Newspaper owners are upset tghey're not getting 20-40% profits. And, they agonize over fewer readers and advertisers. The solution--continue to cut the news product to preserve profits.

The Netroots Nation conference drew more than 2,000 liberal/progressive bloggers and activists to Austin in July. Many of the participants brought laptop computers as well as iPhones, Blackberries and other devices to the sessions so they could “liveblog,” surf the Web, send email or otherwise multitask during lulls in the action (or even during speeches).

All I had was a reporter’s notebook, a pen and a backpack with a few samples of our tabloid newspaper.

When I introduced myself to some of these netizens, as they style themselves, I felt like a representative of an archaic profession. Bloggers do great work providing a sounding board for progressive politicians and organizations and truth-squadding neocon scalawags. But I came away with the stubborn conviction that there is still a role for dead trees in journalism.

Between Britney Spears and the standard influx of targeted political mail exploding their mailboxes, it's a wonder 90% of America hasn't checked completely out of the political process by now, the way they've been insulted.

Even though I actively support many candidates financially and through volunteering, just turning on a TV during election season is difficult for me. Opening my mailbox is painful. I feel smothered by the tidal wave of television commercials and brochures that wash through my house every election cycle.

I was a political consultant for more than two decades before exiting the profession in 1996. I was responsible for helping to create dozens of campaigns and many new techniques for managing them. I certainly produced my share of marginal political ads.

But frankly, I’m shocked by the state of political advertising today. It’s appalling.

Nevertheless, mediocre candidates win and atrocious political ads work for two disturbing reasons: because one side has more money, and because there isn’t enough objective information coming from mass-marketed, neutral sources to communicate the truth...

I need Kossacks to help!

It's time to fight back against media companies who insist upon publishing lies and distortions.  Here in New Hampshire The George J. Foster Publishing Company publishes two daily newspapers, Foster's Daily Democrat, which is circulated in Dover, Portsmouth and Rochester, and The Citizen, which covers the communities of Laconia, Gilford, Gilmanton, Tilton, Plymouth, Franklin, Belmont and Sanbornton. Both newspapers are, and have always been as far to the right as the notorious Union-Leader published in Manchester.

This past Sunday Foster's Daily Democrat trashed Barack Obama in an editorial Obama takes an imperial tour of the Old World in which it observed

Obama's grand tour of Europe and the Middle East was the most presumptuous and pompous act in the modern history of American politics.

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By now, it seems that most people here are aware of the new, disgusting ad that the McCain camp has put out, criticizing Senator Obama for not visiting our troops in Germany.

We can only expect more tactics like such during the coming months. There are a few things that we can all do to help the Obama campaign in the runup to the elction. Here are a few, simple things that I have done or tend to do. I tried to make the tips short and to the point. Feel free to ask questions.

Well, the pictures from Berlin were truly something.  The Newseum in Washington, DC, publishes the front pages of over 600 newspapers from around the world every morning.  I thought some would be nice to share here.  

If you want to check this site out, here's the link: http://www.newseum.org/...

It is interesting how some papers have absolutely nothing on their front page about yesterday's speech...I haven't included them here.

There are also some papers that aren't posted yet.

Pictures after the jump:

(Cross-posted from Burnt Orange Report)

This is an unofficial part of our "Shattering Blogger Stereotypes" series. The myth shattered -- that bloggers hate the traditional media. The following is a report on an extensive study I completed as part of my coursework at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University.

Texas’ newspapers are adapting to the new online medium in noticeably different ways, especially when it comes to political reporting. An examination of the nearly 1,000 blog posts featured on the respective political blogs of the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, and Austin American-Statesman during the month leading up to the Texas primary shows that formal conventions of journalism often do not make their way from the paper pages to the web pages of Texas’ leading newspapers.

...Gore seems clearly to be trying to deceive, and the consequence of the success of his deception is likely to give him immense power over other people's lives.  Syndicated Columnist Tibor Machan  

...two things about this proposal merit attention. It points a country that uses too much energy down the right path. And Gore is showing that being environmentally responsible is economically sensible. WaPo columnist E.J. Dionne

The polar-opposite quotes above are examples of what was actually a very meager editorial response in American newspapers to Al Gore's recent "Challenge to America" speech. As I listened to the speech, (full video and text here) I wondered  how much attention Gore's message would get in the press and what newspapers around the country would say about it, so I decided to do some research. This diary is about what I learned.

