One-Third of US Newspapers As of 2005 Will Be Gone By 2024 (axios.com) 109
Sara Fischer reports via Axios: The decline of local newspapers accelerated so rapidly in 2023 that analysts now believe the U.S. will have lost one-third of the newspapers it had as of 2005 by the end of next year -- rather than in 2025, as originally predicted. There are roughly 6,000 newspapers left in America, down from 8,891 in 2005, according to a new report from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. "We're almost at a one-third loss now and we'll certainly hit that pace next year," said the report's co-authors -- Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill, and Sarah Stonbely, director of Medill's State of Local News Project. Of the papers that still survive, a majority (4,790) publish weekly, not daily.
Over the past two years, newspapers continued to vanish at an average rate of more than two per week, leaving 204 U.S. counties, or 6.4%, without any local news outlet. Roughly half of all U.S. counties (1,562) are now only served with one remaining local news source -- typically a weekly newspaper. Abernathy and Stonbely estimate that 228 of those 1,562 counties, or roughly 7% of all U.S. counties, are at high risk of losing their last remaining local news outlet.
There isn't enough investment in digital news replacements to stop the spread of news deserts in America. The footprint for alternative local news outlets is tiny and they are mostly clustered around metro areas that already have some local coverage. The report estimates that -- for outlets focused on state and local news -- there are roughly 550 digital-only news sites, 720 ethnic media organizations and 215 public broadcasting stations in America, compared to 6,000 newspapers. The authors argue that the dynamic between those with access to quality local news and those who don't "poses a far-reaching crisis for our democracy as it simultaneously struggles with political polarization, a lack of civic engagement and the proliferation of misinformation and information online."
Over the past two years, newspapers continued to vanish at an average rate of more than two per week, leaving 204 U.S. counties, or 6.4%, without any local news outlet. Roughly half of all U.S. counties (1,562) are now only served with one remaining local news source -- typically a weekly newspaper. Abernathy and Stonbely estimate that 228 of those 1,562 counties, or roughly 7% of all U.S. counties, are at high risk of losing their last remaining local news outlet.
There isn't enough investment in digital news replacements to stop the spread of news deserts in America. The footprint for alternative local news outlets is tiny and they are mostly clustered around metro areas that already have some local coverage. The report estimates that -- for outlets focused on state and local news -- there are roughly 550 digital-only news sites, 720 ethnic media organizations and 215 public broadcasting stations in America, compared to 6,000 newspapers. The authors argue that the dynamic between those with access to quality local news and those who don't "poses a far-reaching crisis for our democracy as it simultaneously struggles with political polarization, a lack of civic engagement and the proliferation of misinformation and information online."
Re:Reinvent or die. (Score:5, Insightful)
News is consolidating true, but it's also more homogenised and bland. Outrage about the same subjects, and all channelled towards those subjects. I'm in the UK - the number of kids who have a strong opinion on US domestic politics but none on their own is ridiculous, and it's because the media they use is dominated by large US chains.
So yes, the 'monopoly on the truth' model is broken forever and good riddance. But that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't problems elsewhere.
Re:Reinvent or die. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reinvent or die. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find out what is going on locally on sites like Nextdoor.com.
I get local news faster and unfiltered, directly from my neighbors.
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There's nothing unfiltered about social media that feeds you content via algorithm or forums that use "community moderation". You should consider reading this article [theatlantic.com]. You would do better to fire up phpBB, walk around the neighborhood, and invite your neighbors onto it.
Nextdoor is trash. It's the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [penny-arcade.com] at a local level, except, John Gabriel was wrong; anonymity is not required to become a total fuckwad. People will happily do it under their own names in the presence of people
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I think it speaks more to America's decline in literacy and appreciation of democracy than any victory over a supposed 'monopoly of truth'. Important to remember a
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Unfortunately, the local newspaper here deserves to die. When subscribers call about undelivered papers they promise to attend to it. And in a week or so they do. But they don't refund the subscribers payments for papers that weren't delivered. This has happened multiple times. Even people who had been subscribers for decades are starting to refuse to renew.
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> they won't be uncovering the corruption in your town council or dig into what's being done about the terrible road condition at the junction
We call those people conspiracy theorists and flat earthers. There is no corruption and the roads are great. /s
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The problem here is it's about local news mostly...News is consolidating true, but it's also more homogenised and bland.
Maybe. I'd be more interested in seeing the number of full or part-time journalists. I don't particularly care where they work.
