The demise of dead-tree media?

The problem is paper media is more bias than TV (if that is possible). In our city even before we got pounded by the auto-down turn 3 years ago, the windsor star has lost a lot of readership. They refuse to share the point of view of their community. We have 2 NDP MPs and the give all the positive comments to jerk watson of the CONs whois in the county riding of essex. They always hit the NDP, even with harpers last move, the say "while not illegal it would be better that we have a break so cooler heads prevail instead of a coalition with seperatists"...OK so did they con warroom just email you talking points or do you want to intentionally alienate the 78% That don't vote con in our region.

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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
Noam Chomsky

There's a definite economic bias at work since the more well-off have the Internet while the less well-off need to get their news from dead-tree media and TV. The electronic haves-nots are probably going to get even more isolated in the years to come.

"There's a definite economic bias at work since the more well-off have the Internet while the less well-off need to get their news from dead-tree media and TV. The electronic haves-nots are probably going to get even more isolated in the years to come."

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The great unread will understand less and less of the real world as they are fed what corporate TV folk, their sponsors and pocketed politicians want them to hear.

This has caused great swaths of America to become "dumb as a bag of hair"(Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus).

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/12/16/sunmediacuts.html

T-P, think the Freeps will get cut more?

 I heard a rumour from an inside media friend of mine that the Freeps will soon be edited from India.  That was an exaggeration, naturally, but I think he was simply letting me know what's been on the block for a while now.

I think if print is going to survive as a news\current affairs media, then it'll probably have to move more towards a weekly, in depth, format and use the net to cut and paste breaking news and do blogs and such. 

"T-P, think the Freeps will get cut more?"

London's a big small town, so over the years I've known staff or known some one whose spouse works there.  It's been in "cut back" mode ever since it passed out of the Blackburn family hands.    I'm not sure it's the market here so much, as it is Quebecor management.

Will there be anything left after Quebecor is done with it and is willing to sell it off?  Seems to me they were set to dismantle the press and print it from Toronto, and still plan to do so, eventually.  Or maybe my info is old, and they already have.

If the printing press goes, the paper, as a local voice,  is officially dead. But then, with Laurie Goldstien often writting the lead editorial, the Freeps, as a local entity, died some time ago. 

More disturbing, perhaps, is the way new writers were aleinated by Quebecor's treatment of them.   

Newspapers will survive if they have writers that people want to read.   I remember when there were a good many reporters and columnists that I enjoyed reading in the Freeps.  And once and a while, there are still good feature articles on local subjects.   

But, few and far between.  Adherence to Quebecor's editorial dogma means that it has alienated progressives from the paper, and, no doubt, even bored the right wing with predictable tripe from the likes of Rory Lieshman and others.

No doubt, the Freeps has been and will continue to face the same problems as other newspapers, for the same reasons, and some will survive, and some won't.   

But Quebecor has probably made survival impossible.

Farmpunk:

GV, I'm not real clear on what you mean, dude.  I assume it's a coded Baegent reference of some kind, but please do explain.

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Coded?

You and I discussed Deer Hunting with Jesus not long ago and references to the dumbing down of Appalachia (and elsewhere) by the loss of newspapers, for one thing, was understood as gospel.

You said Bageant wouldn't fly for babblers.

Have you joined the politically correct campaign to expunge  reality?

I repeat:

"But the question remains, what happens to discussion within the larger communities? Do they do a Winchester, Virginia, Farmpunk? An Appalachia? "

The loss of discussion, the end of public exposition of problems of civic government, budgeting, political positiion.  Is that not a problem for you?Or do we just carp about the coverage by throwaways dependent on advertising (and happy business people who advertise)? 

(Quebecoir, by the way, is run by an old friend of Mulroney, and this recession/depression, will sink what's left. Like M'lord Black, people who could not give a fiddler's fart about the public function of newspapers. (Like the late Lord Thomson of Fleet, Ken's dad, come to think of it.)

Shouldn't we, as France once did, consider aiding failing newspapers because of their primary role in informing the great unread to perform their democratic role as citizens?

Come to think of it, when did you last hear of the great consuming/taxpaying public being referred to as "citizens." That's just old revolutiionary rhetoric, isn't it?  (Hope all of the above reveals the code.)

"Everyone in London slams the Freeps for being shite.  But the paper still usually leads the news in London on City Hall, local politics, and solid features.  Someone in the organization must have really good contacts." 

For a few years, "Scene" magazine, a free entertainment weekly was doing not just okay, but better than the Freeps on City Hall coverage-- perhaps not in terms of the obvious BIG stories, but certainly in terms of the subtleties. 

But, there was some kind of meltdown there with the owner at "Scene", and a lot of the political writers were fired and City Hall coverage was eliminated.  Why, I can only guess.   But I suspect an advertiser or advertisers threatened to pull out of "Scene" because City Hall coverage there shed light on the involvement of developers too much, or something along those lines.

I haven't read "Scene" since, and I don't even know if it's still published.

I think the former writters-- you probably know them-- were to be found on line at "Alt. London" which was a really good web site for a time, until the style and format was changed to something I found user unfriendly.

