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The 'Disappearing Dailies' Edition
Newspapers are in major trouble. Some notable dailies such as The Rocky Mountain News, Cincinnati Post and Baltimore Examiner have folded completely. Others such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News and my home town paper, The Bay City Times, among others, have adopted a hybrid on-line only and/or partial printing scheme trying to survive. All papers are losing money hand over fist, laying off workers and renegotiating labor contracts. (newspaperdeathwatch.com)
Everyone blames the Internet and 24/7 cable news availability.
Do you subscribe to or otherwise pay for and read hard copy newspapers?
What do you think?
rdmcd does the 'Gray Lady'...
Yes the NYT's
MD wrote...
I subscribe to the Sunday Times for the coupons and crossword puzzles. The rest I throw away because I've already read it online.
DC Madman said...
I once subscribed to the Seattle Times Sunday and a local bi-weekly paper. As times got harder I cut off the Times and more recently the local paper. Every now and then I open up a Times only to find old news. I'm an avid blog and Google News reader and keep on top of current events and opinion. I do miss my local paper. I enjoyed challenging conventional wisdom and giving the wingnuts a smackdown via Letters to the Editor. Perhaps someday there will again be a place for newsletters/newspapers when the Internet is poisoned by government and corporate interests.
Adam in NoHo weighs in with..
Essentially, no.
I get most of my news from NPR- both the very good local coverage from KPCC here in LA, and the national programming.
The rest of my news I glean from blog headlines, and The Daily Show/Colbert Report.
I do not watch TV news apart from the odd local broadcast when something big is happening. Cable news is just irritating.
I read the newspaper as a diversion when I am somewhere that has a paper and I am not doing anything else. First I read the opinion section, then make my through the other sections if I have time. I also pick out the Fry's circulars that appear in the LA Times that appear at least once a week.
All of this despite the simple fact that the print organizations do the bulk of news reporting and writing on pretty much every level.
SallyP(al) sent a novella...
I have ALWAYS had a paper in my various homes, apartments, hotel/motel rooms - probably even in my crib!
My father always had his paper - it was as respected as any holy book in our home. Usually, my mother just, "scanned" it when I was a small child, even so, the paper was used for many things even after it was read "cover to cover" by my dad. Any vacation my family ventured on, even in Europe, my father always was able to find his paper - some in other languages though... No matter, they all had comics!
Of course, mingled into my earliest memories, are the Sunday comics! In my early childhood, we had a man on the radio who read them to us, so there I was, every Sunday morning, lying on my stomach, and following along as he read - Heaven! That paper also provided me with cutouts, folded "Asian" fans, a media for finger-painting, and other such ventures. Paper was not wasted back then, because it was the WWII era, and paper was in rationed supply. Almost every home, "recycled" their papers in ways such as, tracing sewing patterns, wrapping up messy garbage, and lying them out by most back doors for muddy shoes and delivery persons to stand upon. Today, we neatly stack them by the curb for garbage day, or toss them into a bin to add to our landfills. Who would have thought of such waste back then?
In my private, parochial boarding high school, the girls received our "censored" newspaper every day - unlike my own parents, who would NEVER cut a newspaper BEFORE reading it cover to cover! Unfortunately, it seems the nuns felt it necessary to go through each edition, and cut out any article or picture they deemed inappropriate for our young minds to view. How frustrating to be reading a story, being told to, "turn to pg 6" only to find that the nun had gotten to that page first and clipped an offending ad featuring a lady in her slip! (And trust me, those ads were NOTHING like the underwear ads you see today, and, who among you still wears a "slip" anymore, anyway?) But, I digress.
In my own adulthood, I can still remember picking up the NY Daily News for my subway rides, then later on, after college, the NYT's. Somewhere in the 1950s the "delivery" of the paper became a part of our lives, but I held off on that until I arrived in Colorado in 1970. In retrospect it seemed such a luxury to have a paper on (or near) your own front door EVERYDAY! Paper had become more plentiful in the 70s, and grocery store, "coupon clipping" had become the rage by then. My own children earned their allowance by cutting out, and finding such coupon items at the store every week and splitting the savings between them. By then, my mother still read the obituary's everyday, and enjoyed cutting and sending us coupons, and local articles - as did most elderly ladies of her day.
How I loved my (now defunct) "Rocky Mountain News" everyday for 33 years. I had it delivered even when on vacation and read each and every copy upon our return. My children loved the Sunday comics (though running daily by then), circled toy ads for holiday hints for their gifts, and used the paper for the same fans and folded airplanes I had as a child.
