Tag: newspapers

Capitalism Overrules Wokeism At The Newspapers

Publisher and columnist Adam Kelly is in the West Virginia journalism hall of fame despite being the most conservative man I ever met. He asked me once if I knew what the purpose of a newspaper is.

His answer: To make money for its owner.

What was true in 1982 is true today. The Pulitzer-laden staffs of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post discovered this over the weekend when their owners vetoed endorsements of her majesty, Queen Kamala. Likewise, the Hill reported, “Over 200 American outlets under USA Today parent company Gannett will not back candidates in presidential or national races,” according to USA Today.”

This sudden attempt to restore their virginity by newspapers may be because of the dumb-as-the-B-in-dumb Democrat candidate. But it could be the fact that all these rags have failed Newspaper Rule No. 1, which is to make money for the owner.

I hope that the latter is true because that gives me hope that the problem can be fixed. AM radio was once hopelessly obsolete until Rush Limbaugh revived it as a source of clean information untainted by liberalism.

Jeff Bezos lost $77 million last year as the owner of the Post. He decided to reintroduce objective journalism to the paper on the Potomac that flushed its reputation down the Porta-Potty long ago. He decided to return to the pre-Watergate era when the Post did not endorse in presidential races.

The press coverage of this decision is as expected.

More

The left must be losing it as their domination of the censorship machine is eroding both here and in social media (X).

Who gives a shit what the celebtards think anyway? They all think alike and have no opinion of their own.

Blogs I follow and Why – Don Surber

Here is the link to his blog.

Now, why I follow him.

When I first started blogging in 2004, Glenn Reynolds or Instapundit was the the biggest game in town. I noticed that Don got a lot of attention by linking to him. I thought he was being contentious to gather a following, until I found out what he did for a living.

He was a reporter for a Newspaper in West Virginia, now retired. I won’t mention it because he’s said that he’s not all that fond of it.

What draws me to his writing is that it is good. It’s hard to write well. I can ramble on and take forever to make a point, but Surber gets to it with wit and pithiness that I admire.

I love his Highlights of the News and his commentary of it. I’ve read it for a long time now. He doesn’t pontificate, yet makes his point with the summary that he presents.

Hopefully, I’ll one day be able to get my style somewhere in the ballpark of Surber, but I doubt it.

I don’t expect him to mention or follow me. It doesn’t matter.

I was most happy for him when the greatest radio host of all time called him out last year. That is an accolade to take to your grave and I’m glad it happened to him.

Why Newspapers and The News Are Not Only A Dying Model, But Dead

“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.” – Thomas Jefferson

I don’t subscribe to the newspaper anymore, but I got one this morning.  I’m sure that it was a teaser to try to get me to subscribe.  Upon reading it, I realized I already knew everything in the paper except the local high school football scores from games after I went to bed.

A DYING MODEL

The subscription rates to newspapers are dying, not even a slow death.  Similarly, the evening news is also a dinosaur.  They report what we knew as much as a full day before.

I am on twitter and read blogs all day long.  I occasionally go to the news sites,  but as I discuss below, their bias (I hold both left and right guilty equally here) usually makes me fact check what I’m trying to find out which defeats the purpose of fact-finding, especially if it involves politics. That subject is pretty much unavoidable these days.

Nevertheless, I enjoy many other subjects which you could read about it on other blog entries if you have nothing better to do, and I find good information about them that is interesting and INSTANT.

I’m a boomer, although a technically savvy one having been in the IT industry all my life.  The Gen X,Y, millennials,  and whomever follows them demand even more instantaneous everything virtually dooming the news model of our prior generation.  Thank you Internet.

THE END OF THE BASTIONS OF NEWS

We have establish that we are now used to getting information instantaneously.  The other reason that the model is dying is that they are biased.  This is ok if you are a neo-con or a loony lefty, but for everyone else (the other 80% given 10% on the edges of left and right) we don’t trust them anymore.

Once, these two sources were the basis of our world and local information.  Besides being static rather than dynamic, they also have stopped being factual sources of information, rather they are partisan, with Fox on one side and CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NYT, WAPO, LA TImes, Reuters, AP, HuffPo, Local News, Local Papers and most other news sources on the other side of issues.  All are positioned in a place that position the facts from a point of view.   Some of them blatantly lie.   Reporting was supposed to be the facts of the story that let the reader make up their mind on their position.

We’ve actually learned that the news has been biased for at least as long as there has been television, we just didn’t have the instant fact checking that the internet and the other sources have provided.

There is a joke from Bernie Goldberg that said if they had been reporting on Moses at Mt. Sinai, the headline would read “Moses get the 10 Commandments from God, and here are the two that we think are important to you”.

Walter Cronkite said that the Viet Nam war was lost during the time that we were winning.  LBJ said that if he’d lost Cronkite, he’d lost America.  We’ve since learned that the then “most trusted man in America” was also one of the most biased.

LIFE MOVES ON

Other things have died and we have lived and moved on.  Black and white TV, network only channels vs. cable TV and landline phones vs. mobile (cell for those in the US) phones.  Such is the fate of newspapers and TV network news.  Here is just one fact concerning the NYT declining rates.  I’m sure you could find somewhere that their subscriptions are increasing, but this would seem deceitful given the nature of digital delivery.

So am I disturbed by this trend?  Actually I didn’t even notice it until I saw the paper in my yard this morning.  I haven’t subscribed for news in many years (note: I get the Sunday paper for the coupons as long as they pay for the 1 day delivery – my sister calls me a tightwad but it leads to becoming this).

I get my news from the above stated sources and know more about what is going on than the anchors have time to present in their biases manner.

So as they say, life moves on.