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May 21, 2013
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 Bad Days for Newsrooms—and DemocracyPosted on Jul 21, 2008
By Chris Hedges The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print. All these forces have combined to strangle newspapers. And the blood on the floor, this year alone, is disheartening. Some 6,000 journalists nationwide have lost their jobs, news pages are being radically cut back and newspaper stocks have tumbled. Advertising revenues are dramatically falling off with many papers seeing double-digit drops. McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, has seen its shares fall by 77 percent this year. Lee Enterprises Inc., which owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is down 84 percent. Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, is trading at nearly a 17-year low. The San Francisco Chronicle is now losing $1 million a week. The Internet will not save newspapers. Although all major newspapers, and most smaller ones, have Web sites, and have had for a while, newspaper Web sites make up less than 10 percent of newspaper ad revenue. Analysts say that although Net advertising amounts to $21 billion a year, that amount is actually relatively small. So far, the really big advertisers have stayed away, either unsure of how to use the Internet or suspicious that it can’t match the viewer attention of older media. Newspapers, when well run, are a public trust. They provide, at their best, the means for citizens to examine themselves, to ferret out lies and the abuse of power by elected officials and corrupt businesses, to give a voice to those who would, without the press, have no voice, and to follow, in ways a private citizen cannot, the daily workings of local, state and federal government. Newspapers hire people to write about city hall, the state capital, political campaigns, sports, music, art and theater. They keep citizens engaged with their cultural, civic and political life. When I began as a foreign correspondent 25 years ago, most major city papers had bureaus in Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Moscow. Reporters and photographers showed Americans how the world beyond our borders looked, thought and believed. Most of this is vanishing or has vanished. We live under the happy illusion that we can transfer news-gathering to the Internet. News-gathering will continue to exist, as it does on this Web site and sites such as ProPublica and Slate, but these traditions now have to contend with a new, widespread and ideologically driven partisanship that dominates the dissemination of views and information, from Fox News to blogger screeds. The majority of bloggers and Internet addicts, like the endless rows of talking heads on television, do not report. They are largely parasites who cling to traditional news outlets. They can produce stinging and insightful commentary, which has happily seen the monopoly on opinion pieces by large papers shattered, but they rarely pick up the phone, much less go out and find a story. Nearly all reporting—I would guess at least 80 percent—is done by newspapers and the wire services. Take that away and we have a huge black hole. Advertisement When the traditional news organizations go belly up we will lose a vast well of expertise and information. Our democracy will suffer a body blow. Not that many will notice. The average time a reader of The New York Times spends with the printed paper is about 45 minutes. The average time a viewer spends on The New York Times Web site is about seven minutes. There is a difference between browsing and reading. And the Web is built for browsing rather than for reading. When there is a long piece on the Internet, most of us have to print it out to get through it. The rise of our corporate state has done the most, however, to decimate traditional news-gathering. Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., General Electric and Viacom control nearly everything we read, watch, hear and ultimately think. And news that does not make a profit, as well as divert viewers from civic participation and challenging the status quo, is not worth pursuing. This is why the networks have shut down their foreign bureaus. This is why cable newscasts, with their chatty anchors, all look and sound like the “Today” show. This is why the FCC, in an example of how far our standards have fallen, defines shows like Fox’s celebrity gossip program “TMZ” and the Christian Broadcast Network’s “700 Club” as “bona fide newscasts.” This is why television news personalities, people like Katie Couric, have become celebrities earning, in her case, $15 million a year. This is why newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are being ruthlessly cannibalized by corporate trolls like Sam Zell, turned into empty husks that focus increasingly on boutique journalism. Corporations are not in the business of news. They hate news, real news. Real news is not convenient to their rape of the nation. Real news makes people ask questions. They prefer to close the prying eyes of reporters. They prefer to transform news into another form of mindless amusement and entertainment. A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind. We are cleverly entertained during our descent. We have our own version of ancient Rome’s bread and circuses with our ubiquitous and elaborate spectacles, sporting events, celebrity gossip and television reality shows. Societies in decline, as the Roman philosopher Cicero wrote, see their civic and political discourse contaminated by the excitement and emotional life of the arena. And the citizens in these degraded societies, he warned, always end up ruled by a despot, a Nero or a George W. Bush. 
