Our newspapers is still failing

newspaper blackout poem
Originally uploaded by Precious Roy

On March 2, RealClearPolitics ran with its list of the Top Ten newspapers in trouble. By the time the list appeared, one of the newspapers on it, the Rocky Mountain News, was already gone. 

This week, Time magazine has weighed in with its Top Ten "tim-berrrrr" list. The odds are pretty good that by the time the next issue hits the stands, one of those will be gone. Let's compare:

	RealClearPolitics	Time
1	Seattle Post-Intelligencer	Philadelphia Daily News
2	Rocky Mountain News	Minneapolis Star Tribune
3	Philadelphia Daily News	Miami Herald
4	Miami Herald	Detroit News
5	San Francisco Chronicle	Boston Globe
6	Detroit News	San Francisco Chronicle
7	Chicago Sun-Times	Chicago Sun-Times
8	St. Paul Pioneer Press	New York Daily News
9	Los Angeles Times	Fort Worth Star-Telegram
10	New York Daily News	Cleveland Plain Dealer

Hm. Two lists, twenty slots, but only fourteen newspapers named. It can't have been an easy story to write for either publication: It's not unlike openly speculating which of your aunts and uncles will die first.

I, in my amateur opinion, suspect the next to actually go will be the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, since Hearst is now openly weighing whether to close it outright or go online-only. It can't be a good sign that one of the links on their home page right now is a "tell us about your favorite P-I memories" solicitation. The Detroit News could surprise me and fold tomorrow, or they might be able to hang on for a few more weeks now that they only publish four days a week. 

If I were the average big-time blogger, I would be a lot more worried about this than they appear to be. Instead of congratulating myself for being right that Old Media didn't know how to make the transition to New, I would be wondering where the stories I link to tomorrow will come from.

All these newspapers are in trouble because... Well, they each have unique problems, but they all share two really big ones: (1) A whopper of an economic downturn kicked them in the gonads; and (2) they never really believed that the traditional daily newspaper could go away. The Business Insider is onto something when they calculate that for the New York Times, giving each of its subscribers a Kindle would cost half as much as publishing an actual newsprint daily. I'm hoping the all new, online Christian Science Monitor can show everyone how it's done.

C'mon, guys, it ain't whether to go digital, it's when and how. Change or die.

I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a “journalist”

Editing Their Way to Oblivion:
Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Gov. Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the Big Leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play...

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side - or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for Senators Obama and Biden. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: his job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote McCain’s lawyer, haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer - when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Senator Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?