Thing is, printing dead tree editions has likely only got more expensive over time while the cost of epublishing has dropped. No one here will be surprised by those facts. If newspapers get replaced by Axios or Slashdot or Nextdoor or the neighborhood kid with a podcast, that's not in itself a bad thing.
OTOH, it does take time and effort to sit through city council and school board
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Gawker did real journalism but got destroyed for doing the ugliest form of not-journalism.... ok!
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I don't know whether the real journalism part is accurate, I had thought they were mostly about celebrity gossip, but I do recall their article about Trump's hair got a fair amount of praise for its serious investigation of a ridiculous subject.
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Yes it was sarcasm because they were exactly what you said, a gossip rag. And then they went too far that was that. They didn't do real journalism.
I guess Elon is filing a suit tomorrow morning. We'll see how it goes, obviously I have no idea what's in it but I did read his tweet about it and if they did what he said, making a new account and forcing the algorithm to show it only Nazi stuff with some ridiculous non human behavior then they could be in deep shit.
Perfect recipe for ineffective/corrupt government (Score:5, Insightful)
This will probably come as a shock to you but if there are no local news sources in a region then there's no local news as there is no one to generate the news stories. That's a perfect recipe for ineffective government and corruption
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You're confusing news sources with outlets. Web sites make it a lot easier to aggregate news across towns and counties. Instead of having an editor and printer and advertising department for each town, you have that for five or ten towns, and most of those people can gather and report news instead of being overhead. Instead of having one "newspaper" per town, you get one section on a bigger web site -- and most of those involved in that web site are outside the jurisdiction of that little town where ther
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You're confusing news sources with outlets.
No, I'm pretty sure I'm not.
Web sites make it a lot easier to aggregate news across towns and counties. Instead of having an editor and printer and advertising department for each town, you have that for five or ten towns, and most of those people can gather and report news instead of being overhead. Instead of having one "newspaper" per town, you get one section on a bigger web site -- and most of those involved in that web site are outside the jurisdiction of that little town where there might be corrupt or inept officials.
What websites are you talking about because I don't know what you referring to? Any news from any small county in the US that you see on Facebook is generated by local news outlets. Facebook doesn't deal directly with reporters.
Need to take back the schools (Score:1, Flamebait)
Propaganda works because we don't teach people how it works and the skills to defend against it. We don't do that because marketing and organized religion are
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if I mention misinformation and your 1st thought is "that's an attack on me!" what does that say about you...
While you are trying to smear by implying that misinformation is intrinsically baked into conservatives views, the reality is that weaponized definition of misinformation was repeatedly used on conservatives to censor fact-based but politically inconvenient views. In the current regime of government-news-social media collusion the ability to define what constitutes misinformation is functionally indistinguishable from censorship. Just like all leftist supporters of Palestine, including Jews, are quickly dis
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Re:Reinvent or die. (Score:5, Insightful)
not profitable is not the same as not useful or not important.
And no one is obliged to reinvent news. You can and will instead deal with and enjoy the dribble of bite sized, generic outrage bait provided by the few megacorps who can cheaply provide that mush cheaply enough to turn a profit.
It's obsolete making a living wage reporting on the malfeasance of your local council. But cheering that on the coming darkness is fucking perverse.
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That's why orgs like the BBC and NHK and NPR are so important. Because they are not directly reliant on ads for funding, they don't have to constantly chase clicks. They are far from perfect, but as revenue from news has been in decline for decades, so have all the purely commercial providers.
Re:Reinvent or die. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry BBC and CBC fell in line on Covid lies and sticks to the government press release line every dam time, use to be the press was the primary critic of any government, now they place themselves around movement leaders like bubble wrap materials.
First their senior leadership must declare as a headline that 2001-2022 was the worst era in media since Yellow Journalism of Hurst, then we will talk. Russia and China was either the UK/EU/Wests best friend or our mortal enemy depending on where the money was coming from in media and political circles on a week by week basis. Just now in late 2023 the covid fever has broken, leaving many news readers ready for a bit of payback. Xi meets Biden in California, and both are just figureheads to a machine that eats up free will.
Re:Reinvent or die. (Score:4, Interesting)
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COVID is a good example. You have the official government position, which is backed up by scientists with good credentials. You also have some cranks you think horse de-wormer is the way to go.