The World As It Is:Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress
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By jackpine savage, July 21, 2008 at 6:32 am Link to this comment
Yeah, it’s the worst damn shame that’s happened to this country. And Hedges nails it twice. First with the phrase “post-literate society” and second by pointing out the corporate nature of our news delivery apparatus. I can still buy the major daily that i grew up reading where i live now, but i don’t even bother. The front section now contains at least half advertising, the weather, and the obits…leaving precious little room for actual news. It has come to resemble a television news-cast in depth and breadth. My local daily isn’t good for much more than practicing editing skills, since they don’t, apparently, believe that spelling is important. And “news” includes someone catching a large fish.
So i have The Economist delivered…which at least keeps me sane. And for a conservative, foreign publication it covers more news than all the progressive “news” web-sites. (And as an added bonus, it is not completely Amero-centric…it is even willing to repeatedly admit that its editorial support for Iraq was a grave mistake.)
Report thisBy pro choice lib, July 21, 2008 at 6:30 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Where will all these laid off journalists and photo-journalists go?
Please start their own newspapers. I agree with the demise of “news” both print and TV/Radio. It sucks. If you want to know what is going on, you have to read foreign papers. But I wish someone would get the gumption to start their own local newspapers, anything to challenge the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. Yes, it’s a vacuum out there. There are hungry readers, like me. I refuse to buy into the “we’re all doomed because of corporate media” thinking. Someone start a paper.
Report thisBy Ed Harges, July 21, 2008 at 5:45 am Link to this comment
I subscribe to the NYT, but I must confess I don’t read it much any more.
Regular consultation online of news sources from all over the world long ago caused me to realize that the NYT is a propaganda organ that carefully tries to “manage” liberal opinion on war and the Middle East by masquerading as a “liberal” newspaper while serving as a disinformation conduit for Israel.
I haven’t stopped reading the my Times every morning because its printed on paper instead of glowing on a screen. I’ve stopped reading it because I know it’s largely a bunch of manipulative bullshit, and anything one reads there has to be vetted and researched heavily, in order to avoid being misinformed by it.
Report thisBy Sabagio, July 21, 2008 at 5:12 am Link to this comment
... in the past decade? Have you seen the early morning newscasts. Local news starts and ends with “if it burns or bleeds, it leads tales.” Then followed by the Triplets: The Today Show,Good Morning America and whatever CBS morning news hours calls itself these days. The Pattern and Practice of these 3 begins with 2 minutes of news, read solemnly, about what’s happening now that may or may not be germane to our collective Future. This is followed by topics of “interest” like putting on or taking off makeup, how to grill an avocado for breakfast, or scenes from the Floods of the Day. If its a slow news day, there is the reporting of the Dafur Genocide or Reminiscences of the Family Slaughter of the past, the contacting of the survivors to find out if they are still grieving or have “found closure” or “let go” or “moved on with their lives.” And on a very, very slow day, there are the revelations or updates of who of the cast has cancer and how they are doing while “bravely confronting” this terrible disease. What happens if they don’t “bravely confront” this disease?
And then there are the Odes to the Wedding Industry, with pseudo wedding planners shilling everything that The Modern Bride and Groom should buy or have or indulge in for the Great Day that will keep them in hock during their married life or when they divorce, split up the community property, or file for bankruptcy.
I think the defining moment of what today’s news outlets are all about these days, or at least for me it was, this weekend when there was a one-on-one discussion about the state of the American Stock Market and Economy. The NBC Honey interviewed the MNBC Business Honey. One was blonde and pretty. For diversity , I guess , the other was Asian and pretty. Both talked at an accelerated speed so as to get everything out that was relevant to explaining the complex nature of our economy and the cost of living in under 4 minutes tops. To maintain the interest of the men in audience, both women showed a lot of crossed leg in skirts that rose and fell with the questions.
