The Death of Newspapers

The newspaper business is in a state of collapse, undermining the very health of democracy in America in ways that I shall explain. From a financial standpoint, the fatal problems of newspapers are well known, having begun with the encroachment of web-based advertising on crucial sources of revenue, most particularly classified ads. Adding to this problem is the death spiral of brick-and-mortar retail, a failure that has all but killed the big display ads that used to spread across two full pages. Newsprint and delivery costs have soared as well. The result is that newspapers can no longer afford to cover the news. This is true not only for small papers with circulation of less than 50,000, but for big metros such as the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News and the San Francisco Chronicle; and for newspapers with national or international reach, such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. All have dramatically downsized, not only in width and thickness, but in the resources they allocate to covering even the most important stories.

Unfortunately, in an appalling number of instances, important stories are no longer being covered at all. I speak with first-hand knowledge, as the anecdotes below will attest. I was the state editor of a midsize paper myself, working for seven years at the Atlantic City Press after graduating from college in 1971. From my vantage point in the newsroom, I saw close-up how my employer’s uncritical coverage of New Jersey’s dawning casino era ultimately led to the ruinous decline of a city that used to be called the ‘Queen of Resorts’. The Atlantic City Press was a weak advocate for the town, and casino operators seized on this to make their own rules.

Why Atlantic City Died

Atlantic City could have used a strong advocate, since, at the time, many of its political leaders, including two former mayors, were in prison. With no political oversight, carpetbaggers from Las Vegas (Steve Wynn having been an admirable and honorable exception) descended on the town, building Boardwalk hotels that hindered or blocked access to the city’s beautiful beaches. They tore down hundreds of cozy rooming houses of 1930s vintage, erecting in their stead gargantuan, charmless  parking structures a block from the beach. They even took the most valuable piece of real estate on the island – the intersection of Boardwalk and Park Place, of Monopoly-board fame  – and ran an elevated mechanical walkway across it. The town became a glittering slum, and the only way to revive it now would be to nuke the place and start over with those great beaches, renowned for having the finest, softest sand in the world.

I first realized that local corruption, even on a massive scale, had dropped off the news media’s radar about twelve years ago. At the time, I was attempting to blow the whistle on a major scandal tied to a $5 billion construction project in a big coastal city. An insider source had explained to me in detail how the general contractor had low-balled its bid, then soaked the city for cost over-runs and add-ons that tallied into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Few cities have the expertise to guide or challenge the biggest contractors when such deals are shaped, and both parties are usually in cahoots anyway. In the not-too-distant past, however, it would have been the job of hard-nosed reporters to level the playing field to make sure taxpayers didn’t get screwed too badly. Not anymore.  I called a few top reporters who worked for big-circulation papers, but none of them would touch the story.  I didn’t even try to shop it to the local paper, since, like every other big-city purveyor of news, they weren’t about to bite the hand that fed them.

Although this attitude has always inhibited coverage to some degree, editors’ aversion to scandal involving local businesses has become entrenched over time as successive economic downturns over the last fifty years have taken their toll on cities.  When they were richer, advertisers ruled in such matters, even to the point where one of them got an especially tenacious reporter transferred from his city hall beat to the boondocks. The reporter, a friend of mine who’d won a Pulitzer for investigative work, was the last impediment to rampant corruption in this city, which is widely known as one of the worst-run in America. After the reporter was “relocated,” the mayor and his political cronies had free rein to do what comes all-too-naturally to many politicians – i.e., lie, cheat, steal, and glom as many perks, favors and bribes as they could.

The Stench of ‘Privatization’

More recently, in my neck of the woods, Coloradans caught the stench of a highway privatization deal too late to do anything about it. U.S. Highway 36, once a turnpike tollway, has been free to travelers since the 1960s. However, the consortium of six companies currently expanding it secured a 50-year contract to collect tolls of up to $28 on one of three lanes for the 58-mile round trip between Denver and Boulder. Not only that, any town along the way that builds a new road will put Colorado on the hook to reimburse the projects’ bondholders for “poached” traffic.  There was some brouhaha over this sweetheart deal’s brazen lack of transparency, but by the time the controversy hit the newspapers at the eleventh hour, CDOT was able to diffuse criticism with just a few press releases.