If you want "just the facts" then do you want the cranks presented equally to the expert advice of multiple governments, the WHO, and numerous experts? Given it was a new virus and everyone was still learning, there was no objective truth to side with.
Re:Reinvent or die. (Score:4, Insightful)
More so, the ideological discussion on what constitutes an informed consent and when coercion for vaccinations is justifiable was suppressed. The net result of these censorious actions is that the next pandemic there will be a lot more people unwilling to take public health advise seriously and resisting vaccinations. You already can see the effects in drastically reduced takers for boosters despite on-going COVID wave. More so, as a vaccinated individual, if SARS-CoV-3 were to appear tomorrow I would myself join ranks of people refusing vaccinations, because I would have zero confidence that WHO, NIH or public health are informing me about risks or even accurately stating vaccine efficacy.
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That's why orgs like the BBC and NHK and NPR are so important. Because they are not directly reliant on ads for funding, they don't have to constantly chase clicks.
However, they do have to chase government funding, which makes them beholden to political influence. They are not better, they are different.
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I'm not sure about NPR, but the BBC is funded through a licence fee. Unfortunately the government can and does screw with it, and it has resulted in the BBC being less willing and less able to hold the government to account. Still, it's better than all the alternatives.
NHK doesn't seem to have that issue, but also does tend to be a bit soft on the government in general. I think that's more of a cultural thing. And again, they are still the best source of purely factual news in Japanese (and their English we
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That's why orgs like the BBC and NHK and NPR are so important. Because they are not directly reliant on ads for funding,
When I listen to NPR on the radio, I hear get to them list their corporate sponsors. Even if a specific product is not being pushed, that sure sounds like a form of advertising to me.
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This being said maybe something like that should be worked out for local news: have them being in part paid by taxes, as long as they pro
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What makes you think local news will dig deep into local corruption when national news is thoroughly uninterested in examining potential national corruption?
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Blasphemy! No dividends for you!
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There is a significant aspect in print newspaper. Online news being continuous (content changes/increases each time I visit it), there is no checkpoint to me ('me' here stands for any news consumer) and as a result I am never satisfied that I have read today's news. With print, the checkpoint is a day - once I have read the paper, I am done. Anything not in the newspaper but of importance that I need to know TODAY itself, I would in all likelihood receive it through some other channel (someone calling me u
Re: Reinvent or die. (Score:2)
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You, personally, are an ignorant idiot.
Quick - what is your county or city or state council doing about taxes? Parking garage fees? School boards, and book bans? Is the guy running for city, county, state, or Congress another George Santos?
YOU DON'T FREAKIN' KNOW, BECAUSE THERE'S NO LOCAL NEWS.
Well where I live... (Score:2)
Well, where I live, more than half of them are already gone compared to 2005. Some published a printed version weekly for a while instead of daily until going fully digital and some others have just completely vanished.
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I want a news source that is Neutral (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't want the rabid-right NY Post.
I don't want any shitty political opinion from someone with a Media Studies/Wimmins Issues double major.
I want a newspaper that reports the facts, with sources.
And a similar news website and TV news channel would be nice.
Too much to ask?
Re:I want a news source that is Neutral (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't want...
This is all nice in principle, but in practice what consumers say and what they actually want is different. Overwhelmingly, regardless of political affiliation or education level, people want to have their existing beliefs affirmed. This is because reading something you disagree with is hard and changing your mind is a lot of cognitive work.
What killed printed news is not biases, they always been there to some degree, but easier access to a 'quick fix' echo chambers on social media.
Re:I want a news source that is Neutral (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how anyone under 40 would have been exposed to enough information to have a thought on Gaza vs Israel, long form of video, print or web is long dead. At times there were 4 hour conferences to talk about an issue like Gaza on the BBC and NPR. I spent the late 1970s and 1980s watching middle east poltics play out and compeered the London News Papers vs the DC papers vs the New York papers vs the Chicago papers and perhaps canada papers. As a milktoast christian in middle america, I spent considerable effort figuring out what a Gaza Strip was, and not to order it medium rare. They were fed basic stuff that was clearly basic from at least 3 wire services.
Now there is one US wire service outside of financials centric, one paper that qualifies as the paper of record world wide on wikipedia, and only one message. In the 1980s, one could figure out perhaps the independence movement in the 3rd world can one be a communist movement and be freedom fighters for the peasant class. Now it seems that choice is which side buys from the New York Media Group and gets the head nod from the DC "truthsayers". Some wordy synonym for "Ministry of Truth" flows off of 30 something power players like it isn't a speech assault weapon. If it is political, and it happened in the last 50 years, the chances of the whole truth coming out are small outside a videotaped airplane crash of a commercial airliner where the pilots survived.
