"The few “full-time” journalists who still exist might as well all be clones and even if they wanted to make a splash and perform some important investigative work, they don’t have the time or newsroom help to do so."
------------
And the major issue is that they couldn't do this even if they wanted to, when "the big boss" doesn't approve. (which is basically always) The "journalists" who are in decline are the parrots. The journalists who keep expanding their influence are the ones here.
67 years old former newspaper junkie. I loved the ritual of reading the newspaper and drinking coffee the first hour of the day. Moved to Florida and started reading Florida Today and began to choke on the liberal propaganda. Our county is VERY conservative. Sent constant letters begging for balance. Gave up on them 10 years ago and they have all but withered and died. Dumb ass liberals they did it to themselves.
Same! I’m only 54 but remember spending good money on my local newspaper (The Leavenworth Times very small town) but a subscription every year when I had damn little money to burn and a son to support. I also bought the Sunday KC. Star and occasionally The NY Times bc I loved to do the crossword. I miss those days when the news was self inflicted and way more balanced. It seems like when they changed the size of the paper from the larger pages to the half-sized ones it all fell apart. That and the ease of picking up the iPad or the pc for up to date news has killed the newspaper. I still miss that morning ritual and still to this day can’t eat a meal without reading something!
I'm the same. I almost can't eat a meal without a newspaper in hand ... Or I used to be this way for decades of my life. Now, I never see or read a print newspaper. You make a good point about the page size continuing to shrink. That's "shrinkflation" in the newspaper business. You don't have enough space for many stories or longer stories.
At this very moment my wife is reading a paper print copy of The Epoch Times which circulates, in some form, in 35 countries. It travels all the way out to our little remote town. Might be the only copy in this liberal end-of-the-road happening.
The sections of this newspaper cover some nice headings with well written articles.
When reading is done, the paper quality makes great fire tender. Lights every time!
Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
I used to be a reader of The Montgomery Advertiser, The Mobile Press Register, and The Tuscaloosa News. Nice to see that they are still in print. Read The Alabama Journal also. Sunday editions were always stuffed.
Thanks Bill...keep your Substack journalism rolling on! We need it!
The Epoch Times is taking off ... by simply running important stories no other newspapers will. This ain't rocket science. Now, of course, I bet no big advertiser buys ads in that paper ... which is a tell about corporate America and their POV.
You know what? That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time. I don’t always remember to go to their site but enjoy their articles and documentaries. I think I’ll go subscribe. Thank you!
Oh sweet. She’s not as overt in her writings but I do like that as it leaves the reader to make their own conclusions. Very nicely done but didn’t know if you’d seen it.
This is undoubtedly very true. I literally have hundreds of clippings of my sons little league, high school AND college newspaper articles from the local rag. He graduated from college in 2012 and my grandmother religiously cut out every article. We found them all when she died in 2016 and it was truly a tribute for him to get those. It saddens me to know that I will not have that same privilege to do so for any of my future grandchildren. Unless things change! The way it’s going now it may well be that in 20 years we will have gone back in time to a more simple (and dare I say better) way of life. I can dream anyway right?
My first journalism job was as sports editor for my hometown Troy Messenger. When I wrote all those Little League stories (and high school team stories) and took all those pictures, I was always thinking about the fact this will end up in scrapbooks and be saved for decades. My mother did the same thing when I was playing youth sports. I'm proud that those two no-hitters I threw when I was 10 to 12 are saved for posterity! Or that my kids can know that Dad once scored 12 points against Brundidge in a junior high basketball game!
Lol right! I wish I was a prolific a sportsman as my son he certainly outshined us all. Speaking of your other interests have you read the substack from A Light to Trust Gain Off Unction? Some pretty interesting suppositions therein about exactly *where* that lab leak may have happened (especially considering how there are quite a few credible episodes of Covid right here in the USA way before the supposed leak occurred in china). Interesting read.
I eat at home with the iPad open and either Citizen Free Press (I read that article you referenced it was a good one) or Substack on the screen. At work I have to make due with my phone. My cousin hosts Saturday night dinner at her house every other weekend where I get to read her wonderful Missouri conservation magazines (free) or the free newspaper she gets (Green Acres I think it’s called ). It’s the only newspaper I ever see anymore and I read it front to back even though it’s mostly auctions and Platte County MO stuff. Very wholesome.
