[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY6k50qB4Ys[/youtube]
At a Tuesday rally marking the demise of the print edition of the Seattle P-I (and the bulk of its newsroom) Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat showed solidarity with his fellow journalists, telling them “It’s not your fault.” You didn’t create the Internet, Westneat assured his fallen colleagues, and you didn’t destroy the business model that had long supported print media.
And on one level, Danny’s absolutely right. The P-I’s staff isn’t out on the street due to anything they did wrong, and they certainly didn’t lose their long struggle with the Times because they produced an inferior product. Hearst blinked first; had they not, it could have been Danny being consoled by friends Tuesday evening rather than the other way around.
“The Seattle P-I may be going out of business, but the Times is an equally troubled company, and possibly even more troubled,” said Alan Mutter, a former newspaper editor and Silicon Valley chief executive who writes the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog.
But on another level, Westneat’s elegy is consistent with a profound sense of denial that seems to afflict the entire news industry, and is crippling its efforts to effectively respond to dramatic changes in technology, economics and consumer tastes. Yeah, sure… the P-I’s collapse isn’t the fault of its former staffers, any more than the dedicated, industrious craftsmen of the buggy whip industry can be blamed for their own economic displacement a century before, but to merely fault the Internet or a broken business model misses a larger point: newspapers are losing subscribers and advertisers because they have not been giving customers what they want… at least, not something for which they are willing to pay a high enough price to sustain current operations.
And I hate to get all Adam Smith-y on my friends in the newspaper biz, but isn’t that the way the market is supposed to work?
I’m sure it is comforting to blame Google and Craig’s List or even the woeful mismanagement of your corporate overlords (the Times’ own finances would not be nearly as precarious if Frank Blethen had not over-leveraged the family business to finance his ill-advised invasion of their ancestral homeland), but for all the chatter about business models, I’ve seen very little self-examination amongst working journalists about reimagining the product itself. I’m not talking about layout or redesigns or ink versus electrons, but actual, you know, words. I just don’t hear much talk from journalists about reevaluating their devotion to the sort of flat, objective, personalityless, dispassionate prose that has long made the news pages of the Times and the P-I virtually indistinguishable from one another… and nearly every other major daily.
Don’t get me wrong; I love newspapers. As a child of Watergate I grew up worshipping journalists as heros. But by golly, much of what we read in the papers has always been godawful boring, even when the subject matter is not. Forget for a moment all the brainstorming about new ways to present, distribute and monetize journalism, and focus instead on the reporting itself. Surely there’s more than one way to cover an event, and more than a little room for even the best reporters to grow as writers, but there’s been almost zero innovation in terms of the craft of reporting since the beginning of the J-school era. Tastes have changed, but the daily newspaper most definitely has not.
Let the business model brainstorming continue, but in the meanwhile editors need to give, and reporters need to embrace, the freedom and encouragement to innovate both in substance and style. For if you simply keep pushing the same-old, same-old in the face of market rejection, at some level, at least partially, it really will be your fault after all.
I know where local editors can find a J-school trained liberal propagandist who will work for lettuce and stock options in oilfield supply companies.
I know where local editors can find a J-school trained liberal propagandist with a unique and easily recognizable writing style who will work for lettuce and stock options in oilfield supply companies.
I reposted #1 because Goldy’s edit function isn’t working this morning. I can edit my own writing, but I can’t fix crappy software.
How about a j-school trained journalist who simply reports the news and events without trying to propagandize? What’s wrong with simply telling the truth and sparing everyone of the politicalization of the news?
Where is it written that journalism is supposed to be dominated by liberal or conservative ideology? Give us the news without your fucking opinions, journalists: we can make up our own minds when we hear and read the truth, not your opinions.
Goldy wrote:
So if this is the way markets work around fish-rags (Pelletizer term) why are Obama-Geithner-Summers screwing around with many other markets?
Ohhh… I get it, fish-rags are different.
@4 As a propagandist, I’m eminently qualified to write on an editorial page. That’s what editorial pages are for. The trouble with Frank’s rag is the whole thing is an editorial page. Faux Snooze is even worse. Since conservative propagandists outnumber liberal propagandists in today’s “news” business by a ratio of 10 to 1, I figure there’s room for another liberal propagandist in the contemporary media.
@5 “fish-rags (Pelletizer term)”
Wrong again, puddinghead! I’ve never used the term “fish-rags.” My term is “fishwrapper.” You can’t get anything right, can you? You must have been born stupid. Were you an encephalopathic baby that a sentimental mother didn’t have the heart to abort?