Big newspaper stories were followed in various, "series" such as, "Watergate," or when GW Bushes' brother, "Neil" brought down the S&L's the paper followed the developments for weeks on end. Elvis died and we had the photo's to cut 'n save thanks to our newspaper. Pre "AP" feeds, "Local" sections ran actual stories about local people and local places, Not national celebrities and politicians (in that section anyway)! Speaking of politics, I can remember, when each local candidate had several profile pieces in the paper, and did not have to run those hate ads on TV. The President's itinerary was closely followed, and, "Letter's To the Editor" were local and informative, and not just hate-bombs. We seemed more civilized back then. Again, I digress.
What could be better on a Sunday than reading all the paper sections, perusing the ads, and doing the crossword puzzles (AWA as doing the daily puzzles on the bus or standing in a queue)? Can I ever forget the Sunday supplement magazines stacked on the coffee table, and/or the Times "Entertainment section," and, the newspaper's TV "guide" there as well?
Yes, I still love my newspaper, and subscribe to the, "New Jersey Record" to this day - mostly for the TV listings - but of course, they have not switched to the new, "converter box" schedule as yet...
No, the newspaper does not hold the esteem it once did in my home or many others nowadays.
It's demise started when the papers, in order to save money, cut the size of the print, and used less ink making the print lighter to read, and cut down on the size of the contents - and, by coincidence, my eyesight went into decline...
I now turn on my computer every morning and am bombarded with "News," usually starting with my own AOL Homepage. I am reading about news and events which won't appear in print for days - And, I don't need to get out my magnifying glass, or put on "special" reading glasses - it's all right there in front of me.
Unless the power goes out, and I put on my "emergency lamp" and the glasses and spend the time perusing that good old paper - for now...
I do believe that soon, and very soon, that I am going to again witness another, "End of an Era," and that's always sad for me - but I have also learned to "go with the flow." Even so, losing my paper will be hard, real hard for me.
DanD eruditely comments...
Back before I became Internet literate (pre-1999), I used to occasionally buy and read a community's local newspaper. Then 9-11 happened and I heard all these audio-video/news-print stenographers trying to sell me on the idea that an (actually, three) obviously planned building implosion(s) was (sort-of) an accidental event.
And it wasn't just one or two sources making this outlandish allegation, it was ALL THE CORPORATE MEDIA. As a direct consequence, my post-"Uncle Walter" cherry had been broken. I first gravitated to "alternative (yet still corporation bought-up)" news papers and shows, and eventually went full Internet.
Just last week, the Pasadena Star News called me up (I don't know how I got on their boiler-room list) and started insisting that I purchase a subscription to their rag. I stopped him cold. I then told him that, because the corporate news -- of which his propaganda function is an integral element -- so guilelessly sold the obviously damaged, "Saddam has nukes" bill of sale to the rest of the world when the evidence was easily available that no such circumstance existed, I've gotten my news from the Internet, where the unincorporation of it all at least potentiates (to any surfer with half a brain cell) that getting your information there will in fact get you much closer to the truth.
I then said, "But thank you very much ~" and then hung up.
For that matter, I remember one time about a year ago when the LA Times called for a similar reason of propaganda dissemination. After telling the pitchman during that misinformation attempt that I simply could not trust the paper as a reliable source of global information, he then tried to sell it to me for all the great coupons and such that I would receive ... I hung up without saying goodbye.
As (also) expressed by Michael Rivero, when a population cannot trust an information source to be truthful, all sane people among that population will (has) abandon(ed) that source, even if it's an entire institution.
Personally, I hope every last one of those corporate propaganda whores (and their family members) suffer a debilitating physical ailment at least as severe as the most crippled of our military sacrificial lambs. If the fourth estate had actually done its job, hundreds-of-thousands of America's serving and separated military personnel would be alive and healthy(ier).
As it is with the economy where it's at, these same trusting patriots are increasingly being abandoned by a government that first used them up.
People will not willingly change their methods of information assimilation devoid of some overwhelming cause. Being lied to IS an overwhelming cause.
John O. goes against the flow...
Probably because I'm an old fart who is a creature of habit, I subscribe to the truly awful San Diego Union. My wife and I have a morning ritual of reading the paper and drinking coffee. We look at their slanted reports and find out about local issues and what's playing in theaters.
