Matt Wuerker for January 02, 2020

Whether or not we like the idea, the truth is that most people no longer want to read a newspaper, and this is a death-spiral, because the fewer readers there are, the less they can afford to pay good reporters, the more they have to charge for the daily edition, both of which result in fewer readers.

Instead, people are getting their information from other sources: the TV “news” was first, but of course there’s the whole internet thing too. This is somewhat like the era when newspapers were being invented: Some newspapers took great care to tell the truth, some took care to present a viewpoint, some were purely for entertainment. There are two differences:

1: Things then moved very slowly compared to today. Social changes that we deal with from day to day or month to month took months and years.

2: The internet is “immediate” in a way that even face to face communication never was, much less newsprint. We seek… and get… instant feedback from not one or two but dozens or hundreds of people. Ask any actor, musician or comic whether applause is a drug. Now, we can all be addicted to it.

I do think that if we survive this era we will create new ways of interacting that serve us as well as newspapers once did, with as little (and as much) distortion as they once gave us. The key, imo, is to keep our thinking as sane as possible so that we have a real chance to survive this apparent chaos.

I have little hope we will.

I read two newspapers everyday and do the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink.

We are in a supposed information age, and ignorance grows more robust with the passing of each source of the printed word.

It’s the media, not the medium – and yes, I know one is the plural of the other. It is possible the blight began that long ago. But the underlying causes are many. The decline of the middle class and the rise of ignorance, the birth of inner net mass media and the machinations of a few who have the means to own this country and lack the moral imperative not to do so. It’s called moral imperialism. And it has nothing to do with integrity.

It is the result of corporate MBAs concentrating on the bottom line without any knowledge on how bottom line is generated.

They’re out of business because of the electronic age, much like brick and mortar stores….closing @ a rapid rate in the last 5-10 years. Also I have to say that the media needs to report ALL THE NEWS and stop political correctness just so certain people and or groups are not hurt and getting their way.BOO HISS

And WHERE are we all getting our comic strips this morning???

I happen to live in a small town that only has a WEEKLY newspaper. Published on Thursdays only.

According to a guest on the PBS NewsHour yesterday, on average, print newspapers got 80% of their revenues from ads and classifieds. Ads have gone to social media and classifieds to Craig’s List. This, in addition to the other factors as listed by commenters here, have pretty much nailed the coffin lid down.

And, yes, when I watch tv news, I do watch the PBS NewsHour, called by some the “Snooze” Hour—I guess because nobody screams at us or each other.

They used to say the “pen is mightier than the sword” but it is no match for social media and government sponsored propaganda from cable news.

It’s neither helpful nor illuminating to dwell with uncritical sentimentality on the passing of newspapers – which, thankfully, are at no immediate risk of extinction. I’m a fan and consumer exclusively of print and radio journalism. I’ve never had any respect for TV network news, and so don’t watch it. (The closest I get to TV reporting is PBS’s Frontline. But when it’s staffed by the likes of Lowell Bergman, what’s not to respect.)

I also admire the Fourth Estate’s general willingness to reexamine how it functions in the paperless age. Newsprint press is incredibly expensive to operate, and it’s inherently polluting and wasteful, not only the printing process itself, but distribution, too. On the other hand, the advantages of paperless print journalism are numerous, and there are hundreds of existing outlets demonstrating they can successfully sustain themselves through a combination of subscriber fees and display advertising, just as they always have. But they’re also prepared to reach outside that comfort zone for support. My own local daily, The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), just recently has started funding a special investigative reporting unit through grants from non-profit organizations.

Sure, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I miss the old days when the N&O felt like my family, where I had actually cultivated personal relationships with some of its reporters, editors and photographers on account of how closely the paper interacted with its surrounding community. But there’s much to be said in favor of concentrating, to a limited extent, reporting and editing resources in the hands of fewer print outlets that have broader geographical coverage. Many community newspapers that have fallen by the wayside over the last two decades were little more than social media themselves, just in paper form, serving largely as outlets for the occasional check on local authority gone off the rails, but mostly as …

As if anyone gives a damn.

Washington state voted for Dems. The Seattle Times often supports Republicans.

The Seattle Times is always losing readership, so they made their sports section bigger.

When we told them we were going to unsubscribe because it was more sports than news they cut a third off our price.

The decline every year in the number of newspapers actually printing hard verifiable news is disheartening. TV news is more attuned to sound bites and personal bias. FOX almost-the-news is one of the worst purveyors of slanted, misguided snippets of gossip.

Don’t y’all ever get tired of all those people talking at’cha and talking at’cha? And all those flashing screens with their millisecond changes and no time to process what you’re seeing and hearing? Don’t you start to feel as if you are being manipulated up the kazoo?

And that’s the way the Politicians Want it.

Heartbreaking! I pay for Digital access to 2 newspapers

I stopped buying our local newspaper years ago. The paper costs $1.00 per day and the Monday paper doesn’t have even enough pages to line the bottom of a bird cage. Their editors can’t even catch grammar errors or misspelled words. When someone write a letter to the editor that is in support of the left, it doesn’t make it to print. Say something about how the paper is run, same thing. Our news paper is a joke, a sad joke. Nothing like it was 25 years ago.

Have you seen the new Sign in front of City Hall?

It reads: “Just Trust Us”.

The Dallas Morning News is on its way. Less and less everyday.

I stopped reading my local paper (The Tennessean) because it was crap.