Recent changes in the newspaper industry have prompted me to reconsider a daily routine that I thought would be with me for life.

This was cross posted from Pruning Shears.

crossposted from unbossed

It's been a tough - but exciting - year for workers at the Bay Area News Group-East Bay (BANG-EB) papers. Last August, the company began its anti-union campaign, withdrawing recognition of the union at some locations and using a consolidation to withdraw recognition from all unions.

That was August 2007, but after an NLRB election victory, the workers are gearing up to fight for their rights under a new collective bargaining agreement. It won't be easy. When an employer wants to be anti-union, they can be ruthless, defying the law and even destroying their own companies in the process.

A month ago I ran this diary.  It did well.  People asked me to do it again in a month.  So, here it is.  This is not just a cut and paste of that, it's updated and edited.

Updated, with some of the suggestions from the comments last time
Edited, in that now I am only including media directly related to politics and policy and such (in the interests of space) and I've reformatted it a bit

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 referred to a two-day Executive Leadership Forum that brought together more than 250 college and university presidents and other top administrators in Washington, D.C.  At the gathering, Bill Keller -- the executive editor of The New York Times -- argued that newspapers are likely to remain strong despite blogs and other forms of media that are vying for their currently dominant position.

Twenty-five years ago people were confidently predicting that newspapers would be replaced by fax machines. You would wake up in the morning and you'd get your news delivered by fax instead of the rolled-up paper in the driveway.

Never happened.

Today, of course, newspapers are under a much more serious threat to their continued existence -- the internet. Newspapers are cutting staff all over the country as circulation is dropping. Even traditional cash cows like classified advertising are being siphoned off by Craigslist and now even Wal-Mart with the launch of Oodle.com.

And that brings us to the latest prediction of the demise of newsprint, from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

To begin, let me add my recommendation to plf515's excellent diary, If you want better media, support better media. Ah, I see it has been reclisted, a pleasure I have still to look forward to. I spend my daily diary here because I had more to share than would fit neatly into a comment.

For decades, I've listened to voices both learned and clueless lamenting the state of the fourth estate in the United States. No depth, too much fluff at the expense of substance, and my personal peeve, overly American-centric. We may rightly thank god now for the internet, as worldwide, newspapers have followed the American media example of creating an online prescence.

I include here some of the links to news outlets in the News folder in my favorites list. Only two links listed is of a news organization in the United States, The Atlantic Monthly and The Christian Science Monitor, both old, old favorites of mine.

More beneath the fold...

There is a recommended diary here that says

If you want better media, support better media

Our individual choices sometimes, but rarely, have an impact.  It is true that I am heartened by the fact that the ratings of Faux News is declining.  

But it is rare that our individual choices in media combine to have any real impact. It would be more important if we did things like:
Break up the chains in newspaper, radio, TV station & cable TV ownership
Make license renewal for radio and TV stations a real event instead of an empty formality
Strengthen public radio & TV
Put more tax money into financing good movies as is done by the Canadian Film Board
Reinstate the Fairness Rule for broadcasting
Support Net Neutrality rules on all levels of government so that all internet content is dealt with equally

None of those changes create good content in media, but they all add to the number and diversity of voices. Making all public media more like the internet, where there are multiple voices, makes it harder for the creation of the echo chamber effect we often get in the MSM.

A lot of us bemoan the state of the mainstream media.  I don't know much about TV, but I do read a lot.  The typical newspaper and news magazine do not merit our consideration.  Most local dailies, and magazines such as Time and Newsweek are badly written, badly edited, biased, and focus on things of truly monumental global importance like which rock star got busted for which drug charge.

What can we do?

Support the good stuff!

more below the fold

It’s not like another independent newspaper just bit the dust. At this point with almost all newspapers being dependant on a very small club of very rich people today was just another day that one multimedia corporation sold a tabloid that is famous for not sensationalizing the news to a more local entertainment empire.  

Cablevision purchased Newsday today. This newspaper that serves Long Island and is very popular in the borough of Queens has the largest circulation of suburban newspapers in America and is ranked sixth of the nation’s regional newspapers. Newsday can also be purchased and delivered throughout New York City but the tabloid hardly competes with Rupert Murdoch’s disgusting rag, The New York Post and Mort Zuckerman’s Daily News.

Both Murdoch and Zuckerman had bids in but Charles Dolan has deeper pockets and now has way too much influence in areas that surround Manhattan. Some Long Island and Queens residents will get all of their news from a pretty scary and very powerful family.

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