I think of the local athletes - from Little League through college - who used to get their name or pictures in the newspaper all the time. Those clips would end up on the refrigerator or in a scrapbook. Those kids aren't getting the coverage or positive feedback/thrill that kids of previous generations did. Our local college sports programs rarely get an article in The Montgomery Advertiser. In the past, the paper had one sports reporter who filed many stories about Troy college athletics every week. What's really sad is to go to press conferences (hosted by colleges or even politicians) ... and there's often not one reporter there (maybe one).
Our YMCA basketball team came in second in the state in 1961 and 1963. I still have the pictures, as well as some coverage of time at Camp Laney up in Mentone, AL, plus a variety of other memories of our family.
I hope those clippings go a long way down the line. Important for family.
My great grandfather walked home from Appomattox back in April, 1865. Got written up in The Montgomery Advertiser 50 years later. I have that piece also, plus other memories and histories.
Speaking of history...may it be maintained and told correctly!
When I was sports editor of The Troy Messenger (30 years ago), my publisher sent me to Rock Hill, SC for a week to cover the local Dixie Boys team that was trying to win a World Series (they did!).
A couple of years later I worked or a competing free newspaper and that publisher sent me to Massachusetts to cover Troy State's basketball team competing for a Division II national title.
I doubt any local publisher would spend that money today. However, I think the expense was covered by more subscriptions and advertising because the papers did cover those events.
I got a tip from Blacklock's reporter one day a few months ago and did some subsequent digging and determined the following.
First, the newspapers and TV are dying a natural death due to the rapid evolution of the Internet.
The internet is faster, up to the minute and more conveient than waiting for the 11:00 news. Even before that the money grubbing owners like Conrad Black would buy up papers then walk down the news room and fire every other reporter. Their goal was to fill the space between the ads with cheap news stories. Wire services did well, investigative journalism not so much.
In Canada successive Federal governments refused to bail out the failing major media until in 2018 the Liberal government suddenly reversed course and invited appx. 30 heads of major media to a meeting to divvy up over half a billion dollars in subsidies. Now the conservatives stated they would never support a failing MSM business, the NDP will never form the government so the only answer to stay alive and get more subsidies is for a news agency to support the liberals. Conveniently this timing in 2018 was a year before the 2019 Canada federal election. So the Canadian media was bought off and they are heavily biased.
In the US the MSM wrote articles to support their advertisers of course so during the plandemic they biased towards the Goverhment narrative and pharmaceutical companies (heavy advertisers).
However this is not enough to save them. Blacklock Report advises that of the Covid subsidies offered in Canada to the MSM, not all were used up as they were tied to staffing levels and staffing levels fell at MSM over the past year.
I read that in New York City the MSM is in such financial straits that they cannot pay their entry level reporters enough to live on. They need a side gig to make rent. Naturally the MSM are not going to attract the brightest reporters like they could in the 60s and 70s when newspapers paid better.
There you have my take on the problem of declining journalism amongst the MSM. However substack and people like Matt Tabbi have made a go of it independently. Thanks Substack!!!
"in 2018 the Liberal government ... invited appx. 30 heads of major media to a meeting to divvy up over half a billion dollars in subsidies. "
Then, come 2020 - and how 'bout that ?! (as the author says:) "there’s virtually no “watchdog” press watching over any powerful figures in government "
'Ya think? - I think the Liberal government had a plan. - knew what was up-ahead 24 months.
There is one kind of source that may be able to provide an important central function of watching for govt injustices, in spite of what's going on in broadcast print and media... I've got a one-page intro for a voluntary, democratic approach to doing this. Cheers, and glad to find your substack.
I recently canceled my subscription to our local paper after they published a series of fact-free hit pieces on local county administrators. It was nothing but innuendo and negative buzzwords, with no pertinent questions even being asked, much less answered. I wrote letters to the editor, but they didn't publish them. So I dropped them, and will never go back. The sooner they go out of business, the better.
There was a time, (before the internet was pervasive) that newspaper reporters could be as bristly and caustic as they wanted and ask questions no politician wanted to answer. Politicians had no other way to reach the general population other than print and 3 channels of TV to get re-elected so they grit their teeth and answered questions. Now, politicians don't need journalists to get their message out. The result is the journalist has to print what the politicians want them to say or their access is cut off and they are out of a job.