Ah, America! Where dost thou go from here? More news shows that ask the question: “Are You(American Public) smarter than a 5th Grader?”
Sabagio Mauraeno, at 7 am with the first 4 cups of coffee to start the day
Report thisBy KISS, July 21, 2008 at 5:11 am Link to this comment
to have the false chronicles of the news or not to have these hypocrites at all? What passes for journalism is nothing more than sensationalism and pablum on the tube or in print.
Report thisI acknowledge that we need news but I think we do not need the news media we have at hand, today. I surly will not miss the New York Times nor the Miami Herald nor the Washington Post. These Icons died and quit publishing the news long ago. When journalist, a wrongful term, indeed, accept government hand-outs and corporate censored material why would we want to call this news or even to stoop to read this gibberish?
By JMCSwan, July 21, 2008 at 4:53 am Link to this comment
Excerpt from:
Meditations on Collapse
A review of Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
By Richard Heinberg
Reprinted from MuseLetter number 154 (February, 2005), http://www.museletter.com.
Civilizations collapse. That is the rule that we learn from history, and it is a rule whose implications deserve careful thought given the fact that our own civilization-despite its global extent and unsurpassed technological prowess-is busily severing its own ecological underpinnings. Thus we should pay close attention when Jared Diamond, one of the world’s most celebrated and honored science writers, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, devotes his newest and already best-selling book to the subject of how and why whole societies sometimes lose their way and descend into chaos.
Diamond uses his considerable popular nonfiction prose-writing skills-carefully honed in the crafting of scores of articles for Natural History, Discover, Nature, and Geo-to trace the process of collapse in several ancient societies (including the Easter Islanders, the Maya, the Anasazi, and the Greenland Norse colony) and show parallels with trends in several modern nations (Rwanda, Haiti, and Australia).
One theme quickly emerges: the environment plays a crucial role in each instance. Resource depletion, habitat destruction, and population pressure combine in different ways in different circumstances; but when their mutually reinforcing impacts become critical, societies are sometimes challenged beyond their ability to respond and consequently disintegrate.
The ancient Maya practiced intensive slash-and-burn horticulture, growing mostly corn. Their population increased dramatically, peaking in the eighth century C.E., but this resulted in the over-cutting of forests; meanwhile their fragile soils were becoming depleted. A series of droughts turned problem to crisis. Yet kings and nobles, rather than comprehending and responding to the crisis, evidently remained fixated on the short-term priorities of enriching themselves, building monuments, waging wars, and extracting sufficient food from the peasants to support their ostentatious lifestyles. The population of Mayan cities quickly began a decline that would continue for several centuries, culminating in levels 90 percent lower than at the civilization’s height in 700.
[Link to From the Wilderness, blacklisted by TruthDig, do search; or can also be found at Musesletter.com]
. ...
Why is the ... press grossly under reporting on the most significant issues of our time, i.e.:
overpopulation as a national security threat for all nations; population growth control as a national security issue;
family planning as a national security issue;
abortion as a national security issue;
implications of global warming for U.S. security;
the implications of legalized abortion and family planning for papal authority;
the relationship between the popes demand for open U.S. borders and the fact that 90% of immigrants are Roman Catholics;
the implications of the current immigration level for U.S. security and American democracy;
the Vatican influence on the American press;
the Vatican takeover of the Republican Party.
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Pope: ‘Insatiable Consumption’ Depleting Earth’s Resources
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Report thisBy DarthMiffy, July 21, 2008 at 4:13 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
By and large agree, sadly. However, I’m not quite ready to agree that internet users retreat into their like-minded ghettos. I can find my opinion and many others…I do go to sites that I can’t agree with.
Part of the difficulty is the sheer amount of information means the user has to select from a huge array, not just the local paper’s spectrum. About twice a month I buy a print newspaper.
Also, I’ll wager people spend less time on the NYT website than reading it is because we aren’t distracted by ads and turning the page and folding the huge, awkward thing.
I hope Mr. Hedges will next address what newspapers will DO in the near future…although it seems they’ve been bought completely and the “newspaper” is merely “news magazine.” Maybe it is too late, again.
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