The best tech/slashdot material article I have ever read, was in wired Dec 1, 1996, the page count was something like 30 pages of text and 20 photos collected from around the world. Could british telecom placed the story in the media about undersea data connectivity that was to surpass satellite links then and forever into the future? But why would they, the journalist was doing a book and was picked up by wired in support of putting something in between tech advertisement. Now anything with 30 pages, 15000+ words is beyond a paywall. The discussion about the story was on slashdot, nntp for months and had many books following it. I do not know if Flash Boys could be written and published today, that a circuit critical to national infrastructure runs down I-80 might not be some in government want to share today...because terrorism....profit.
Now any news story is gone in 30 minutes and only covered by 500 words and best served with 15 to 19 seconds of video, because apparently delivering long form video is expensive. , Any follow on is more than likely AI generated rehash of the day one headlines. There were more articles written about untrue media narrative over a Illinois teenager who properly defended himself than plight of gaza in 2020. The two organizations with the largest advertising budgets are fighting each other today. Who wins in israle vs gaza.... the press taking money from the message shapers. Anyone know who wants less to to do with the people in Gaza than the israelis without a check to google, a nation that wrote gaza out of its history?
I want to see 15000 words about something, anything, without someone jumping in a immediately fact checking. A governments or free market news sources invest in words like ink made of politicians russian "diplomat" girlfriends blood is still used in the press. Blood of that population has not been used as press ink for at least a week.
I get the occasional barn burner from a Chicago paper about a local story,
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If some social scientists perform a study, which is peer-reviewed and then replicated multiple times, that shows that women are discriminated against in tech hiring, my beliefs would be dented, but I would very much like to see that news story.
What I don't want on the news is a report on yet another women-only tech conference with hundreds of whiny feminazis complaining about "sexism".
If some climate denie
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Either I am weird, or you are very wrong.
Another explanation is that you are not objective toward yourself. Ask yourself the following question - what is the level of proof I would accept for something I agree with vs. the level of proof for something you disagree with. Don't get me wrong, it is a good thing to strive toward objectivity, but you need to also acknowledge that even people that do so (not everyone) universally fail.
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I was more pointing out that if it did happen I feel that I *would* like to read about the facts of it, in a Neutral Newspaper.
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Another explanation is that you are not objective toward yourself. Ask yourself the following question - what is the level of proof I would accept for something I agree with vs. the level of proof for something you disagree with. Don't get me wrong, it is a good thing to strive toward objectivity, but you need to also acknowledge that even people that do so (not everyone) universally fail.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's why there was skepticism here on Slashdot about the latest "room-temperature superconductor," and that reactionless "EM drive" a couple of years ago. https://xkcd.com/675/ [xkcd.com]
Ditto climate change. This has been studied since Lord Kelvin over a century ago. Personally, I'd need more than a journal article that sneaked through peer review. I'd need a LOT of evidence.
Yes, revolutionary developments do occasionally happen. Yes, our knowledge is evolving. B
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And yeah, journalists these days are ignorant cowards... but is the average youtube/tiktok "News commentator" or whatever they call themselves any better?
Individually, no. But in aggregate they are vastly superior because you can find ones with integrity and then you just have to decide on whether you agree with their conclusions or not, instead of also having to worry about being gaslit by agenda driven activist journos.
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OK, so instead you'll be gaslit by Youtube's algorithm, which is completely opaque and exists solely to ensure that people keep watching youtube, and therefore keep watching ads. Is youtube showing you stuff you agree with to keep you happy, or stuff you disagree with to make you mad? Is ANY of the stuff youtube shows you tre true? Youtube doesn't care, just as long as you don't turn it off and do something else
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OK, so instead you'll be gaslit by Youtube's algorithm
Yes, that is huge problem. However, bookmarks still work. You don't have to follow AI suggestions that you know will lead you to paranoia and mental health issues.
Re:I want a news source that is Neutral (Score:5, Informative)
Try AP and Reuters. They specialize in just the facts, mostly supplying other orgs but you can read their raw reports on their websites.
The BBC is good for just the facts too.
Re:I want a news source that is Neutral (Score:5, Insightful)
lol, wow.