The paper shrinks every month, has fewer ads, has fired many employees, and despite the changed ownership keeps the same Republican biases. The editorial page is useful to get my blood boiling as they constantly blame all the world's problems on unions. The teacher unions have bankrupted the state and ruined education. The Sand Diego Teacher's Union has ruined education in San Diego. The local labor unions rule city government and have bankrupted us all. Public employee unions are responsible for bloated pension plans are responsible for California's budget mess. Their anti-union fervor is unrelenting and constant. The Democrats are slaves to the unions and stop the Republicans from saving us.
So here I am, a retired teacher and former union member who is giving them money, all because of a newspaper addiction. Sad, isn't it?
Baron Dave ("The invention of printing was the greatest event in history. It was the parent revolution; it was the fundamental change in mankind's mode of expression, it was human thought doffing one garment to clothe itself in another; it was the complete and definitive sloughing off of the skin of a serpent, which, since the time of Adam, has symbolized intelligence." -- Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame ) wraps it up with...
My father was editor of the Times Herald-Record, in Middletown, NY. I grew up literally surrounded by newspapers. I was a paperboy starting at age 12. It's almost inconceivable that I don't get a newspaper delivered everyday.
To be sure, sometimes it feels like an act of charity. The Mpls Star Tribune used to be a decent paper, but got sold several times recently and went waaay downhill, almost a conservative rag. Still, it has a good comics page, a Bridge column, a sudoku and two crossword puzzles. Plus Miss Manners and News of the Weird.
Oh yeah, sometimes I read the news. The Business section more than the skewed front page.
As you might imagine, I have lot to say about newspapers and why they're in decline. But this isn't the right forum.
Since June 1st, my local paper has been printing just 3 days a week. Thursday, Friday and Sunday. I purchase the Sunday paper off the rack mainly for the advertising supplements and the classified ads. I occasionally buy USA Today when they run special sections on sporting events e.g. the start of the college football season etc. I read many papers daily on line. Both Detroit papers, of course, but also the NYT, Washington Post and Bangor Daily News (gotta keep up with what's going on 'Down East' dontcha know). I, too, bemoan the death of hard copy papers, but what are ya gonna do? It's like the old 'underground' FM radio that use to be before 'formats' oozed in. Gone, but not forgotten....
Thanks to all responders! As I always say, "Yer the Best!"... Oh, and don't let the bastards get ya down!
BadToTheBoneBob
New Question
The 'Resistance is Futile' Edition
Sunday, on Meet the Press, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Iran..."We believe as a matter of policy it is unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons... So we are united in our continuing commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons... First, we're going to do everything we can to prevent you from ever getting a nuclear weapon. But your pursuit is futile, because we will never let Iran--nuclear-armed"...
Do you think Obama would use the military option to prevent a nuclear armed Iran?
Send your response to
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: An Incoherent Truth (nytimes.com)
On health care, the Blue Dogs aren't making sense. The conservative Democrats can't extract major concessions on the shape of health care reform without dooming the whole project.
DAVID SILVERMAN: How to Write a Résumé That Doesn't Annoy People (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)
A Google search for "résumé" results in over 178,000,000 hits, whereas "possum" nets only 5,340,000. Thus the documentation of work experience is 33 and 1/3 more popular than arboreal marsupials. But what does this really tell us? Not much, but neither does the average résumé that comes across my desk.
Michael Massing: The News About the Internet (nybooks.com)
The practice of journalism, far from being leeched by the Web, is being reinvented there, with a variety of fascinating experiments in the gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. And unless the editors and executives at our top papers begin to take note, they will hasten their own demise.
As told to Chris Broughton: "Experience: I revolutionised astronomy" (guardian.co.uk)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell: 'Very few people get the chance to make mega discoveries.'
Jennifer Ring: 'Stolen Bases' Tells Story of a Sports Robbery (womensenews.org)
Women and girls have been discouraged from playing hardball because our culture says the sport is "too strenuous." But they still tenaciously play the game. An excerpt from Jennifer Ring's book "Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don't Play Baseball."
In Celebration of "Gay Icons" (advocate.com)
Take a sneak peek at some of the 60 "Gay Icons" celebrated from now through October 18 at the National Portrait Gallery in London, including k.d. lang, Virginia Woolf, and Quentin Crisp.
Yusuf Islam: What's new, pussycat? (timesonline.co.uk)
After 30 years bowing to Allah and a bossy wife, Yusuf Islam has got his claws back into music, finds Lesley White.
DAVID SCHMADER: Pop Goes the World (thestranger.com)
The Long, Strange Trip of (the) Gossip, That's Only Just Begun.
Corey Scholibo: The Redhead Gay (advocate.com)
Kevin Allison, the lone gay of the '90s sketch group 'The State,' dishes on the group's formation, their fallout with Les Moonves, and bouncing back after hitting bottom.