I also believe a former poster here at "babble" was the founder of "Alt. London". 

I have to ask, Farmpunk.  You've probably gotten to know a lot of big and small media types here, and walked around the city some.  Do you see the real problem at the Freeps, and even in the underground or alternative media on line?

London isn't a homogenous WASP town anymore.  It's a good sized city, where you see lots of people of colour, lots of diversity.

And, what do you see when you look at our media?  Almost exclusively white middle aged males.  Sure, the Freeps has a few women-- but what do they write about?  Fluff.  Not allowed to opine outside the kitchen, it seems.  And there's Salim Mansur, of course.  A carefully selected person of colour who writes from the perspective of the white establishment.   Must drive the ever growing Moslem population nuts to think he's their "spokesman".

 A canny media type might recognize this, and start a news outlet that includes voices and talents from today's real London, and not the London that existed forty years ago.

Yeah, my "fluff" comments were more directed to the columnist side of the paper. 

I met Gary Ennet many, many years ago when he was still working over at, if memory serves, FM 96.   I have him on in the morning during my drive time to work.  I like his delivery.   I don't stop to think too much about the quality of his work, or Kerry McKee's, 'cause the rest of radio news is so bad, it's hard for me to be critical of what seems a breath of fresh air.

I have not listened to AM CFPL 980 in decades.  Although, it certainly was the voice of London from the 30's through to at least the 70's or maybe even the 80's. 

 I always forget about the Roger's news coverage, and hardly watch, so I don't have an opinion.  I do know that if anyone knows the news biz in London, it's George Clark.  He started in the mail room at CFPL TV ( now the Eh? Channel) and learned from, I believe, people like Hugh Bremner, and maybe even ol' man Blackburn himself.  But I've never been impressed with Clark's insight as a columnist at the Freeps. 

The A or Eh? channel is disco news pretty much, an ill fitting City T.V. template that was plopped on it from when Moses Znaimer bought the station.  It suffers from the fact that it tries to serve too large an area, leaving viewers in those areas feeling ill served.  If I see another house fire story from Windsor, it will be too soon.  And it also suffers from what most local T.V. news suffers from, in that they try to stretch 15 minutes of actual news into a one hour news broadcast. *yawn*

The interesting thing about news media and broadcasting in London is that  untill the great corporate conglomerate take overs, London could boast a lot of "firsts" in Canada.  A lot of that had to do with Walter Blackburn, I think.  Too right wing for me to like, but he was certainly no luddite-- his interest in new technology kept London on the cutting edge for decades in radio, then T.V.

There's such a thing as a corporate culture.   London's has evolved from a monopoly mentality, where the media owner just decided what he wanted people to have.  I think that mindset has never been broken out of. 

I don't know about the business side of the news.   I tend to think though, that certain fundamentals-- knowing the community, having writers that people want to read, and giving people what they want instead of giving them what you want them to read have never really been met in over 30 years.

I think an indy media organization might work if it paid more than lip service to those ideas.    The key, from the business end, would be to spread advertising revenue out so that no one customer has any clout by withdrawing adds.   It's a big city, London.  But still small in many ways. 

Not to mention petty, in some circles.

Jesus, this thread has taken an odd London centric focus.  But... whatever.  It's all media, anyhow.

T-P, it's a fine idea, and would be fun, but the odds are stacked against.  I'm not against the idea, but, having met some of the younger locals who would want to be involved, or represented - they have NO clue about business or work.  That might be mean, but the gap between my blue collar friends in the city and near hinterland, and the local progressives is really wide.  And that's me being generous.

To do it properly, both "rednecks" and progressives would have to support it directly.  And I have trouble imaging how such a situation would work.

George is a machine; a seventy-plus idealist.  If you like him, send him an email.  I bet he'd respond.      

I'd like to believe that it's the editorial stance of Quebecor that has created the financial mess they are in.  Similarly with the National Ghost-- although that particular publication may be an oddball example.  I don't think it ever made money, nor was it intened to.  A vanity press for CONrad Black, and later, the Aspers.

While I do think that has something to do with it, it's probably more likely due to technological change, and environmental awareness to some degree.

People don't need catalogues and newspapers anymore, not with the internet.   And many people (such as myself) don't want them because they are seen as just a waste of trees.

What I see in the future, for newspapers, is one or two surviving in various markets, but only as a specialty weekly that we may not even recognize as a "newspaper". 

We've already seen in the last many years, layoffs and mill closures in the paper industry.   We'll see more. 

I wonder what effect this is going to have on the flora and fauna?

"People don't need catalogues and newspapers anymore, not with the internet.   And many people (such as myself) don't want them because they are seen as just a waste of trees.

Thomas Paine: 

What I see in the future, for newspapers, is one or two surviving in various markets, but only as a specialty weekly that we may not even recognize as a "newspaper". 

We've already seen in the last many years, layoffs and mill closures in the paper industry.   We'll see more. 

I wonder what effect this is going to have on the flora and fauna? "

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Nobody on this board (with the possible exception of Frustrated Mess) respects our destructive course through the effing "flora and fauna" moe than myself, TP.