Privatized roads are the wave of the future, and it’s a scandal in itself that with all the  road taxes we pay – on gasoline, tires, auto registration, etcetera – the states are too broke to build roads on their own. When privatized highways come to your neighborhood, don’t look for the press to sort out the details, since the only news they can afford to gather will come directly from the contractor’s flacks and the highway lobby.

It is not just financial problems that have ruined newspapers. Most of them have all drifted well to the left politically, unbalancing coverage so that the news media has all but ignored the biggest, most putrid scandal of them all: Obamacare. One of its chief architects, an MIT professor named Jonathan Gruber, has been caught on video saying that the plan was designed to hide the massive transfer of wealth – we’re talking about the largest tax ever enacted by Congress — that the Affordable Care Act required. Gruber said the ruse worked because of the “stupidity” of Americans.  In another video that was recorded at a conference a few years ago, he even explained how the Massachusetts health plan he’d helped craft was funded in large part by tricking the federal government into paying for it.  Democrats from Pelosi on down, lying through their teeth,  are saying “Gruber who?” But unless you get your news from Fox, you wouldn’t have heard of Gruber either, since the mainstream media has completely ignored the story thus far.

A Drift to the Left

If the choice comes down to reporting a political scandal that reeks to high heaven or ignoring it because it might harm one’s political allies, even the best reporters are increasingly making the wrong choice.  One of them is a dear friend, a West Side NYC liberal who earlier in her career was rated “outstanding” by Forbes MediaGuide.  Only six others received this designation, which implies not only that they are “pacesetters for the entire news media” but that their work “consistently provides fascinating insight, and  magnificent…provocative writing.” My friend blogs on healthcare issues these days, but when I first met her 25 years ago she would have been mad as hell at the way Obamacare was being executed, if not at the concept of universal healthcare, and eager to rip the plan to shreds one legally sordid detail at a time. Far from it, there is no mention of Gruber on her website, nor even of the Constitutionally crucial issue, soon to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, concerning whether healthcare-plan subsidies are legal in the many states that did not set up exchanges.

Despite all this, I am optimistic that the business of gathering and reporting news will regenerate itself once it has decoupled from the exorbitant fixed costs of brick-and-mortar operations. The driving force will be the public’s insatiable demand for news, particularly local stories. Entrepreneurs will find ways to exploit the fact that it’s possible to cover events and issues in a city of 100,000 online with four crackerjack reporters and one news-savvy managing editor.  Jettison newsprint, printing press operators, truck deliveries and editorial offices, then outsource copy editing and photography. Hire high-schoolers and wives of wrestling coaches to cover sports, since talented, sports-savvy stringers can be had for less than it costs to hire blues musicians.  At this point you will have reduced the cost of putting out an interesting and very readable newspaper to perhaps $600,000 a year – a very small fraction of what it costs to operate, to take one example, the laugh-out-loud-bad Boulder Daily Camera, my local paper.

  • tommyd November 21, 2014, 3:45 am

    Rick – I agree with everything you say. In fact, met a lady recently on a trip that said her husband, an MD was voluntarily retiring from his private practice because of unnecessary skyrocketing costs imposed upon him and his clients, among other issues. My only contention is this is an intentional eventual bankrupting of the private insurance industry, eventually forcing one and all onto a gov’t health care program that we all know has the earmarks of ‘medicine from hell’ for those needing medical attention. I recently spent 3 years getting over a motorcycle accident(and yeah duhhh, I got another one already) and let me say other than the two weeks emergency attention I received at the U of Miss Med Center, Jackson, Miss. my health care out here in Idaho was very, very lacking for not wanting to use more appropriate words expressing how I really felt about it. I now know how cattle shoved thru an auction yard must feel! In my experience, skyrocketing costs and collapsing quality of care may/will be the new norm for ‘the unwashed.’

    Perhaps you are right, the law will not stand, wrongs will be righted and all is well that ends well. Personally I do not see our congressional eunuchs stepping in to unravel this satanic mess along with all the other messes they themselves have created(border issues, lack of SEC criminal oversight, on&on&on etc.) and imposed upon us ‘the unwashed,’ since aca is all part of an overall plan not just a ‘one of’ screw up. Plus they themselves, our illustrious eunuchs representing us, are not subject to aca mandates, as far as I know.

    I could really get negative on the possibilities of our future our health care but thought I would just cover the optimistic parts in this post!!!