Morgan Falconer: "Bill Nighy: 'I've never had a plan'" (timesonline.co.uk)
He's found huge success playing louche charmers but now he's taking on digital guinea pigs. So what's the actor up to?
Chrissy Iley: Denzel Washington on 'The Taking of Pelham 123' (timesonline.co.uk)
He plays an overweight loser in Tony Scott's subway hijack thriller. The star tells how he became a Hollywood role mode.
The Wizard Of Oz at 70 (guardian.co.uk)
Follow Emma Brockes on a trip down the Yellow Brick Road to find out everything you've ever wanted to know about the making of a phenomenon.
What cartoon character would Mr. Wizard rescue with the incantation, "Drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome; time for zis one to come home"?
answered:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Back to near seasonal.
Network Responsibility Index
HBO
HBO scored highest among 15 networks for its representation of gay characters last season, according to a report released Monday.
In its third annual Network Responsibility Index, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation found that of HBO's 14 original prime-time series, 10 included content reflecting the lives of gay, bisexual and transgender people. That totaled 42 percent of the network's programming hours, in series such as "True Blood," "Entourage" and "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency."
By contrast, on NBC and CBS only 8 percent and 5 percent, respectively, of prime-time hours included them, the report said.
ABC got the highest ranking of the five broadcast networks, with 24 percent. It was the second year in a row that ABC led the broadcasters.
The CW logged 20 percent, and the Fox network 11 percent, the report said.
HBO
Honored In Beverly Hills
Michael J Fox
Michael J Fox has been in honoured in Hollywood for his work in raising awareness to Parkinson's Disease.
Celebrities and special guests turned out at a private residence in Beverly Hills to pay tribute to the activist at the 11th Annual Designcare Event.
TV presenter Laila Ali, daughter of boxing legend Muhammad Ali who also suffers from Parkinson's, said of the Back To The Future actor: "He carries himself with such dignity."
She continued: "He doesn't try to hide his symptoms from the public and I think that's excellent, he's a great man."
Michael J Fox
Website Hacked
Melbourne International Film Festival
Hackers have defaced the website of Australia's biggest film festival which refused to withdraw a documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, organizers said on Monday.
The Chinese government two weeks ago protested to the Melbourne International Film Festival over the inclusion of the documentary and last week three Chinese films were withdrawn in protest at Kadeer's planned attendance at the August 8 premiere.
Beijing has blamed Kadeer for instigating this month's ethnic riots in Urumqi in Xinjiang in which almost 200 people died. She denies the claim.
Festival organizer Richard Moore said on Monday that hackers had replaced festival information with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans and were continuing to disrupt the site by spamming. He said the attacks appeared to be coming from a Chinese IP address.
Melbourne International Film Festival
Top Party School
Penn State
Penn State University is now the nation's No. 1 party school. The school known partly for its football tailgate weekends and fraternity and sorority scene snatched the title away from the University of Florida in the 2009 Princeton Review survey of 122,000 students nationwide. Florida, last year's winner, finished second in the annual survey released Monday.
It's the first time Penn State has finished first in the dubious category. The school has been on the list the last seven years and ranked third in 2008. The listing covers Penn State's main University Park campus in State College.
"These rankings are not more than popularity contests," said university spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz. She noted that groups on the social networking site Facebook have urged members to make Penn State the top party school.
After Penn State and Florida, the top five institutions on the party schools list were the University of Mississippi, the University of Georgia, and Ohio University-Athens.
Penn State
Hendrix, Madonna
Rock Auction
Rock legend Jimi Hendrix's first recording contract worth $1 and erotic audio and video tapes sent by Madonna to her old bodyguard went on sale in an online auction on Monday.
Other artists and prominent figures featured among the more than 450 items offered in the rock 'n' roll and pop art auction on www.gottahaverockandroll.com include John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones and Eminem. The auction will run through August 5.
Hendrix's earliest known contract for $1 dated October 15, 1965, could fetch up to $250,000, auctioneers said. It was signed by Hendrix and music producers PPX Enterprises of New York for Hendrix to play and sing exclusively for three years.
Also on sale are Dylan's original 1962 working lyrics for his song "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," jackets worn by Lennon and U.S. rapper Eminem's outfit that parodied Michael Jackson in his "Just Lose It" music video are also on sale.
Rock Auction
Codex Atlanticus To Be Displayed
Leonardo da Vinci
An enormous collection of writings and drawings by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci will go on public display for the first time in September, organisers said Monday.
