Jon Stewart Laughs At Newspaper Woes: "What's Black And White And Completely Over?"

With major newspapers companies in turmoil, Jon Stewart dedicated his "Clusterf#@k to the Poor House" segment to newspapers.

"What's black and white and completely over?" he joked. "Give up? It's newspapers."

Stewart dramatically declared that "THE INTERNET!" — specifically Craigslist — has brought about the industry's demise.

"Online ads are cheaper, they receive wider distribution, and, perhaps most importantly, many newspapers still stubbornly refuse to post classified ads like, '57 Year Old Man looking for No-Strings-Attached Shemale Scat Gang Bang."

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Comments

[Simpletruthiness]

The problem with newspapers is that they keep shifting to be more for people who don't read newspapers. Less info more fluff,shorter articles. People who look to the paper to find out more are left wanting and next time just leave the paper on the stand.

[Charity]

bingo. i've been saying that for years. they have focused on hiring young inexperienced staff (who used to have to work their way up by starting with community papers, etc.) - AND - everything shifted on the pages to a "young" view. everything had to be hip, "now," and "with it," and "trendy," and....sho­rt, mcpaper articles for the attention-span challenged.

my statements for a long time about this - who the hell do they think their readership is? it's not the kids with the IPODS or the Macs. they don't read newspapers. it's those of us who are older, who grew up with newspapers, who actually like to read something on newsprint, who used to believe in the ideals of journalism. we no longer became relevant, we were ignored, we were not cultivated by the newspaper industry - either as readers or as staff. the thing is, we didn't die - even the oldest boomer among us has 20 or more years to go in this life, most likely more.

it's one thing to try to update an industry and make it more relevant to its readership. it's quite another to ignore a solid base of readers who actually read and have read your product for years. it's us who the industry turned off. it wasn't the young readers. they could have cared less, mainly because they didn't read newspapers in the first place.

r.i.p. newspapers. but you partially brought this on yourselves.

[brand X]

These are good points indeed. I hope you have shared them with your local paper(s) ... ?

[CrittersRTasty]

Well Said!

[bascombe]

when was the last time a story of the Iraq war made a headline? I meet and talk to many people who have family in the service, as do I. 4200 american dead. no mention outside of olberman, maddow and occasionally stewart. over 1 million Iraqis dead. no mention anywhere. I haven't bought a newspaper in thirty years.

Watergate was the last time this country has seen anything like journalism. the nytimes has not done anything involving journalistic courage since the ellsberg papers. not since noxin has there been much useful done by print media and certainly, the electronic media, radio and tv, were already in the tank since before the kennedy asassination.

have any of them covered the rampant protests against the 'bailout? did they even cover the protests against the stolen Florida vote?

they'l smell no less as corpses than they do as ongoing enterprises spewing lies and corporatist oligarchical propaganda.

[jamespatrick101]

What will the world line their bird cages with??

[SimJack]

Printouts of yesterday's blogs

[zizyphus]

One more thought- I agree the internet is the future, having usurped the role of papers, but- I see the day coming when the military will take over the internet again. For "security" reasons. Probably after there are 5-10 million unemployed folks marching on DC.

At that time, it will be more important than ever to have local newspapers. Subscribe to your local paper! And don't forget the little alternative papers! Support those, especially. They always provide the opposing views of the regular daily, which is generally owned now by some "media group".

[SaulBloodworth]

You are probably right

[SpaghettyIrish]

The paper where I live now puts out a front section with 6 pages. And upped its price by 50% in the last year. the local is never any larger. And now they're laying off newsroom staff, as announced in the last week, not that they could get anything right anyway. Glaring factual errors that looking at a map would fix.
To coin a word, my hometown paper has irrelevanted itself to death.

[SaulBloodworth]

If you print and distribute 1000 papers it's not substantially cheaper than printing and distributing 10.000 papers. Hence, if the circulation goes down, the costs go up. And to save money, publishers lay off staff.

[SpaghettyIrish]

I get all that. But the paper turned a profit before the cuts. How would you expect to regain circulation with a lesser yet more expensive product?

[IhaveaDREAMwhitegirl]

I love my Sunday NYtimes! If she goes I may donate my laptop to charity just to spite myself!

[apoliticalchick]

are newspapers really dead?
http://democralypsenow.blogspot.com/2008/12/rip-usnewspapers-doomed-to-extinction.html

[bascombe]

judy miller? rupert murdoch? william kristol?

[UberReaganite]

I think you all need to channel hop more. I hate Fox, but I watch it. Because I want to see what the crazies think too.

When you flip through the channels take note of exactly what is presnted and how. I think you will be surprised that the same exact news is being regurgitated and instead of making the difference with hard objective questions to bring in more detail all the stations do is slant the view their way and coddle or bash as required.