    &&&&&&

    Having said Obamacare will be repealed, I am reminded by your post that there may in fact be no alternatives, since, as you have surmised, the medical care system has been wrecked — intentionally — by Obama, Pelosi and Reed. What this implies for Baby Boomers is that their healthcare future looks more like — heaven help us! — a limping, bankrupt Medicaid than the bounteous system that has supplied titanium hips and knees, triple bypasses and heroic cancer care in unlimited quantities to the Greatest Generation.

    The only solution I can conceive of that could save healthcare would be physicians uniting to boycott third-party payments. Hang out a shingle that says “The Doctor Is In. We Take Cash,” and they have reduced their operating costs by 50% or more, a saving that could greatly reduce patient bills. The main impediment to this would be the hospitals, which are tied even more closely to Obamacare socialism than the doctors. Physicians without hospital privileges are dead ducks, but the hospitals need them more than they need hospitals. RA

  • Jason S November 20, 2014, 5:49 pm

    Rick,

    Do you see a point where the DCCC comes to the major news papers’ rescue and just subsidizes them like they do CNN and MSNBC?

    &&&&&

    What is DCCC? RA

  • Dave November 19, 2014, 10:29 am

    Gotta Love Lou Dobbs!

    Democratic Party trying to cover up Gruber-gate with denials?

    http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/lou-dobbs-tonight/index.html#/v/3896198461001

  • mava November 19, 2014, 7:04 am

    I found it entertaining that you’ve used the information gleaned (but not requested) from “claptrap” to make a correct conclusion about “N Y Times et all”. I always enjoyed good old western humor like that.

    • Rick Ackerman November 19, 2014, 9:43 am

      The New York Times continues to disgrace itself, extending a tradition that stretches back to the 1930s and 40s, when Walter Duranty filed fawning dispatches from Stalinist Russia and the Holocaust went virtually unmentioned on the front page. Search the Times‘ website and you’ll find that, as of November 19, the Grey Lady’s coverage of Grubergate has consisted mainly of letters to the editor, most of which are uncritical of Obamacare itself, and oblique editorial commentary, including a bizarre news round-up explaining how to mix a ‘Red Cross’ cocktail.

  • Malcolm McIntyre November 19, 2014, 5:47 am

    Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off.

    Nice piece of writing Rick. Mish Shedlock had a good post on Obamacare http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/grubergate-obama-caught-lying-about.html – it does rely on Fox News.

    • Rick Ackerman November 19, 2014, 9:33 am

      Thanks for the link. I posted the following in response:

      Obamacare will not survive because its huge costs, even at this early stage of implementation, are already crushing the broad middle class. The burden is so large and hits so many households that the fight for repeal transcends politics. Problems with the rollout will grow exponentially worse when the employer mandate kicks in. Fortunately it won’t come to that, since subsidies will be dead when the Supreme Court weighs in on Halbig v. Burwell. Regardless of what Congressional Democrats ‘intended’ — i.e., that subsidies be available to everyone — they cannot coerce the states to make this a reality. Gruber has laid bare the fact that Obamacare [would attempt to mask] the largest tax increase ever enacted by Congress. The public can no longer be fooled into thinking that it is insurers who will pay it. Even the unions will line up solidly against Obamacare, because its endgame, by design, is to phase out healthcare as a tax-free benefit to employees.

      • tommyd November 19, 2014, 11:15 pm

        rick – you could be right with your optimism, but aca is doing just well imho, accomplishing what it set out to achieve in great satanic detail, and nothing less. I would be surprised if the devastating financial/bureaucratic/pharma affects upon the middle class populace is repealed in any way, shape or form by our betraying congressional eunuchs.

        “The public can no longer be fooled into thinking….” Along with the Boulder/Denver toll road bamboozle you mention above, it is amazing how the public is being forever fooled in broad daylight. Been going on for decades now….

        Thanks for the good read today….

        &&&&&&

        The law simply will not stand, Tommy. The Humana notice I received canceling my family’s coverage is similar to letters already received by tens of millions of households. My new plan will cost nearly twice as much as the old one, but with a much higher deductible and greatly reduced coverage. The entire middle class is in the same boat, or soon will be. The Obamacare catastrophe will grow exponentially when companies big and small decide they can no longer afford to offer healthcare coverage to their employees. It may not come to that, however, since the U.S. Supreme Court could easily overturn subsidies in 27 states that did not set up exchanges.
        RA

  • Rick Ackerman November 18, 2014, 6:18 pm

    The Gruber scandal continues to grow nastier by the day, even if the Mainstream Media remains three days behind Fox — and even then, with softball stories that assiduously avoid conveying the immensity of this scandal. The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page, to its credit, has been catching up with it, even if the news-page editors still have their heads up their butts. Here’s a terrific expose — ‘Another Obamacare Deception’ — that ran op-ed yesterday. It beautifully frames their heads up the financial-fraud aspect of the ACA’s passage: click here.

