgedaddy]

The Orwellian prediction of mind control due to a reduction of words in the English language seems to be fast approaching. Newspeak is coming . Double Plus Good!!!

Or when you Twitter your Twat.....Dbl + gd.

[oldredfordette]

Diehard, did you read anything else that was written in this thread? Or are you just reacting to one sentence?

I'll repeat, so maybe you can understand. In the mid-90's, when you could get 35 cents on every dollar you invested in Gannett, they spent their time prosecuting a stupid strike instead of seeing how the industry was changng. Papers like the NYtimes and the Baltimore Sun and the LA Times were paying huge dividends instead paying for R&D. They are reaping what they sowed in those boom years. Stupid stupid stupid greedy corporate bastards.

Carry on.

[EMG]

Until the news generated by "print" journalism is no longer available to you free online, then you'll be crying out for that rock and scrubbing board. What will "Yahoo News" and "Google News' have for you then?

Whatever they have won't be any worse than the liberal trash that's spewed by my own local paper [[the Arizona Repugnant, er, Republic). At least it made the decision to cancel my subscription years ago an easy one to make.

[cloud_wall]

It seems a little unfair for Simon to be repeating the R&D mantra w/o any tangible idea of how newspapers could have stayed profitable in the digital age. There's certainly no guarantee that a silver bullet would have been discovered. However, it does seem that the industry - and network TV news too - has suffered greatly because it's been squeezed for higher profit margins.

I agree with the suggestion that people read the whole thread or watch the clip before making their earth-shattering observations that maybe the Internets had something to do with this.

[Ravine]

The goddam internet availability of news is fine, but there's a lot more to all of this than that, and suggesting that wanting to have a newspaper with news printed on paper is anything like opting to do one's laundry with a rock & scrubbing board is silly.
If you're a young person whose idea of being connected with the world all revolves around sitting, slack-jawed & glaze-eyed, in front of a monitor for at least nine hours per day, I guess you have no wish for a newspaper.
Isn't it funny, how the world seems to be shrinking, and yet people are becoming further apart, and actual human contact is like, you know, man, like so old-fashioned.

[barnesfoto]

Ravine, I am referring to what some consider a political party, a party that has held the white house for all but eight of my adult years...By their gurus of finance, I refer to people who have sold us so many of the short-sighted schemes of the last twenty eight years...Broadly, I am speaking of the deregulation of corporate behavior, which [[perhaps you may have noticed) did not accompany any deregulation of individual behavior [[except maybe the repeal of the ban on individual ownership of assault weapons...)

I sense that my sometimes frequent use of the term "sick cult" to describe the American Right is tiring you...
A while back I asked you for a term that better describes these folks, and never heard back.
Perhaps if my mantra drives you "batty" you could follow the suggestion of the poster known as Pam, and use the ignore button.

Am I blaming the entire demise of the newspaper industry on the American Right? No. Things are a bit more complex than that. But if the industry was still owned by many smaller companies, instead of a few big ones, perhaps there would be a few more survivors....And perhaps, as Oldred suggests, if those few big companies had focused more on planning for the new century, and less on hiring guards to keep tabs on the strikers, [[or in the case of the NYT, less on building a shiny new glass tower), they would have been more prepared for what happened when Craigslist came along, because Craig Newmark does not seem to be picking up the responsibility for funding the sort of in-depth, investigative reporting that turned me into an avid newspaper reader.

[Ravine]

Barnesfoto:
Well, then! Asked & Answered. Now that you have explained what you mean, I'm on-board with you. And yes, I admit that I have found your repeated use of the term to be grating, but part of that reaction was due to the vagueness of the term, a vagueness which your explanation has dispelled.
I don't recall your earlier invitation, but no matter; I would never suggest that anyone use any language other than the language which they believe to best match their thoughts.
And, no Ignore Button for you. I think that whole thing is stupid, anyway, and even if I didn't feel that way about the Ignore function, I would not apply it to you & your posts, and I regret it if anything I have written has caused you to believe that I have contempt for you or your posts.

[Servite76]

Not a good day around here!!

[EMG]

The goddam internet availability of news is fine, but there's a lot more to all of this than that, and suggesting that wanting to have a newspaper with news printed on paper is anything like opting to do one's laundry with a rock & scrubbing board is silly.
If you're a young person whose idea of being connected with the world all revolves around sitting, slack-jawed & glaze-eyed, in front of a monitor for at least nine hours per day, I guess you have no wish for a newspaper.
Isn't it funny, how the world seems to be shrinking, and yet people are becoming further apart, and actual human contact is like, you know, man, like so old-fashioned.