The Codex Atlanticus contains a vast array of his work, from studies of bird flight to sketches of complex machinery.
The 1,119 pages of the collection, which he made between 1478 and 1518 and are housed in 12 volumes, will be displayed in the northern Italian city of Milan in 24 separate exhibitions.
Fifty pages will be displayed at each exhibition for three months, with the first display on September 10, and the final exhbition not taking place until 2015.
Leonardo da Vinci
Lawyer Says Charge Bogus
Joe Francis
Federal prosecutors brought trumped up charges against a Hollywood associate of "Girls Gone Wild" creator Joe Francis, two ex-sheriff's deputies and a jail worker to pressure them to implicate Francis in an alleged bribery scandal, a lawyer said.
Attorney David Houston said Francis, his client, was targeted by the FBI after Washoe County Sheriff Mike Haley told federal agents that his internal probe turned up allegations of misconduct at the end of 2007.
Francis was awaiting trial for nearly a year on U.S. tax evasion charges in Reno in 2007.
Prosecutors accuse Francis associate Aaron Weinstein, a video and marketing executive, of bribing the law enforcement officials, including former deputy Michon Mills, with money and gifts that included a Cartier watch and Oakland Raiders tickets in exchange for preferential treatment for Francis.
Joe Francis
Trial Set To Begin
Music Downloading
Lawyers are to begin formally presenting their case in a music downloading lawsuit filed by the recording industry against a Boston University student.
The industry accuses Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., of downloading songs and making music files available for distribution on the Kazaa file-sharing network.
Last month, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled that a Minnesota woman must pay $1.92 million for willful infringement of the recording industry's copyrights by posting music on Kazaa.
The industry has threatened about 35,000 people with charges of copyright infringement over the past five years, typically offering to settle shaking them down for $3,000 to $5,000.
Music Downloading
Missed Hearing
Kelsey Grammer
A man convicted of killing the sister of "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer in 1975 was denied parole Monday.
Freddie Glenn, 52, is serving a life sentence for the first-degree murder of Karen Grammer when she was 18.
Glenn won't be eligible for parole again until 2014, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti.
Grammer had planned to attend the parole hearing at a state prison in Limon, about 90 miles southeast of Denver, but rain caused him to miss a connecting flight, Sanguinetti said.
Kelsey Grammer
Merger Concerns
Ticketmaster/Live Nation
The proposed merger of ticketing giant Ticketmaster and Live Nation, the world's largest concert promoter, should be closely scrutinized by the Justice Department, according to the chair of a Senate antitrust subcommittee and 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday.
Sen. Herb Kohl, chair of the Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee, said the merger would combine Ticketmaster, the nation's dominant ticket seller, with Live Nation, which has its own ticketing business.
The deal has been criticized by superstar Bruce Springsteen, politicians like Senator Charles Schumer, and legions of music fans commenting in Internet chatrooms.
Ticketmaster/Live Nation
Double Derringer Auctioned
John Dillinger
A small pistol belonging to 1930s gangster John Dillinger has been sold at auction to a private collector for $95,600 -- more than double the pre-sale estimate, the auction house said on Sunday.
The Remington .41 caliber Double Derringer was said to have been found hidden in one of Dillinger's socks when he was arrested in Tucson, Arizona in January 1934, said Dennis Lowe of Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas.
According to affidavits, the pistol was given by the then Tucson sheriff to a probation officer and kept in the family until selling it in 1959.
The owner, who wished to remain anonymous, sold it because he was in declining health, Lowe said. It had been expected to fetch about $35,000 - $45,000 at the auction on Saturday in Dallas. A private Los Angeles collector made the winning bid of $95,600.
John Dillinger
In Memory
Merce Cunningham
U.S. choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham, credited by many with revolutionizing visual and performing arts, has died at age 90, his foundation and dance company said on Monday.
Cunningham, whose long-time partner was the late composer John Cage, died peacefully at home on Sunday of natural causes, the Cunningham Dance Foundation and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company said in a statement on Monday.
Born in Centralia, Washington, Cunningham trained in dance and theater at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and from 1939 to 1945 was a soloist dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company.
He formed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1953 and choreographed nearly 200 works for the company. Cunningham's work has also been performed by Ballet of the Paris Opera, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, and Boston Ballet.
Among the honors and awards given to Cunningham were the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Laurence Olivier Award in London and an Officer of the Legion of Honor in France.
He continued performing as a dancer into his 80s and has also worked in film and video, collaborating with filmmakers Charles Atlas and Elliot Caplan.
Merce Cunningham
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