    I have spared you Gary Liebowitz’s leftist/statist/socialist claptrap by continuing to ban him from this forum. He has tried to harangue me nonetheless via emails that would purport to show that the New York Times et al. are on top of the story. Nothing could be further from the truth. Their coverage to date has sought only to shore up the case of the liars and would-be-deceivers who have attempted to ram Obamacare down America’s throat.

    • mava November 18, 2014, 10:04 pm

      ROTFLMAO

      • Rick Ackerman November 18, 2014, 10:10 pm

        Could you spell out this acronym?

      • mava November 19, 2014, 7:00 am

        Yes, I am sorry, I was under impression that this is well known.

        ROTFLMAO = Rolling On The Floor Laughing My A** Off.

  • Frank November 18, 2014, 5:45 am

    We still get the morning paper even though delivery is limited to Wed, Fri and Sun. I don’t even look at the editions but my wife must have her puzzles. Old habits are hard to break. I have 4 children with growing families and none subscribe to a paper. Anything they wish to know is available from their iPhones and the info is instantaneous. The handwriting is on the wall “death to newspapers”.

  • Bc November 17, 2014, 11:26 pm

    I just follow individual Twitter accounts. By vetting individuals for their integrity I’m able to build my trust in them as individuals. They tweet links that they trust and that works for me. I read a lot of great content this way.

    • Neil November 18, 2014, 7:14 am

      I’ve not heard of getting news that way. Care to share whom you follow?

  • Oregon November 17, 2014, 9:55 pm

    Like the brown paper bag at the grocery store, the newspaper will survive. How else will people start fires?

    I don’t subscribe to any newspaper, but I’m happy to collect from my parents, and do end up reading most of it before I light it on fire.

  • Traveler November 17, 2014, 7:23 pm

    I haven’t subscribed to a delivered newspaper in at least 15 years, ever since I discovered I could get enough of my news off the internet. Really don’t understand how they manage to stay in business. But yes there is a real need for quality reporting everywhere. Lots of blog-based journalism out there, some of it is actually pretty good, but most of the time, it isn’t a self-sustaining venture. Along those lines, I wonder if any enterpreneurs are trying out your proposed business model.

    Seems to me the only newsprint subscribers left must be the old folks who like a real newspaper with their morning coffee. Many in the elder generation of my family are like that. The conservatives among them are well aware of the bias in the reporting but still gotta have that morning paper. What happens when they pass away?

    Regarding Denver’s Highway 36, I’ve stayed near there twice in recent years, July, 2013 and a couple of weeks ago. I did business in Broomfield and Westminister in 2007-09 so my first reaction last year was why are they messing this up? Seems to me like progress is real slowwwww. The Sheridan Blvd interchange is still a mess, for instance. Looks like classic milking the state for overrun money. Too bad they’re turning this back into a toll road, remind me to skip it on my next stay in the area.

  • Rantly McTirade November 17, 2014, 5:05 pm

    But of course the newly empowered Stupid Party(aka the Republicrat side of the coin) doesn’t(and won’t) take the one step that will kill Clowncare-saying, in unison, ‘on day one of our new majority we WILL repeal the individual mandate in Clowncare(and, as a warning shot to the power grabbing judiciary, saying ‘we’re reviewing whether to impeach John Roberts for his corporatist stooging that kept Clowncare moving along’) They won’t because they’re in the pockets of the insurers, pharma, hospitals, etc., as much as the Demopublicans, and they’re just as lazy, hence the lack of smackdown on the judicial branch. No, they’re too worried about looking ‘mean’, and ‘divisive’ if they attack the Obozo’s crapping on the value of citizenship by crushing his ‘ we luvs wetbackers’ maneuvers.
    Meet the new boss……

    • Rick Ackerman November 17, 2014, 11:59 pm

      Considering the Gruber revelations, it’s hard to fault Chief Justice Roberts for legally categorizing Obamacare as a tax. All of us who are paying for it in flesh sensed that was true from the beginning, but Gruber has made it official.