House Passes Executive Bonus Tax
“WASHINGTON (March 19) — Acting swiftly, the Democratic-led House approved a bill Thursday to slap punishing taxes on big employee bonuses at firms bailed out by taxpayers. The bill would impose a 90 percent tax on bonuses given to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at American International Group and other companies that have received at least $5 billion in government bailout money. …
“The vote to tax back most of the bonuses was 328-93. Voting ‘yes’ were 243 Democrats and 85 Republicans. It was opposed by six Democrats and 87 Republicans.”
(Quoted from Associated Press under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This is probably as close as we’ll ever get to bipartisanship, but notice where most of the votes to let the corporate greedheads keep their taxpayer-funded bonuses as a reward for wrecking the economy came from — the GOP, naturally.
I grew up reading Hunter S. Thompson (before he bought his $25 doctorate)in the pages of the National Observer.
Even as a young reporter he had the keenness of a wolverine on ibogaine.
Hey,
I just got a robo-call saying the state leg. is trying to repeal I-1029. They didn’t give a bill number or say who was doing what. Anybody else heard about this?
Sighhhh
I am sure Goldy is correct, BUT …
when is someone going to publish some actual numbers of the finances involved? How much of the problem IS the changing market vs. admin overhead and leverage? Is physical paper the problem?
Howsit that Google, Ebay and Amazon have viable businesses that live off what was the cash flow for the older media? Should/could Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, MS, Google support a real newspaper? Would the draw add enough to their revenues to justify the expense?
Or we can just wring our hands and blame eash other.
What a laugh, It is their fault they ran the paper like it was 1960. Forget the internet people still like getting coupons reading the paper when they want in a chair they want to read it. It was people like Joe the pervert and horsey that didn’t help keep readers. Needless to say the copy and paste of left wing spin killed the paper.
Liberals never take responsibility it is always
If you’re stupid enough to trust your competitor to handle the business (advertising, printing and distribution) end of your business, you’re not going to last long.
I remember reporting to the P-I that their newspaper boxes were being removed near me a few years ago, in favor of the Times own. They just didn’t seem to care; replied it was some type of rebalancing. So in an area where the P-I would sell out before the Times, even on Sunday, they got rid of the P-I boxes.
@12
oops forgot to finish…
Liberals never take responsibility it is always your fault.
Hey ol’ dumb bunny Pelletizer@8 remember Chris Dodd? He and Treasury originally approved the AIG bonuses.
Did you forget the past 24 hours?
@15 Have you forgotten that the wingnut White House coerced Dodd into supporting that provision?
Ummm no Pelletizer. Obama’s White House of course. They are nuts. The coercion occurred Feb 10, 2009 fool. Reread the Arrogance, Corruption, and Greed thread.
Even your friendly clueless wonder agreed that yesterday morning Glenn Greenwald nailed it to Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers. Later Chris Dodd on CNN said he did it. All happened on Obama’s watch!
LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO
“They are nuts.”
Look who’s talking!
(Not to mention off-topic. Then again who’s going to read the collective drivel 200+ comments down the other thread?)
Once the P.I. was forced into the Joint Operating Agreement, it’s days were numbered. Of course, a Joint Operating Agreement is supposed to save newspapers, not kill them. But once the Times got Doonesbury away from the P.I. and moved to morning delivery, the P.I. had no choice but to agree to the JOA or die. It was going to eventually die anyway, it’s just that it held out for a remarkably long time.
I’ve mentioned before that although the Times advertising, subscription, and delivery staffs were supposed to treat the companies equally, they managed to discriminate against the P.I. in a variety of ways. I’ve seen delivery people fill up boxes with the Times but only put a couple of papers in the P.I box right beside it, which regularly sold out. The boxes themselves were sometimes placed with the Times box at chest height, but you have to stoop down to see the P.I. box underneath it, much less insert the quarters.
The P.I. didn’t even have an online presence of any significance for years, because the Times argued that the JOA didn’t allow it to do so (while the Times sought to capture the local internet market for news).
Since revenue-sharing percentages were fixed to the level it was at the time the JOA was signed, any investment by the P.I. owners to expand services or reporting would have benefited the Times more than the P.I., so there was no incentive to do so.
So all in all, they did remarkably well. I’m pleased to see that my links to old articles on the P.I. are also continuing to work, I had my doubts about that in this new era.
@16 Have you forgotten that the wingnut White House coerced Dodd into supporting that provision?
———–
Coerced? Let’s get the story at least halfway right, eh? Dodd didn’t have a gun to his head, and unless he’s a total idiot, he had to have known the purpose of the change in the language. I mean, he must have understood that this very specific language:
“exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009”
served a purpose, and unless he’s a buffoon, he was obligated to ask, right?
