I SAID ‘NOT REDUCIBLE TO’ - I DID NOT SAY THAT THEY ARE
NOT INVOLVED IN THE CLASS WAR!!

Damn, you made me use the caps.

My disagreement was with your statements forcing the
issue through a ‘class war’ filter, as though there
could be nothing else valuable about newspapers beyond
the question of whether or not they fight for the right
side in this war. Life can’t be reduced to a battle
between polarities.

Oh, okay.  So what part of the media are not involved in the class war?  The crossword puzzle?

Anyway, you missed my point, which was not about the undoubted fact that the traditional media have been major class-war players, but that they have been uniform culturally, the positions they took in the class war being just one aspect of this uniformity, something only to be expected given the structures of their ownership and control.  Back in the day, there just wasn’t that much difference between them, although up until the 1970s some Southern papers allowed themselves to be overtly racist.

‘does not reduce to’ not ‘not involved in’.

Media aren’t involved in the class war?

Plenty of rich and influential people have promoted Leftist causes. Also, ‘the voice of the city’ does not reduce to ‘some Socialist representation’ nor even to ‘diversity in politics’. Papers have scope and importance beyond class war as does the life of a city.

I agree however that they’ve typically been in a deplorable state and far too pleased with themselves, even before the recent decline.

The mainstream press has been fairly uniform.  For instance, at a time when there were 2000 daily newspapers in the United States, not a single one of them was socialist.

One can hardly expect those with the means to own newspapers to publish material which is contrary to their beliefs, or hostile to their interests.

Hmm, seems a little dogmatic; I don’t think it’s all one thing. If it was so tightly sewn up by money-power there’d be nothing more to talk about and no means to say anything.

I can see that the homogenization of culture might be less interesting aesthetically than the former mosaic of local peculiarities, but the class interest and the politics are the same: the traditional mass media are owned and operated by capitalists and primarily reflect the views and interests of their owners, regardless of size.  They are not the voice of anything but established wealth and power.

@Anarcissie: I take your point about newspapers not being categorically ‘the voice of the city’ but there’s a grain of truth in here still. The newspaper-men of a city know the city and can keep its citizens informed on local wheeling and dealing; when the coverage becomes consolidated and bland there’s that much less close scrutiny of power at a local level.

Again: I know it was never great, but it can still get worse. And a (relatively) healthy paper can have some beneficial symbiosis with that nebulous thing ‘the voice of the city’, whatever that exactly is.

Spin is manufactured.

News happens.  No matter who it embarrasses, uplifts, condemns, or just generally informs.

News is truth.

Spin is not the truth.

Is there someplace where truth (News) can still be available - other than the Internet which gives you both?

Does anyone see a day when truth many not be available without first being picked over?

In other words, the only truth to be published will be that which supports an agenda?

The “free press” has been censored to death, misreported, underreported and nonreported events which bolster the official government views has killed it, the wound is self inflected and fatal.

The people vote with their wallet and are tired of being fed pablum by the censors.

Advertising is where the money is.  Or was.  Considerably more money is necessary to publish a physical newspaper than to put up a web site.  The deterioration of the non-advertising part of the newspapers occurred because publishers were hunting for an audience among those who don’t normally read.

I have often wondered if anyone could identify the day of inflection, that threshold day when “Spin” officially became the “News”.

@ Queenie

Appropriately said.

In light of your post I should admit that my previous post was composed with ‘cynicism on full’.  You highlight historical trends that, if we are fortunate, will not be completely overlookied.

I find that the degradation of media that has taken place over the recent decades is extremely apparent if one listens to rebroadcasts or recordings of politically themed radio shows from earlier decades.  I’ve heard replays of what were daily/weekly broadcasts from the ‘60’s and been blown away by how they compare to the current fare on offer.  Of course the sophistication and in your face honesty of Fox News is a stand-out exception….

In our little town here in Maine we are witness to the same thing happening. Those of us old enough to remember what a newspaper meant watch with sorrow the death of our local voice. Newspapers have become like McDonald’s. Homogenized, pasteurized and sanitized to death.

When newspapers decided to become a cheerleader for the Chamber of Commerce (local or federal) or a cheerleader for war and corporate power instead of serving the people in their communities, they began their death march into oblivion.

Deciding to go after ad revenue (whoring) instead of subscription revenue (wiz bang reporting) has been their fatal mistake. No “product disparagement” and no reporting on rotten businesses like Walmart because they received advertizing dollars and to hell with good old-fashioned muckraking.

It has been a long death with much suffering. so much so that the younger generations can’t tell the difference between a living, vibrant newspaper and the corpse it has become.

I lived thru a newspaper war.  There were two papers to begin with - One Republican, one Democrat.

There is no longer any progressive voice to hear.  The winning warrior allows only the Conservative Gospel to be spread.

When a Newspaper dies, we all lose a little life.

Would we all gather at our keyboards if only the Conservative Gospel was allowed be heard?

Save a tree. All those editions sounds like a lot of carbon in the atmosphere. Thank goodness for computers!

To understand all the bemoaning the dying of the press
is to partly understand the Boomer generation.  They had
some good shit going and they’re sad it is no more. 
Sniff sniff…

AS IF!!  BACK IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS..

As if the press was accurately reporting the reality
underlying our imperial nature, our sponsor of
terrorism, our oppression of peoples around the globe in
ongoing wars for resources and resource control.  As if
the press wasn’t complicit more often than not.  As if
the few major challenges to power offered by the press
were not only simply ‘few’, but far between and on a
broader level ineffectual.  As if consolidation of the
press hasn’t been going on for decades.  As if the
nature of the discourse hasn’t been devolving for
similar decades. 

As if?

As if there ever was a “free press”.

Can’t get your baseball scores in print from one of
numerous additions in a day?  Cry me a river. 

Wake up boomers while you still have some genuine power. 
Power that has been kept hidden from you, in large part,
by afternoon editions and baseball scores.

Saying that a newspaper is the voice of a city is called a ‘delusion of reference’, I believe.