      Those Republicans who think dealing with Obamacare means repealing the medical devices tax should be flogged for being so spineless. And anyone who thinks the ACA WON’T be repealed doesn’t understand how incredibly much financial pain Obamacare will visit on the broad middle class in the months ahead.

      Did I mention that MY family plan was just canceled by Obamacare, and that its replacement — which includes maternity care for my 57-year-old wife — will cost me an extra $550/month? This is the kind of pocketbook issue that transcends politics, and it is why Obamacare is doomed no matter what the weak-kneed politicians and editorialists are saying.

      • John Jay November 18, 2014, 2:48 am

        Rick,

        The Corporations learned their lesson well after the S+L Scandal saw successful prosecutions and prison for the perps.

        Long story short, they hired the Government, and their lobbyists now write our laws to enable Peak Looting.
        Obamacare is just the latest incarnation of that looting. Other examples? The F-35, TARP, Student Loans, Medicare, just throw a dart at a list of Government Programs!

        Just look at the Supreme Court now, its members chosen for their susceptibility to blackmail, no doubt.
        I never thought I would live to see the day I would look back with nostalgia at the Earl Warren Supreme Court!

    • mario November 18, 2014, 2:06 am

      Seems at least Time is willing to explain the ACA garbage fairly and clearly here:

      http://time.com/3583526/the-truth-about-gruber-gate/

      Cheers, Mario

      &&&&&&&&

      Let ‘Time’ magazine ‘explain the ACA garbage’? ‘Time’ epitomizes what we disparagingly refer to as the Mainstream Media, and I would no more trust them to ‘explain’ the Gruber affair than I would Rachel Maddow. The MSM is not only staying a good three days behind Fox on this developing story, what they deign to report is strictly softball stuff that conveys nothing of the stench of the epic scandal that is Obamacare.
      RA

      • Redwilldanaher November 18, 2014, 5:40 am

        Sorry Mario, unless I missed the sarcasm, Time has become a joke just like everything else. I’m with Rick .

      • mario November 18, 2014, 3:52 pm

        Er um I get your point guys… Try reading THAT article… Apparently an exception to the rule…

    • mava November 18, 2014, 10:08 pm

      There is no difference between the left and the right, unless you are one of them. From where I am, there is none. Just like there is no difference in whether I am going to be hit from the left or from the right.

      It is amazing to me that this simplest abuse setup (good cop – bad cop) is still working on most people.

  • Neil November 17, 2014, 9:29 am

    Revelations by German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, in his book “Gekaufte Journalisten”, that German mainstream media is controlled by the CIA, have really angered the German people. They are abandoning not only the mainstream print media, but also the associated websites, in huge numbers.
    http://russia-insider.com/en/germany_politics_ukraine_media_watch/2014/11/07/11-10-08am/germans_abandon_major_news_sites_anger
    Here’s another quote from Mark Twain: “A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.”
    Learning that their newspapers are not reporting the news as it is has made the German people mad enough to do something about it.
    The collapse of American mainstream media can’t happen soon enough.

  • Dave November 17, 2014, 7:55 am

    “But unless you get your news from Fox, you wouldn’t have heard of Gruber either, since the mainstream media has completely ignored the story thus far.”

    Newsprint backroom politics may be easier to cover-up but internet speed and social media are key to changing that.

    Twitter is the biggest newsfeed aggregator out there. If you’re a news junkie like me and crave immediate gratification at any time, you can (news) feed your addiction and follow upto 200o media outlets of all types to keep updated 24×7. Impossible to do with newsprint and magazines especially when you’re culling latest news from worldwide sources. The good ol’ days of waiting at the newsstands at midnight for the night owl editions of next day’s papers are long gone.

    Current Fox Business anchor Melissa Francis, BA Economics/Harvard, a former child star best known for her role on Little House on the Prairie, and former CNBC reporter claims CNBC brass “silenced” her 4 years ago when her on-air interview questioning of Obamacare funding were viewed as “disrespecting the office of the President. ”

    BOMBSHELL: Melissa Francis ‘Silenced’ by CNBC for Criticizing ObamaCare

    “In the shocking clip that has picked up major traction on social media, Francis explains that she is not surprised by the lack of media coverage of “Grubergate” because many liberal media outlets are all too happy to help the architects of ObamaCare cover up the truth.”

    http://insider.foxnews.com/2014/11/16/bombshell-melissa-francis-says-she-was-silenced-cnbc-criticizing-obamacare

    Howard Kurtz, Washington journalist, “critically” reviews topical media coverage on his Fox show Media Buzz, spoke with Melissa Francis which aired today. Click on 11/16 video link “Fox anchor: CNBC silenced me” for her story.

    http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/media-buzz/index.html

    You shouldn’t be shocked, maybe disgusted, CNBC responds in a condescending tone “A CNBC rep said, “That’s laughable, but we take notice, because as the fastest-growing network in prime time, we’re always on the lookout for high quality comedy writers and actresses.”