And let’s not forget the small matter of Dodd insisting – lying, that is – just a day before that he had nothing to do with the change in the amendment.
And that “wingnut” White House is Obama’s White House, just to be clear.
Incidentally, all the breaking news in Seattle and the state regarding busted budgets, pampered politicians, and under strength light rail steel, and this is all HA has to offer?
4 It might actually be that the professional journalists are doing a perfectly decent job of presenting the news, and even composing editorials that express a balanced view–and that a large and increasing proportion of their audience are so fanatical about seeing everything as political.
In other words, the market for “just the facts, Ma’am” is dwindling because everyone only wants to read a depiction of the world as it exists inside their own heads.
I’ve found it rather instructive to read the comments on the KOMO site in response to some of Ken Schram’s editorials. There’s typically about a 50-50 split between those who want to draw and quarter him for what they perceive as his rabid liberalism, and those who see him as a shill for the neocons. My impression is that neither faction is right.
“And let’s not forget the small matter of Dodd insisting – lying, that is – just a day before that he had nothing to do with the change in the amendment.”
Either that, or he’s lying now.
Why? Well, why did Pelosi and Conyers take impeachment “off the table”?
Puddy,
H.R 1 – Written by Democrats, passed by Democrats, signed into law by Democrats.
There is no scandal here. Any outrage by Democrats in the house, senate or WH is all boloney. The Democrats own this process, slammed it thru, and know, when the American people are upset, have to eat crow….
The saddest point is AIG is laundering tax payer money tho Morgan Stanley, Goldman, Deutch bank etc. etc..etc..
This is not the “Change” independents voted for. The HA mouth frothers will ignore this and play the “what about the shrub???” but this all falls on Democrats heads. Reed, Pelosi, Obama……
@16
Your correct there rabbit, Obama sent over to Dodd one teleprompter the teleprompter said we want to give AGI the provision. After all Dodd I got a little over 1.3 million you my friend got a little less from AIG to our campaign.
@24 Come back when you can write a coherent sentence, sonny. I can’t figure out wtf you’re trying to say.
When a substantial part of your advertising income simply disappears (Craig’s List), when a major portion of discretionary money goes to on line and digital sellers (music, books, Rx’s, and a large portion of other such items), when The Bon, now Macy’s no longer buys multiple pages of your ads……
And when multiple sources of online new comes available…..
I really don’t think that blame is needed to explain the disaster. Running a newspaper is labor extensive from tree to story to printing to delivery. And the money is no longer there to do it. Sad, but explanable
KCD Election Bullshit
I went to my local library to vote in the King Conservation District election. There were 3 people ahead of me in line, but it took me 20 minutes to vote. The little old lady looking up the voters on a laptop computer repeatedly complained about how slow the computer was, and repeatedly couldn’t find voters in the database — including me, even though I handed her my voter registration card. But what really bothers me about how this election is being conducted is the polling workers are asking everyone in line to vote a provisional ballot even if they’re entitled to vote a regular ballot — and assuring them that provisional ballots will be counted. How do we know that? The way this election is being conducted stinks to high heaven.
The Publicans are for free markets, except when they’re not.
23 “This is not the “Change” independents voted for. The HA mouth frothers will ignore this and play the “what about the shrub???””
Well, my mouth ain’t exactly frothing, but I happen to sorta-kinda agree with you. Except, my main complaint is that behind what they’re saying, it rather looks like what the new administration/congress are doing is about what you’d expect them to do if Rove and Norquist were still calling the shots.
19 Blethen basically used the JOA like a roll of duct tape to lash himself and the P-I together, then take a flying leap into deep water, figuring he could hold his breath longer. The P-I drowned all right, but now Frank’s coughing up fish shit and turning pretty blue.
Hey Pelletizer: Another Pelletizer rant that went
K A B O O M
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaha
LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO
Hey Pelletizer: Another Pelletizer rant that went
K A B O O M
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaha
LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO
“I don’t know a single person, including Republicans, who are not impressed with the leadership Obama has demonstrated so far. The only people critical of him are Republican politicians, wingnuts, and the rightwing spin machine. He is succeeding on every level. The task before him is hopelessly onerous, given the monumental fuck-ups of the Bush Administration, but Obama is up to that task. Lord, it’s great to have adults back in charge.” – proud leftist
——————
“Let’s demand that the White House live up to its vows of transparency.”