There is no watchdog press. The media cooperates with and perpetuates big narrative scams. That's why blogs and substack are so important. Newspapers are still twitching but are basically corpses.
The Baltimore Sun charges 99 cents per month to view it online. I won't pay it because they won't criticize politicians in Baltimore even though it is the most dangerous city in America.
I've been binge watching "The Wire," which I missed when it aired many years ago. The last season focusses on the Baltimore Sun and journalism. It would be interesting to compare and contrast the size of the newsroom depicted in that TV series from 20 years ago ... to today.
If you want a one-sided shiz show, check out Forbes. If you’re lucky to get a story by Bruce Y. Lee, let’s just say, it’ll be wrong info. He pushes the narrative in an arrogant, rude, & kind of elitist sort of way. He writes an article on Graphene Oxide that’s a perfect example.
( “of course, it’s not in the vaccines”, you idiot!) He’s wrong, but convincingly confident.
We have had to become investigational journalists, just to get to the truth. It’s exhausting or was.. before Substack.
So many are perfectly accepting of medical studies that are orchestrated & completely corrupt & flawed, ONLY because they are the first 12-20 studies they see when they Google search. 🙈 C’ mon people! Really??!!
Hack newspapers are disappearing is a better title for the article. This is at once good news and a recognition of how technology has opened up the dissemination of information.
"The few “full-time” journalists who still exist might as well all be clones and even if they wanted to make a splash and perform some important investigative work, they don’t have the time or newsroom help to do so."
------------
And the major issue is that they couldn't do this even if they wanted to, when "the big boss" doesn't approve. (which is basically always) The "journalists" who are in decline are the parrots. The journalists who keep expanding their influence are the ones here.
Precisely
Let them all rot in perdition.
67 years old former newspaper junkie. I loved the ritual of reading the newspaper and drinking coffee the first hour of the day. Moved to Florida and started reading Florida Today and began to choke on the liberal propaganda. Our county is VERY conservative. Sent constant letters begging for balance. Gave up on them 10 years ago and they have all but withered and died. Dumb ass liberals they did it to themselves.
Same! I’m only 54 but remember spending good money on my local newspaper (The Leavenworth Times very small town) but a subscription every year when I had damn little money to burn and a son to support. I also bought the Sunday KC. Star and occasionally The NY Times bc I loved to do the crossword. I miss those days when the news was self inflicted and way more balanced. It seems like when they changed the size of the paper from the larger pages to the half-sized ones it all fell apart. That and the ease of picking up the iPad or the pc for up to date news has killed the newspaper. I still miss that morning ritual and still to this day can’t eat a meal without reading something!
I'm the same. I almost can't eat a meal without a newspaper in hand ... Or I used to be this way for decades of my life. Now, I never see or read a print newspaper. You make a good point about the page size continuing to shrink. That's "shrinkflation" in the newspaper business. You don't have enough space for many stories or longer stories.
At this very moment my wife is reading a paper print copy of The Epoch Times which circulates, in some form, in 35 countries. It travels all the way out to our little remote town. Might be the only copy in this liberal end-of-the-road happening.
The sections of this newspaper cover some nice headings with well written articles.
When reading is done, the paper quality makes great fire tender. Lights every time!
Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
I used to be a reader of The Montgomery Advertiser, The Mobile Press Register, and The Tuscaloosa News. Nice to see that they are still in print. Read The Alabama Journal also. Sunday editions were always stuffed.
Thanks Bill...keep your Substack journalism rolling on! We need it!
The Epoch Times is taking off ... by simply running important stories no other newspapers will. This ain't rocket science. Now, of course, I bet no big advertiser buys ads in that paper ... which is a tell about corporate America and their POV.
You know what? That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time. I don’t always remember to go to their site but enjoy their articles and documentaries. I think I’ll go subscribe. Thank you!
Oh sweet. She’s not as overt in her writings but I do like that as it leaves the reader to make their own conclusions. Very nicely done but didn’t know if you’d seen it.