    Melissa Francis: CNBC scolded me for criticizing ObamaCare

    http://pagesix.com/2014/11/14/melissa-francis-cnbc-scolded-me-for-criticizing-obamacare/

    • John Jay November 17, 2014, 4:40 pm

      Dave,

      Even live TV news shows are dying.

      “The Weather Channel tweeted, “Thank you, @weatherchannel viewers. The week of 10/6, WUWA outperformed CNN, and during the week of 10/20, outpaced MSNBC, CNBC and CNN.”

      Personally, I love the Weather Channel.
      Aside from their obligatory Global Warming/Climate Change segments, there is no politics or propaganda, just interesting weather stories.

      • Dave November 17, 2014, 6:36 pm

        JJ,

        I saw that on Twitter 😉 Should be a good week for TWC as we are hit by early arctic cold.

        TV news shows may be dying but local coverage has expanded in AM and PM hours, over 5 hours, 4am to 7am, 4pm to 6:30pm in NYC. Maybe the public wants more factual, less opinionated news.

        CNN is still trying to reinvent itself. Out with Piers Morgan on issues like gun control, in with Anthony Bourdain, a foodie.

        Jeff Zucker Has Endured Cancer, Hollywood, and Being TV’s Wunderkind. So Why Not Take on CNN?

        http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/endurance-of-jeff-zucker-cnn.html

  • John Jay November 17, 2014, 5:59 am

    There are many reasons for the demise of old fashioned newspapers.
    Here are the main ones I can think of:

    The rise of the internet provided an alternative to both news seekers and advertisers.
    News junkies can get instant access to breaking stories without waiting for the morning paper.
    If you are searching for a house to buy today, it’s Realtor.com etc., not the classifieds.

    A pronounced bias in favor of the Government agenda.
    The L A Times runs endless sob stories about illegal aliens, with no stories about the problems they cause.
    Every time they run such propaganda the comments section runs 10 to 1 against them.
    They are oblivious to this fact, and do not take any corrective action.
    So, over the course of time, they lose more and more subscribers.

    A continuous decline in the overall intelligence of the American populace.
    Sports and Celebrity Worship trumps everything else now.
    As Dan Rather expressed it, “Dumb it down, tart it up.”
    Sports and Celebrity Worship are primarily visual stimulus, so it’s TMZ, NFL Pre Game shows, and Reality TV.
    Reading is too much work!
    When I was growing up, NFL players all had regular jobs in the off season, they did not get paid stunning salaries to play a child’s game.
    That is ancient history now!
    As one article I read complained, “Who do Americans admire, a cardiac surgeon, or a neurosurgeon, who save lives everyday? No, they are enthralled by a professional Quarterback!”
    Go figure!

    It is all just another signpost on our path to Zombieland!

    • mava November 18, 2014, 9:55 pm

      100% ditto what JJ says above!

  • roger erickson November 17, 2014, 5:17 am

    Death of feedback is what kills coordination in any system.

    Since the newspaper biz model is dying, that just means that there’s a need to get better/faster/wider market, social and cultural feedback via other methods.

    Agreed, adequate new methods haven’t appeared, yet there’s no going back. The newspaper model never was scalable – hence all the anecdotes about leaving readers misinformed vs informed. That inadequacy has now been laid bare for all to see. Readers are voting with their feet.

    What new methods for distributed adequate feedback will emerge? Who will champion those methods? That pot is still boiling.

    As always, it’s an interesting time to be alive.

    • mava November 18, 2014, 10:25 pm

      True. Nobody views it from an engineering standpoint. There can’t be any feedback. Here is why.

      Currently, I think you can agree that there is a drive to “communise” the system, (easier to abuse, and therefore the people are dumbed down, so that they are not capable of knowing the difference).