No. There are absolutely no big name news sources that are focused on just the facts without jamming in a heavy political bias.
The only way these days to have half a chance at figuring out what's going on is to read the stories from several sides and piece it together yourself. One article will utterly fail to mention a key fact which another focuses on and so on. The truth is not in the middle. It is where you can find enough pieces and set aside your own biases to put those pieces together in an honest way even when the end result isn't how you'd like.
If your news sources consistently agree with your world view then you live in a bubble. Break out. You're being lied to.
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If one article from a reputable source fails to mention something that another does, it's usually because they are being cautious and waiting for verification. Sometimes they publish with a note that something is unverified, but for example the BBC is often late to the game because they waited to verify first.
In other words, you are being lied to, and they tricked you into thinking that it's because reputable sources are hiding things from you. It's a classic trope in conspiracy theories - the reason inform
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WOT?!
The BBC is woked up its jaxie!
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I second this. People can get very cynical about new sites, but there are multiple places that do analyses of the stories on many news sites. It's how I found news sources I have leaned on successfully.
Two sites I can recommend:
AdFontesMedia
Static chart: https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-c... [adfontesmedia.com]
Interactive: https://adfontesmedia.com/inte... [adfontesmedia.com]
AllSides
https://www.allsides.com/media... [allsides.com]
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Forgot to add though, it's not just the facts that you want. It's the selection of stories. Things that matter to you might not be worth enough ad clicks to get any prominence. You really have to be willing to dig if you want the full picture.
Re: I want a news source that is Neutral (Score:2, Troll)
Maybe looking for news that doesn't offend you is the wrong filter.
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We love em.
They're just hard to find.
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Normal, non woke, non rabid-right people cannot be offended by facts.
We love em.
They're just hard to find.
What you're calling facts is just news that you don't find offensive.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/art... [thetimes.co.uk]
If this was kalashnikovs found in every home in Mariupol by a Russian brigade, or scary black rifles found in homes in America, who would or would not run those sorts of factual articles? That's what selection bias is. In this context the bias is against Gazan civilians, and the article was written in a country that isn't exactly sensitive to NRA's interests. In America it would be reworded by anything remo
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And only the facts.
By a Neutral newspaper, that checked its sources and quoted them.
Nothing to do with whether I would find those things offensive or not, because it *is* the facts I am looking for.
Re: I want a news source that is Neutral (Score:2)
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I work, part time, at a local paper. and I do mean local. We cover most of 1 county and parts of 3 others. Our entire population in that area is less than some suburbs of Chicago, New York, Miami, or Detroit. Circulation is down, as expected because of the digital streaming-style news alternatives. We get hundreds of reports from the State Government per month, and if it does not directly mention or involve our area we leave it out. We still go to every City, County, Township and School Board meeting,
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Thank you for the insightful post.
Considering the quality of the reporting invovled. (Score:1)
Let me just say I am..."unsurprised".
You could replace most of these outlets with pre-literate children and a box of crayons.
And raise the standards...
Re: Considering the quality of the reporting invov (Score:2)
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Splitting hairs.
Tax & fund. (Score:3, Insightful)
I get more 'socialist' with age.
Whenever an important common need is failing to be met for a community and there is no economic incentive for an individual to step in to fill it, that's when you start talking about funding a solution with tax dollars.
The 4th estate is important to the function of a healthy democratic state, and you don't really see that until it's too late. Like good security, it does very little when it's working well enough to deter problems... but if you get rid of it, you're going to have problems.
Random bloggers can't be trusted to publish important information since they are motivated by fame and subscribers, you need people whose job and whose income depends on them reporting significant news accurately. In fact, these days you can't trust the corporate media either. They too are chasing clicks more than stories, and have obvious strong political bias based on the desires of whichever billionaire owns them or controls their boards.
Having said that, there's no real need to print that news on dead trees any longer in most places. Whatever used to be the community newspaper can now be the community news website - as long as it isn't under the direct control of the organizations on which it should be reporting. No city councillor should be able to pressure an outlet into suppressing an inconvenient article.
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Random bloggers can't be trusted to publish important information since they are motivated by fame and subscribers, you need people whose job and whose income depends on them reporting significant news accurately.
but in the state-funded media case, their job and income depends on them reporting significant news in the way that the state approves. this is very dangerous for obvious reasons.
Re:Tax & fund. (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no slippier slope then state funded media.