Look, it's a free world, and I fully understand that some people enjoy sitting around with a Sunday paper. I did too, and I don't begrudge anyone their recreation.

To each his own. I had a grandfather whose idea of being connected with the world revolved around sitting, slack-jawed & glazed-eyed, in front of a television [[although even he didn't spend nine hours a day at it, any more than I spend nine hours a day in front of my computer monitor, much as from reading my posts it might seem that way - I'm just a fast typist).

But I still do maintain that it's a lot easier to cut through the bull, avoid wasting time on sensationalism that matters not one iota in one's life, and zero in on the news that really matters through use of the Internet.

[sumas]

I mourn the loss of our quality papers. I do think the decline started with the strike. Reading a monitor doesn't cut it with me. My sons learned to love to read because of papers. On Sundays, we would sit around the dining room table to read and share stories. Our kids would look at the comics until they too could read. Both boys were reading at a 5th grade level in 1st grade.

At one point in our lives, we were getting the News, the Free Press, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday New York Times, WWdaily, DNR and a few others.

Now I make the trip out, to pick up the Free Press so my mother can do her daily Sodoku. The puzzle page is the only decent thing in it. It is sad when the Metro Times is bigger and has better investigative reporting than the large daily news.

[EMG]

The goddam internet availability of news is fine, but there's a lot more to all of this than that, and suggesting that wanting to have a newspaper with news printed on paper is anything like opting to do one's laundry with a rock & scrubbing board is silly.
If you're a young person whose idea of being connected with the world all revolves around sitting, slack-jawed & glaze-eyed, in front of a monitor for at least nine hours per day, I guess you have no wish for a newspaper.
Isn't it funny, how the world seems to be shrinking, and yet people are becoming further apart, and actual human contact is like, you know, man, like so old-fashioned.

Here you go.

Attachment 1508

[BShea]

It is sad when the Metro Times is bigger and has better investigative reporting than the large daily news.

Oh, I thought the Free Press [[who I compete with) just won the Pulitzer Prize. Apparently that was a typo.

But I still do maintain that it's a lot easier to cut through the bull, avoid wasting time on sensationalism that matters not one iota in one's life, and zero in on the news that really matters through use of the Internet.

And where does the Internet get its news from? The same place TV and radio go to get their news: Newspapers. Close newspapers, and your news is gone. Even the blowhard talking heads, who get their subject matter from newspapers, will have nothing to talk about.

The Internet is the delivery mode, nothing more. I still prefer to have a print paper in my hands at times, but get a lot of my news from online. I also understand online has serious flaws: You pick up a lot more news, especially small stuff, but casually scanning a printed page. Online you're going for specific things and will miss a lot of stuff that isn't headlines out front. Many, many times I've learned things, or found out about events I wanted to attend, but flipping through the paper. Online, I'm far more likely to miss those things because I'm not clicking every headline.

Pure online news users, I believe, will end up with the major stories, but end up far less informed than traditional news consumers.

"There was a fire down the street? I didn't know. It wasn't on Google news ..."

[Maxine1958]

It is sad when the Metro Times is bigger and has better investigative reporting than the large daily news.

Oh, I thought the Free Press [[who I compete with) just won the Pulitzer Prize. Apparently that was a typo.

But I still do maintain that it's a lot easier to cut through the bull, avoid wasting time on sensationalism that matters not one iota in one's life, and zero in on the news that really matters through use of the Internet.

And where does the Internet get its news from? The same place TV and radio go to get their news: Newspapers. Close newspapers, and your news is gone. Even the blowhard talking heads, who get their subject matter from newspapers, will have nothing to talk about.

The Internet is the delivery mode, nothing more. I still prefer to have a print paper in my hands at times, but get a lot of my news from online. I also understand online has serious flaws: You pick up a lot more news, especially small stuff, but casually scanning a printed page. Online you're going for specific things and will miss a lot of stuff that isn't headlines out front. Many, many times I've learned things, or found out about events I wanted to attend, but flipping through the paper. Online, I'm far more likely to miss those things because I'm not clicking every headline.

Pure online news users, I believe, will end up with the major stories, but end up far less informed than traditional news consumers.

"There was a fire down the street? I didn't know. It wasn't on Google news ..."

Amen!

I love my newspapers. Or should I say I used to love them. We always had both the Free Press and the News delivered daily when I was growing up. Learned to really love reading them in 7th grade. A teacher quizzed us weekly on the current events. Wise woman. I'm still learning things from them every day. I will never learn to love the online versions. If that makes me an 'old foggy', then so be it.