Desperation strikes old left wing guard in Media

Newspapers, which have for the last several decades gone downhill, both financially and regarding quality, are desperate. They know that a Federal, or State bailout isn't going to happen. The people didn't like it when we bailed out the Automakers, they're starting to turn on the Porkulus Bill, and the News industry knows they won't support a News corp bailout.

So now, the Newspapers are desperate enough, and they hope the people are dumb enough, to ask for an anti-trust exemption from Washington. In other words, the Newspapers want to become the Robber Barons of yesteryear. 

In an online exchange with his paper's readers this week, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller pointed out that "there is a diminishing supply of quality journalism, and a growing demand. By quality journalism, I mean the kind that involves experienced reporters going places, bearing witness, digging into records, developing sources, checking and double-checking, backed by editors who try to enforce high standards. I mean journalism that, however imperfect, labors hard to be trustworthy, to supply you with the information you need to be an engaged citizen. The supply of this kind of journalism is declining because it is hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work." 

Keller said the best evidence of the soaring demand is that websites that do "dependable" reporting are winning readers; he noted that the New York Times' website gets nearly 20 million unique monthly visitors. "The law of supply and demand," he said, "suggests that the market will find a way to make the demand pay for the supply."

But the problem isn't supply and demand, you charge for the paper, and could charge for the online content. The problem came when you tried it, twice now, and a vast majority of the people refused to pay to read. Then your monthly visitors, which interestingly enough is less than Rush Limbaugh reaches in a week, and when you consider that in a week, Drudge Report has another twenty five million hits, you have to realize that your loyal readership, is about nil. 

Since the Newspapers won't change to embrace a journalistic style that is desired by the marketplace, fair and ballanced reporting, then the mainstream media is going to fall by the wayside, victims of their own inability to evolve in the changing marketplace. Like other extinct species of history, Reporter Liberalallis will one day be found only in History texts.