Arianna Huffington, HuffingtonPost
“At first, on the nutty bonuses, Team Obama thought it could get away with the same absurd argument used to justify the nearly $8 billion in unnecessary earmarks it allowed Congress to jam into this year’s overdue spending bill: It was written last year; we’re just signing off on it; we’ll do better in the future.”
Maureen Dowd, New York Times
31 In reference to……which?
Or are you going to accuse us all of being stupid because we can’t read your mind?
Well, Goldie, journalists have done lots of self-reflection. I think one of the great myths of traditional journalism (not to be confused with what used to be called “new Journalism”) is objectivity.
I’ve always felt, writing as a journalist who’s still working, that the cult of objectivity really set journalism up for a crash. The least you should expect from a journalist is thoroughness, the ability to consider complexity and gray areas and the ability to convey complex concepts in simple terms. And speaking truth to power, well, that’s a given, but not always easy to do when your corporate task master is a conglomerate with close ties to the oil industry. Objectivty usually meant bland “he said, she said” reporting with faux balance, which left the reader confused and disillusioned.
Well, Goldie, journalists have done lots of self-reflection. I think one of the great myths of traditional journalism (not to be confused with what used to be called “new Journalism”) is objectivity.
I’ve always felt, writing as a journalist who’s still working, that the cult of objectivity really set journalism up for a crash. The least you should expect from a journalist is thoroughness, the ability to consider complexity and gray areas and the ability to convey complex concepts in simple terms. And speaking truth to power, well, that’s a given, but not always easy to do when your corporate task master is a conglomerate with close ties to the oil industry. Objectivty often meant bland “he said, she said” reporting with faux balance, which left the reader confused and disillusioned.
@12
Lies, I have no idea what the fuck you are on about but I seriously doubt ideology had anything to do with the demise of the P-I in print.
Besides this is Seattle, a paper with a hard conservative spin would be more out of touch with the readers.
The Rocky Mountain News was a conservative leaning paper and they went under, in more-conservative Colorado no less.
The problem is one of both readers and advertisers moving on-line, but on-line revenue streams being nowhere near what they were for print.
re 4: If a journalist breaks from the typical ‘Villager’ journalistic model, he or she soon finds that they are unemployed.
Noam Chomsky has compared this type of self-censorship to a plywood box with a tilt toward one end. No matter how slight the tilt, if you put a bag of marbles in the box, they will all end up in the same corner.
And as for your suggestion about dispassionate reportage of ‘just the facts’, the progress of human events cannot be described as dispassionately as watching something react in a beaker to the heat of a bunsen burner.
@25
obama and Senator Dodd are Fu@$%^& Crooks
@29
AF you are not one of the “mouth frothers”..
RS
@36
The Anchorage Daily has been in trouble for a long time…..
24/7 new channels with the 24/7 “breaking news” crawlers is as much to blame as Google, IMO….
6 & 37,
Well, neither of you have told me what’s wrong with having journalism be about reporting events without any political indoctrination being provided by the journalist.
Journalism should be about reporting, period, dot, end of sentence. When they start acting as the thought police, journalists lose all credibility and should be totally disregarded.
To all journalists: tell me the fucking news and shut the fuck up. I can interpret things for myself, thank you very much!
Goldy, I called you out this morning over the Mayor’s snow response, and the obvious way he personally commanded snow plows over to his house. In addition, The Seattle Times reported that Nickle’s buddies also got preferential treatment in getting their streets plowed.
You have not responded. In fact, you have ignored it.
There can be only three reasons. You did not read the comments today. Or you are one of those people who cannot admit a mistake.
Or….you are Greg Nickels personal blogging bitch.
I’M JUST SAYIN’
Which is it?
It’s YOUR fault Stupes.
You chose and continue to choose right wing bullshit.
32
I’m honored that you saved an old post of mine. I stand by it, though I will acknowledge that others are now, at this later date, giving Obama shit. Those others include some on the left. He is doing an outstanding job under onerous–incredibly onerous–conditions, conditions that Bush created. You tell me, who the fuck would want the job of president right now? I trust Obama.
Another Liberal democrats trash flushed down the drain. Good to see the PI go the way AirAmerica did.
Hows that 2 Trillion over budget Obama doin, or the aver growing 9Billion Gregoire Deficit gang
Yeh Send me my $400,000 AIG bonus boys and girls, I’m waiting for the F’n check in the mail
GS
Have you ever heard of punctuation? Please try to use it if you have.
@31 Did it blow your fingers off? You shouldn’t be playing with rabbit shit, you know.
@38 And Republicans aren’t?