Claiming a slippery slope isn't the compelling claim you seem to think it is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
After that, the UKs BBC does a fine job. Certainly not any worse than any of our major non governmental news organizations in this country and is absolutely critical of their government.
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To be fair I could say most of the same about any American news outlet.
I miss the fairness doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Wikipedia isn't calling you anything. "Slippery slope" is a logical fallacy, end sentence. Wikipedia was just the link I chose so if you wanted to understand why you sounded ignorant you could.
Also, the BBC has been doing news for almost 100 years so I got a chuckle out of your "it's only a matter of time" comment
The trick is to set it up right so the rest of the government can't monkey in their operations and they've done a *pretty good* job at doing that although as with anything in this world, not perfec
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There is no slippier slope then state funded media.
What about encrypted police radio? They then give a radio programmed with the encryption code only to the "journalists" they trust to lick boots.
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How far down your slope have the state-funded BBC and DW slid? Give me some examples of their sins, then explain to me how the corporate-funded media avoids making those same mistakes.
Because when I watch those outlets, the quality of what I see stacks up very favorably to corporate media.
Re: Tax & fund. (Score:3)
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The friction in reading "the news" on a website is much higher than you think. Clicking on a link to read an article means most peop
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I have a print + digital subscription to my local paper. The online experience is way worse than the real physical paper. Their website is laden with ads (mostly blocked by my pi-hole) but it's also just _harder_ than a printed page. As you say, it's easier to skim through a printed paper, read the articles that interest you, but still get a feel for what else is happening in the news. I haven't found an online way to consume news that fully replicates, let alone exceeds, a dead-tree newspaper.
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> and there is no economic incentive for an individual to step in to fill it, that's
> when you start talking about funding a solution with tax dollars.
And you're going to argue that newspapers are a common need?
Can you say that with a straight face, in 2023? I need video evidence.
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If only you'd read and understood the entire post. You're late to the party, I'm probably the only one who is going to read your comment... and you wasted it with an ill-informed knee-jerk reaction.
Reading's not that difficult. If you're going to bother replying, reading a couple of paragraphs to completion isn't a huge ask.
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Churchill was a man of his time and not such a great guy by today's standards.
If you grow conservative with age - by the political definition not the non-political definition - you're doing it wrong.
Cost (Score:2)
Very little of value will be lost (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless its the NYT, WaPo, NY Post, or WSJ, 90% of the papers you get today are just pages and pages of AP and Reuters stories. They are not doing any journalism, they just publishing and they are mostly just doing layout and printing at that.
If it is one of the above papers, the journalism is mostly crap churned out by people who either never understood, forgot, or cynically seek to obscure the difference between what goes on the news and editorial pages.
There is is the big fear about lack of local news but I don't see it. These conversations take place on Next Door, Facebook, at the PTA meeting. In most places I have been in the last 20 years the local television affiliates do much more and much more effective hard news gathering work than any local paper anyway. Their actual news program, websites, and mobile apps actually do a fairly good job of keeping people informed about what is going on in their community.
It is true that something has been lost in terms of deeper analysis and context that could be provided in longer form articles, but honestly I have not seen much of the that from many local outfits in the places I have lived and visited in a long time. Generally the local rag, prints articles very similar what you get from the TV people, because they long ago figured out the balanced of text to ad space and the public's attention span were optimal around that.
There just are not enough people that want carefully crafted hard local news; so their hasn't been much. That isn't new though, its just people that have not been reading these papers anyway are taking notices because they are finally closing up the store fronts and pulling them from the vending machine outside the grocery store.
Re:Very little of value will be lost (Score:5, Insightful)
There is is the big fear about lack of local news but I don't see it. These conversations take place on Next Door, Facebook, at the PTA meeting. In most places I have been in the last 20 years the local television affiliates do much more and much more effective hard news gathering work than any local paper anyway. Their actual news program, websites, and mobile apps actually do a fairly good job of keeping people informed about what is going on in their community.
Good lord, you're telling us you feel local internet gossip where anyone can say anything with zero accountability is a replacement for a proper local news source? Sounds more like an informational dystopia to me.
As for local TV news, in my experience outside of major urban areas it's crappy to non existent so not really a replacement either.