This is undoubtedly very true. I literally have hundreds of clippings of my sons little league, high school AND college newspaper articles from the local rag. He graduated from college in 2012 and my grandmother religiously cut out every article. We found them all when she died in 2016 and it was truly a tribute for him to get those. It saddens me to know that I will not have that same privilege to do so for any of my future grandchildren. Unless things change! The way it’s going now it may well be that in 20 years we will have gone back in time to a more simple (and dare I say better) way of life. I can dream anyway right?
My first journalism job was as sports editor for my hometown Troy Messenger. When I wrote all those Little League stories (and high school team stories) and took all those pictures, I was always thinking about the fact this will end up in scrapbooks and be saved for decades. My mother did the same thing when I was playing youth sports. I'm proud that those two no-hitters I threw when I was 10 to 12 are saved for posterity! Or that my kids can know that Dad once scored 12 points against Brundidge in a junior high basketball game!
Lol right! I wish I was a prolific a sportsman as my son he certainly outshined us all. Speaking of your other interests have you read the substack from A Light to Trust Gain Off Unction? Some pretty interesting suppositions therein about exactly *where* that lab leak may have happened (especially considering how there are quite a few credible episodes of Covid right here in the USA way before the supposed leak occurred in china). Interesting read.
Can you provide a link? The "origination" question is really what most interests me with all my "early spread" research and reporting.
I eat at home with the iPad open and either Citizen Free Press (I read that article you referenced it was a good one) or Substack on the screen. At work I have to make due with my phone. My cousin hosts Saturday night dinner at her house every other weekend where I get to read her wonderful Missouri conservation magazines (free) or the free newspaper she gets (Green Acres I think it’s called ). It’s the only newspaper I ever see anymore and I read it front to back even though it’s mostly auctions and Platte County MO stuff. Very wholesome.
I think of the local athletes - from Little League through college - who used to get their name or pictures in the newspaper all the time. Those clips would end up on the refrigerator or in a scrapbook. Those kids aren't getting the coverage or positive feedback/thrill that kids of previous generations did. Our local college sports programs rarely get an article in The Montgomery Advertiser. In the past, the paper had one sports reporter who filed many stories about Troy college athletics every week. What's really sad is to go to press conferences (hosted by colleges or even politicians) ... and there's often not one reporter there (maybe one).
Our YMCA basketball team came in second in the state in 1961 and 1963. I still have the pictures, as well as some coverage of time at Camp Laney up in Mentone, AL, plus a variety of other memories of our family.
I hope those clippings go a long way down the line. Important for family.
My great grandfather walked home from Appomattox back in April, 1865. Got written up in The Montgomery Advertiser 50 years later. I have that piece also, plus other memories and histories.
Speaking of history...may it be maintained and told correctly!
When I was sports editor of The Troy Messenger (30 years ago), my publisher sent me to Rock Hill, SC for a week to cover the local Dixie Boys team that was trying to win a World Series (they did!).
A couple of years later I worked or a competing free newspaper and that publisher sent me to Massachusetts to cover Troy State's basketball team competing for a Division II national title.
I doubt any local publisher would spend that money today. However, I think the expense was covered by more subscriptions and advertising because the papers did cover those events.
I agree. They slit their own throats.
Ever read the Tampa Bay Slimes, 'er Times?
I got a tip from Blacklock's reporter one day a few months ago and did some subsequent digging and determined the following.
First, the newspapers and TV are dying a natural death due to the rapid evolution of the Internet.
The internet is faster, up to the minute and more conveient than waiting for the 11:00 news. Even before that the money grubbing owners like Conrad Black would buy up papers then walk down the news room and fire every other reporter. Their goal was to fill the space between the ads with cheap news stories. Wire services did well, investigative journalism not so much.
In Canada successive Federal governments refused to bail out the failing major media until in 2018 the Liberal government suddenly reversed course and invited appx. 30 heads of major media to a meeting to divvy up over half a billion dollars in subsidies. Now the conservatives stated they would never support a failing MSM business, the NDP will never form the government so the only answer to stay alive and get more subsidies is for a news agency to support the liberals. Conveniently this timing in 2018 was a year before the 2019 Canada federal election. So the Canadian media was bought off and they are heavily biased.
In the US the MSM wrote articles to support their advertisers of course so during the plandemic they biased towards the Goverhment narrative and pharmaceutical companies (heavy advertisers).