But where, in "the internet" do you find people talking ACROSS  the GODDAMN IDEALOGICAL CHASMS that we have created, and that are reflected in the single-minded chatter of this thread?

"But where, in "the internet" do you find people talking ACROSS  the GODDAMN IDEALOGICAL CHASMS that we have created, and that are reflected in the single-minded chatter of this thread?"

I think the ideological chasms existed long before the internet, and newspapers probably did much more to create them than provide some kind of meeting place for the left and right, for example, to discuss and find common ground and discover that the other guy has more than straw for brains.

Yes, it's true that people who go on line for news or information, or to babble away seek out re-affirming places to do so.   But, I don't think the internet created this.  In fact, it has created greater possibilities for the opposite. 

We just choose not to employ it for those ends, being tribal and all. 

Where did that quote come from, T-P?  Did I miss that somewhere?   

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George's 1:23 pm. posting?

I don't mean to be rude responding with a question to a question, but I'm not sure I am following you, George. 

Are you suggesting newspapers were or are places where people of divergent viewpoints could interact?

 I wasn't suggesting there was a place "in the real world" where this takes place.

I'd imagine if one "felt the historical connection" to the "art of papermaking" and the current day printing presses of ole as well, they would see the advancement of information greatly enhanced.

Quote:

“Somebody who only reads
newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like
an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is
completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since
he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on
his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of
other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.
There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and
with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work
belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a
few writers of antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) that the people in
the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves from the
superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a
millennium. Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's
snobbishness.”"On Classic Literature"
from Ideas and Opinions – Crown Publishing (1954)-Albert Einstein (page
64) originally published in the Jungkaufmann, a monthly publication of
the “Schweizerischer Kaufmaennischer Verein, Jugendbund" (Feb, 29, 1952)

So such advancements most certainly would have to take in the recognition of the larger populace, and not just those who would keep tabs on what the elite of society are doing.

I know many science magazines are souring the blogs for new information to supply their magazines, or writers, looking for new ideas. Speaking of their own.

 

Quote:

Ursula Le Guin

In
its silence, a book is a challenge: it can't lull you with surging
music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks or fire gunshots in
your living room; you have to listen to it in your head. A book won't
move your eyes for you the way images on a screen do. It won't move
your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put
your heart in it. It won't do the work for you. To read a story well is
to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it--everything short of
writing it, in fact. Reading is not "interactive" with a set of rules
or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the
writer's mind. No wonder not everybody is up to it.

Quote from Scienceblogs,"Shifting Literature by Jennifer L. Jacquet?

Moving ove rto copies of the current books in E form would make availiability enhanced for more to read, but at the same time changes the effect and cost of living that would amount to writers trying to make a living on less?

The economy has to change and the way we think about that economy.

Best,

"But, please, it is not going off thread to discuss the"demise of dead-tree media" effect on thought, surely?"

Certainly not.  The demise of newspapers mostly due to technological change.   Radio pecked away at it, T.V. took another chunk.  And now the internet has pushed it over the edge.  But, even with technological change, there will be some survivors, as there always is. 

I'm not sure about all news broadcasts on T.V., but many now provide viewer input via e-mail, not at all unlike "letters to the editor".   Now, we can debate the quality of such commentary, but we can also debate such quality when it comes to print "letters to the editor".

The "Sun" media has nearly 200 pages a day where they put forward their low brow right wing interpretation of the world.  They devote a half page to "letters to the editor".   Not content with this, they add comments after the letters that are often innacurate, mean spirited and, at best, catty if it doesn't march in ideological lock step with the paper. 

I do not see newspapers, generally, as having a very positive roll in providing a great forum for the interaction of ideas.   They've always been vehicles for the ideas of whoever owns them.

Towards the ends of providing a meeting place of ideas, the internet has the greater potential to serve.   Start up capital is less onerous, obviously, and because of this more likely to be a practicle force for "freedom of speech." 

There's little to stop anyone from starting a website that solicits material from both right and left, secular and religious, etc, writers, and a message board where we all repectfully debate the issues.

The fact such places seem as common as hen's teeth speaks to another issue, I think. 

Point is that people have found an easier way to numb themselves by letting some medium takeover their existance.  If one does not consider the continued push for knowledge and information. Use, "step off points" of ideas presented, and  allow this dumbing down, then what hope is there other then to continue to find many sleeping and sheep  who follow blindly, not ever giving society a better look?

There was a time the current media served it's purpose and was thought much the same way as we think of the interactiveness of these forums.

Who was to know of the real time measures that would allow us to report the incidences as they were unfolding?
Technology changed this for us and brought us close to the timing of events. It is progressive the technology and to see conglomerates who will offer this view "for you" biased, how will it over take the sleeping mind in face of what it asks of you in your complacency and offered up emotive call for action?

Don't get me wrong I am very nostalgic about books too,  as I sit in my library in the wilderness. It reminds me of the need for information. Emotively as well, how can one not be connected to the trees and find newspapers waining or trying to capture the forum debate in views responding in those newspapers?

If not E-Books then will you settle for wikipedia?

Best,