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Haha no. The papers in my area stopped running that stuff at least a decade ago. People have already seen the news on their smartphones before the paper is printed, even if it's still a daily paper, and an awful lot of them are weekly now. I expect some of them to go down to once every two weeks, or maybe even monthly for a while, before eventually ceasing population altogether. There's no reason, at this point, for
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Up here, there's not much for "woke" newspapers: they were mostly all bought out by Post Media, so all we have is very conservative right-wing drivel, with brazenly obvious strong biases and agendas, driven by editorial control from another country. It's so sad to see the state of media capture here. I don't know where all this drivel about "woke media" is coming from, because it sure doesn't describe the media landscape in North America.
Digital Dangers. (Score:2)
Most would see the decline in newspapers as a good thing for the environment, but converting all news to a digital format isn't necessarily the best move either. Even in the face of how most people consume their news.
A printed record of events distributed to many, is a hell of a lot harder to manipulate and destroy than a purely digital one. In the era of mega-corps consuming companies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all it takes is a new owner who wants to "edit" a few things in history they don't agre
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A printed record of events distributed to many, is a hell of a lot harder to manipulate and destroy than a purely digital one.
Unless, of course, Bill Clinton signs the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and makes massive media consolidation possible, then you can own all of the papers and they can all print the same lies.
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My local paper told me a Republican signed that... lol
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A printed record of events distributed to many, is a hell of a lot harder to manipulate and destroy than a purely digital one.
Unless, of course, Bill Clinton signs the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and makes massive media consolidation possible, then you can own all of the papers and they can all print the same lies.
LECs starting up their own CLECs only to destroy them like they did the competition. Good times.
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Most would see the decline in newspapers as a good thing for the environment, but converting all news to a digital format isn't necessarily the best move either. Even in the face of how most people consume their news.
A printed record of events distributed to many, is a hell of a lot harder to manipulate and destroy than a purely digital one. In the era of mega-corps consuming companies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all it takes is a new owner who wants to "edit" a few things in history they don't agree or align with, and you've suddenly changed history. Regardless if it turns worse to better, it isn't factual anymore.
We need to be able to learn from our factual history for one main reason; to avoid repeating the worst of it.
Yep. Recent case in point, and not from some podunk small-town rag either: https://www.theguardian.com/in... [theguardian.com]
sounds about right (Score:1)
Amazon quit magazines and newspapers (Score:2)
You used to be able to subscribe to (some) newspapers and magazines via Amazon Kindle. They don't do that now. It was convenient because you could download the issue and read it offline.
Normal (Score:2)
Billionaires now own social media or TV stations.
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Billionaires now own social media or TV stations.
Billions upon billions blown on advertising makes these entities attractive to billionaires.
Should corporate law ever change that doesn't allow business to put the majority of marketing/advertising spend on the tax-deducting side of the books, media might be forced to create valid programming and reporting in order to stay alive because business would think twice about spending insane amounts of money that translates to media revenue.
It's been interesting (Score:3)
It's been interesting watching the decline of print media, and the newspaper specifically.
I delivered papers in the mid-90s as my first paid job. Must've been about 12 or 13 at the time. Up at 4am every day (no idea how I managed that), got all bundled up and - rain, blizzard, or shine - if that bundle of papers was on the corner, I'd be outside for 2 hours rolling them as I went, placing them in doors or paper boxes (because putting them in mailboxes was/is illegal). It paid a pittance. I hated Sundays because the Sunday paper was 2-3 the size, full of fliers, and usually required 2-3 stops back at the drop off location to get more due to the weight.
People paid something like $1.25 for that service, daily. Nuts, by today's standards.
Since then, the same local papers have gotten thinner and thinner, with the writing level getting (seemingly) lower as time goes on. Now, instead of printing in a 10 or 12 point font, they print them in this massive 18-24 point font. There is a LOT less advertising to match, and most of it is niche. It's mostly just the outer taco shell, double sided, for distribution of fliers and coupons. And they cost about the same amount now as they did then!
My busybody mother-in-law, who's read the paper religiously for 50+ years at this point, just canceled her subscription.
News print is dead. The internet's ability to iterate quickly and at near-zero cost has made it ineffective at keeping the populace ideologically synchronized.
Our local paper isn't printed here (Score:1)
example (Score:2)
An example (ok, anecdote). We had a county council issue (the majority gerrymandered the county districts so two council members they didn't like would have to run against each other). That made it into the local newspaper, and the result of that and other factors was that the gerrymandering majority is no longer a majority. But now that newspaper is gone.
Now we have an issue in the city, where a developer wants to turn nearly the last remaining greenspace into expensive high density housing, violating a