      Technically, what is happening when system is communised is that it becomes much more inter-connected. This complicates and overloads any existing feed-back loops. It is for this reason (diminishing SNR in feedback loops) that the communism does not work above the relatively limited systems, such as the family, or the wider relative circle, or a hunting clan, etc).

      Property rights, freedom, pay-per-use, limited government – all these serve to ground all the individual cells of a system so that the needed feedback is not drowned in an unnecessary noise.

      If you can’t pay for yourself, and there is no one willing to voluntarily support you, – then there is no reason to exist, – used to be the rule that kept the machinery free of obstruction, loss of power, friction losses.

      I would also say, that unlike RA, I do not consider this to be fixable. (I think RA thinks this is cyclical and will return to the mean, but, of course, I might be wrong).

      It is near impossible to restore a system, once it is allowed to start self-destructing. This has only been done on “Restoration Projects”, meaning that the system was either frozen or died. Never on a live system. There is no hope. This is why all empires must die.

      &&&&&&

      I don’t think the system can be fixed, Mava. The lies and popular delusions that are keeping it afloat run so deep that they have become terminal. It will take a full-blown depression to eradicate the most popular delusion of all — that we can borrow our way back to prosperity. RA

  • gerold November 17, 2014, 3:50 am

    Good riddance to the ass media. What Mark Twain said about newspapers applies to all forms of media; “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read it, you’re misinformed.”

    I once subscribed to half a dozen print news media. Today I get my news from the alternative news media (alt blogs). Yes, 90% of it is crap, but that’s better than 100% of the ass media crap.

    http://geroldblog.com/2013/03/17/real-news-alt-news-blog-links/

    &&&&&&

    Twain also said that the hand of God reaching into the mire could not elevate the very best journalist to the depths of degradation. RA

    • mario November 18, 2014, 1:32 am

      Napoleon: “I fear newspapers more than 100,000 bayonets.”

  • Andy Gutterman November 17, 2014, 3:40 am

    I think the primary cause of the decline is the decline in readership. Growing up I remember reading The Stamford Advocate during the week, every day, and the NTY on Sunday. The whole family read the paper.

    Today I read the local paper seven days a week. What I like about it is it presents both sides of the story, not just the right or the left. My wife and I are the only ones in our extended families that still read the local paper.

    Multiple this across the land….

    Andy

  • No Way Jose November 17, 2014, 2:51 am

    Reporters are expensive – so they are easy targets for cutting back – but the lack of good reporters is what is killing newspapers. A newspaper has to have content that is not the same thing you find the day before on the Internet. Another thing many newspapers do wrong is to cover what ‘happened’, instead of what ‘will happen’. And finally, newspapers should be the ‘go to’ place for on line classified ads – but they seem clueless on format and pricing for those ads.

    &&&&&&

    Great reporters are a glut on the market; it’s their editors that suck. Content’s a problem though, for sure, since 80% of the “news” you read on the web has been ripped off from the dwindling number of sources who initially reported it: Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg et al. RA

  • Charlie November 17, 2014, 2:39 am

    In June 2012, the Fort Worth Texas Star Telegram worded a story about a policeman who gunned down a border collie who was facing away from him. The story was worded so as to imply the shooting was not more of an incident than stepping on a bug. My family had been subscribers since 1961. I stopped the subscription and told them they were stupid to offend most people and were idiots to be drilling holes in their own hull. They then turned telemarketers loose on me. I explained “I don’t want your newspaper if it’s free.”

  • Tom November 17, 2014, 2:30 am

    Pleasure to read your commentary as always, Rick. Great to see the term ‘free rein’ spelled correctly too – it’s about a horseman, not a monarch…

    &&&&&&

    Oh geez, I meant “free rain” — the stuff that falls from the sky (except, these days, in California). RA

  • Squire Danaher November 17, 2014, 1:54 am

    All roads lead to serfdom. The cowards and sociopaths in the “media” really helped make it all possible. If the pitchforks ever come out I hope that the Ezra Klein’s of the world are the first to meet up with the farmhands.

    I thought so-called liberals were for the little man. Where’s the outrage from them? Apparently they only care about the frog’s habitat and not the frog after all…

    http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2014/11/20141115_serfdom.jpg

    • Rick Ackerman November 17, 2014, 5:10 pm

      Regarding the graph you’ve linked, workers who live long enough may get to see the tide of investment shift from capital back to labor. That’s the demographic destiny of Europe, Japan and many other countries whose birthrates are falling far shy of replacement rates.