However this is not enough to save them. Blacklock Report advises that of the Covid subsidies offered in Canada to the MSM, not all were used up as they were tied to staffing levels and staffing levels fell at MSM over the past year.
I read that in New York City the MSM is in such financial straits that they cannot pay their entry level reporters enough to live on. They need a side gig to make rent. Naturally the MSM are not going to attract the brightest reporters like they could in the 60s and 70s when newspapers paid better.
There you have my take on the problem of declining journalism amongst the MSM. However substack and people like Matt Tabbi have made a go of it independently. Thanks Substack!!!
Thanks for those great thoughts. They all ring true to me!
"in 2018 the Liberal government ... invited appx. 30 heads of major media to a meeting to divvy up over half a billion dollars in subsidies. "
Then, come 2020 - and how 'bout that ?! (as the author says:) "there’s virtually no “watchdog” press watching over any powerful figures in government "
'Ya think? - I think the Liberal government had a plan. - knew what was up-ahead 24 months.
Journalism has always been dead, since the 1960s at least.
The messengers/couriers life is/has always been at risk.
The truth is that we are all the purist idealization of “journalist” when we stand and speak the truth.
There is no audience for the truth though.
The truth is that;
1-the purpose of news is to sell advertising/propaganda.
2- the purpose of advertising/propaganda is to finance ‘news’.
The definition of advertising/propaganda is persuasive writing to illicit beliefs and actions.
Political activism masquerading as journalism is causing journalism to die. Credibility is gone. The free press has been hijacked.
There is one kind of source that may be able to provide an important central function of watching for govt injustices, in spite of what's going on in broadcast print and media... I've got a one-page intro for a voluntary, democratic approach to doing this. Cheers, and glad to find your substack.
https://markgmeyers.substack.com/p/introduction-to-a-democratic-approach
I recently canceled my subscription to our local paper after they published a series of fact-free hit pieces on local county administrators. It was nothing but innuendo and negative buzzwords, with no pertinent questions even being asked, much less answered. I wrote letters to the editor, but they didn't publish them. So I dropped them, and will never go back. The sooner they go out of business, the better.
In this interview, Seymour Hersh mentions the state of journalism over the past 60 plus years. https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-02-21-hersh-on-how-dumb-this-leadership-was.html
There was a time, (before the internet was pervasive) that newspaper reporters could be as bristly and caustic as they wanted and ask questions no politician wanted to answer. Politicians had no other way to reach the general population other than print and 3 channels of TV to get re-elected so they grit their teeth and answered questions. Now, politicians don't need journalists to get their message out. The result is the journalist has to print what the politicians want them to say or their access is cut off and they are out of a job.
It isn't dying. It is dead. It committed suicide.
There is no watchdog press. The media cooperates with and perpetuates big narrative scams. That's why blogs and substack are so important. Newspapers are still twitching but are basically corpses.
Four great sentences there! I could have cut my story from 1500 words to 30 with your post.
The Baltimore Sun charges 99 cents per month to view it online. I won't pay it because they won't criticize politicians in Baltimore even though it is the most dangerous city in America.
I've been binge watching "The Wire," which I missed when it aired many years ago. The last season focusses on the Baltimore Sun and journalism. It would be interesting to compare and contrast the size of the newsroom depicted in that TV series from 20 years ago ... to today.
The media seem to thrive when censorship is public, its rules explicit, and an individual is responsible for it.
That is the case in Singapore and China, whose media are thriving and whose readers overwhelmingly trust what they publish.
If you want a one-sided shiz show, check out Forbes. If you’re lucky to get a story by Bruce Y. Lee, let’s just say, it’ll be wrong info. He pushes the narrative in an arrogant, rude, & kind of elitist sort of way. He writes an article on Graphene Oxide that’s a perfect example.
( “of course, it’s not in the vaccines”, you idiot!) He’s wrong, but convincingly confident.
We have had to become investigational journalists, just to get to the truth. It’s exhausting or was.. before Substack.
So many are perfectly accepting of medical studies that are orchestrated & completely corrupt & flawed, ONLY because they are the first 12-20 studies they see when they Google search. 🙈 C’ mon people! Really??!!
Hack newspapers are disappearing is a better title for the article. This is at once good news and a recognition of how technology has opened up the dissemination of information.