New Poll: Obama Buries Palin In 2012
“(March 19) – President Barack Obama would cruise to re-election in 2012 if Sarah Palin is the Republican nominee, a new poll finds.
“In the hypothetical contest, Obama would defeat the Alaska governor 55 percent to 35 percent, the poll by Public Policy Polling found. …
“Several national polls of GOP voters have suggested Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2008, would be the party’s No. 1 choice to head the ticket in 2012.”
(Quoted from AOL News under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Yes! Yes! Yes! Lord, please let her be the 2012 GOP nominee. Yes! Yes! Yes!
re 40: Every reporter sees things from their vantage point. That implies a bias.
Por ejemplo: If one person is on a riverbank and watches someone drop a stone from a passing railroad car that is on a bridge, the stone appears to fall in an arc. To the person in the railroad car, the rock appears to drop in a straight line.
Both people could report to Mr. Incorrect what they saw, and he would only hear two liars. The only way to satisfy MR. iNCORRECT IS IF ONE OF THE OBSERVERS ACTUALLY DOES LIE.
Or, if one is a blustering asshole. My prediction is that Mr. Incorrect will believe the cranky bluster.
Bush Official Says Many Gitmo Detainees Were Innocent
“SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday.
“‘There are still innocent people there,’ Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. ‘Some have been there six or seven years.’
“Wilkerson … told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a ‘mosaic’ of intelligence. …
“Wilkerson … said intelligence analysts hoped to gather ‘sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.’
“Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to determine ‘who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation.’ …
“Wilkerson wrote that ‘U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, … that many of the detainees were innocent …, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.’ …
“Wilkerson told the AP … that many detainees ‘clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban …. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head.'”
(Quoted from the Associated Press under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Hey wingnuts, are you listening? This is why we don’t imprison people without trial or due process. Got that, you fucking nazis?
re 50: Like most Republicans, he’s a day late and a dollar short. A whistleblower now that it won’t cost him.
46 Just so long as he’s brushed his teeth…
@49,
You’re talking about a fucking optical illusion, you arrogant cocksucker. I’m talking about reporting accurately what happened without the journalist trying to promote a political agenda.
If you can’t get that straight, asshole, then there’s no point in talking to you.
BTW, it’s Mister Politically Incorrect to you, you fucking lying cocksucker. Be mindful of who your betters are, fuckhead!
@53
Unfortunately going too far down that road leads to annoying “he said, she said” coverage.
I mean do we need any more “scientists say sky blue, others disagree” type stories.
Sometimes people are outright wrong or lying. What they say shouldn’t be given the same weight in reporting a story as those who are correct or telling the truth.
The basic problem with stepping away from the “cult of objectivity” is that conservatives tend to control the most powerful media outlets. Do we want even more of a right-wing echo chamber than we have now?
In the real world there are no ideal systems. Whenever you try to change a system dramatically, beware unintended consequences.
It’s not Obama’s fault or is it? Obama said in CA the buck stops with him.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....No-10.html
“The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words “wrong region” came up on his screen.”
“By the way, when Obama’s unlikely gift was disclosed, a reader emailed me to ask if Clueless was among the films. Funnily enough, it was not.”
White House is full of morons!
Toooooooooooooooooooo
Damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Funnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnny
@55: Yeah right.
NBC
CBS
ABC
CNN
Tell us all about it.
WalMart giving big bonuses again.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/.....roQwnoN5Ro
It’s not your fault you chose to work at another corp that doesn’t pay employees bonuses again like they did last year.
It’s not Puddy’s fault you read DUmmys. http://www.democraticundergrou.....26#3790737
What a bunch of morons!
It’s not your fault you chose to work in the recreation industry and now Obama is destroying your paycheck by impugning any leisure business trip given as a perk. It doesn’t matter you voted for him slavishly worshipping his “messiahship” and now you out of a job.
Hey it’s class warfare baby! You in da wrong class.
PI@53:
You need to add racist.
It’s not your fault your child you love was born with Down’s Syndrome and their only goal is the Special Olympics.
It’s not your fault the suave, brilliant, calm and kool “messiah” can’t bowl better than a Special Olympian and then goes on national TV and mocks them to national TV laughter.
It’s not your fault Obama is making fun of your child.
It’s not your fault Obama forgot to take the Teleprompter onto the Leno Show so the Teleprompter could have stopped Obama from impugning your Special Olympic special needs child.
It’s not your fault the Teleprompter failed.
I’ve got a couple of remarks and questions for Headless and Puddy over on the other thread. I don’t care if it’s you guys (if there is, in fact two of you) or your sockpuppets show up, but get your asses over there.
Hey Steve I’m going…