I need to watch the crazy lefties, then the crazy righties and then the international opinion just to get an objective view. Even then I find that what are many logical questions to me are never even asked nor are answers provided. It isnt just what you are fed that slants your view, its what you never see.....

[JonRaymond]

It's called agenda setting. The corporate media monopolies decide what the stories are and that's what everyone goes with. Not only should you look at different politically charged sources, but nations as well. The BBC always covers stuff we never see, like the Iraq body count, or stuff that bush is pulling while the US media is regurgitating the FBI talking heads on Illinois corruption. Check out AlJezeera to see their headlines - Iraq - you remember that war thing we have going? http://www.aljazeera.com/

[Cogitoe]

Granted news papers are way too slow for actual news reporting, their editorials are biased and non-interactive, sports and entertainment coverage are skin deep and classifieds are non-searchable, but I do need them for starting fires in my fireplace and for the puppy.

[kittyarmy]

I work at a local newspaper, which was bought by Dean SIngleton & Media News Group. We have seen similar occurrence­s-layoffs, decline of local coverage, increase of AP feed. As a reader who is stubbornly in love with paper, I still see a place for paper newspaper. I still can't take my laptop in the bathroom to read the news, or read it on the bus or while waiting at the dentist. And there remains some pleasure in being "offline". But I agree that the game has changed. The challenge newspaper face today is similar to the challenge faced by the music industry with the emergence of music sharing & MP3. They cannot operate on the same model they have used for years. Their current solutions have been to cut cost, in content as well as production. But I believe by cutting back on local coverage they actually abandon one of their advantages. National news can be easily obtained online from other news site, at at a much faster rate. So why compete with the many numbers of news sites and online papers out there offering the same content? A newspaper can offer the same AP stories and still play a significant role locally by covering local news and local issues in depth. Their ability to successfully adapt to the changing information field will be crucial. But I guess whether newspapers will be able to figure out what they need to survive or not remains to be seen.

[Charity]

netbooks and kindles can be taken into the bathroom - and on your bus. i was a journalist. i mourn for the loss of the paper you hold in your hand and read. but face it, the internet immediate delivery of information has changed everything. what bothers me the most, i think, is the ability newspaper staff of worm out corruption and hammer it day after day until something was done. nothing quite like huge headlines on your morning breakfast table decrying corruption down at city hall.

[SaulBloodworth]

The problem is, though, that these cheap AP stories subsidize the expensive corruption stories (that's at least how a newspaper is supposed to work). A paper solely filled with expensive stories would cost you, like, $20 per piece. There is advertising to soften that price, but advertisers don't like content critical of corporations.

[BBackSoon]

I saw a story on MSNBC a few months back and the most shocking thing I heard was most news comes from 3 or 4 sources. The NY Times, the LA Times and the Washington Post were all named. So when we lose the papers we will lose the last true reporters. We will still have the AP but they are beginning to dwindle also.

Now I have to admit I do not get a paper every day. It is simply too easy to find it on the web but it appears that someone will have to pony up to keep real reporters working. Do we make some of the news organizations non profits and do by-annual pledge drives?

The Fourth Estate must not be allowed to die. At the moment the internet while a good fact checker is not ready to take over these duties.

[SaulBloodworth]

That is true.

I once did some research about the wife of a New-York based media personality. If you google her name that will get you tens of thousands of hits. Only three of all these stories were originally reported.

One was in an Australian monthly magazine, the second one in The New York Times and the third one in The Wall Street Journal (and I doubt they would print it today)

[JeepRover]

I love my local paper, but I've got to admit since they lay-offs have started the local portion has all but ceased to exist. The national section is nothing more than AP feeds. I can get the exact some coverage from the internet for free and in less time and with less effect (or is it affect?) on the environment. Sad to say, I'm cancelling my subscription in a couple of days.

[UberReaganite]

No offense to the Boston Herald that did the right thing but how many times was this PROBLEM of church abuse brought to the attention of DOZENS of American papers and was quietly hushed? Why did it take DECADES for the American people to get an idea of the scope of this atrocity and why was it covered up for so long. I hate to hurt your feelings but the American media dropped the ball on that problem for DECADES and why? Each local paper and even the conglomerates of media are biased and protect local institutions like the clergy. You can’t deny this, the facts are there for all to see now. The papers and other media covered up this atrocity for DECADES so congratulations on your BREAKING NEWS that was decades or even centuries too late!

[DontJustFollow]

When a town had two papers, they usually went at each other with different political agendas, right?

When one of the papers went out of business, eventually half of the readership drifted away. It is understandable that the NYT went liberal, but with that string of bad press about contrived stories, the blatant agenda, and the internet - it and all the other papers were doomed.

The question really is, where are we going to get a replacement for our packing material, bird cages, cat boxes, floor coverings, fire starters, etc. delivered to our front door for only 25 cents a day?

[bascombe]

junk mail