A campaign executive for Gavin Newsom's governor's race said I was "scraping the bottom of the barrel" when I posted a photo of the mayor's green recycling bin in connection with a column about the city's new mandatory composting regulation. Point and shaky pun taken.
But, despite my own best lowly efforts, the New York Times reports today that "Newspapers Have Not (yet) Hit Bottom" of the yowling plunge the profession's been in for several years. I don't know if that's good news -- that there is a bottom somewhere from which we presumably will bounce or creep up like the economy in general -- or just a smack in the face of last week's Rupert Murdoch/stock market optimism that deep cuts, vertiginous circulation price hikes and successful prayer services for ad revenue to stop sinking so drastically have finally meant some newspapers are back making a buck. Or a lot closer to it than they were a few months ago.
Other trends are looking potentially juicy to the parched army of worried journalists. Atlantic blogger and media star Andrew Sullivan makes a digital ask for his readers to buy subscriptions to the paper version of the Atlantic and he gets almost as many people signing up in two days for what usually takes a month. Such powerful pitches from big name brands "may be the future of print" says Mediaite.com.
Future?! Print!? We haven't heard those words used together very often lately. And certainly not on a Web site. Can all those death march stories be wrong? Maybe the imaginary black border around Jim Romenesko's must-read media blog -- with all the negative stories or angry, pyrrhic defenses of newspapers -- is turning a brighter shade of grey.
So, just when profit seems to be staging a more improbable comeback than Britney Spears, along comes Barack Obama supporting tax breaks for newspapers that are structured as NON-PROFITS. Come on. The President must like ironic timing. Or is he trying another socialist sleight-of-hand here?
There's already a bill in Congress that addresses this possibility, and there's so far been no Obama support for it. But with the way he monopolized the morning show broadcast window yesterday, maybe the government wants to exercise that kind of regulation of newspaper news in return for surrendering profit and paying less tax.
Which would at least mean they care, always a good sign in any relationship. And I'm for supporting journalism, even if it takes a vote in Congress to get there. (I sit on the board of a journalism nonprofit, the Center for Investigative Reporting.)
Mr. Obama says he's a "newspaper junkie," which is good for traditional newsrooms; more people than we thought are still slapping that vein for ink on paper; that's why readers are willingly shelling out higher prices. But is he hiding some kind of Nancy Reagan-style "Just Say No" campaign behind that non-profit offer?
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Fawn Germer: Asinine Lessons From the Dish Room
Not long after he left his job as executive editor of Sky magazine for Delta Airlines, Bailey sent me an e-mail: "Did I tell you that I'm going to start work as a dishwasher in a fancy French restaurant?"
This is beginning to feel a little like before the Iraq War when some warned of impending disaster and the administration and mainstream media blew them off.
Mike Doyle: The Day Michael Miner Killed Commentary
Miner's less than well-meaning suggestion to dispense with commentary and turn Chicago's columnists into service-oriented seat-warmers for journalists was nothing short of cowardly.
By 2013 he will cast them loose, no longer necessary. In any case it's a band aide, the next Republican president will shut the valve his or her first day in office.
Remember to stick to Religion and drop the darned Truth!
Today's Government Service, er, Public Service Announcement has been brought to you by New Minds For the New Age.
Besides, it wrong if the White House bails-out newspapers. (1) Because it will be with taxpayers money (youra and mine). So is the White House gonna bail-out every mom-and-pop store? Every retail franchise? And so on. (2) Its unfair (influence) and undemocratic. It only stands to reason, any newspaper bailed-out by this White House will tend to be Pro-White House on all the issues.
I realize that the advertisers are far more important than the subscribers which is why the ratio of ads to news keeps increasing and to make sure the big advertisers don't get upset, a lot of important stuff the should be above the fold on page 1 is relegated to the rarely read areas. But who am I to tell papers how to run their business.
But while newspapers figure out what went wrong and to do next, don't worry about us. We get our news online and there's plenty of other stuff to line the bird cage with...like the phone books we get getting dropped at the door.
Now people will pay for news like the Wall Street Journal. That content informs people of actual facts and data that people need to do their jobs.
All of this is just free market speaking. You can see from radio and print what sells and what doesn't.
The Wall Street Journal is owned by Murdoch. That's where you'll find yellow journalism.
Sure, the NYTimes prints errors once in a while--who doesn't--but I find it hard to believe you're calling the WSJ "actual facts."
Are you being serious?
If you had said Barrons I would have believed you.
They understand that regardless of the content of the editorial pages, an investor paper (or magazine in this case) needs to print "just the facts," in the news stories. Otherwise investors lose money because of biased stories not including all the facts, and then find another more accurate news source.
The WSJ is soon joining other papers bought by Murdoch as republican papers that lose money.
If the Government holds the keys to papers sinking or swimming . . . this isn't good.
Basically, if you change a newspaper from a for-profit to a non-profit, there will be tax breaks. Non-profit papers are less vulnerable to being bought out for partisan gain or propaganda, so it should be a win-win.
Of course, most foundations and non-profits tend to be left wing, but that is simply explained.
Left wing board members try to support the organization and keep it going.
Right wing board members try to figure out how to steal the principle of the organization and put it in their own pockets.
So long running organizations either are run by the left, or broke.