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Newsprint RIP

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Robert Gibbs Won't Bailout The New York  Times.  

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We can pretend that White House speaker Robert Gibbs was commenting on all city and regional newspapers when he said that the Obama administration sympathizes with the imminent newsprint failures.  We can pretend that the Obama administration doesn't depend upon the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, the USA Today.  We can pretend that there is no bailout.  But there will be a plan, and tax credits, and a game to save the newsprint ink side.  The scheme I like best so far is to put all of them into Chapter 11 and then to convert all newsprint outfits to charities with 501 3(c) status.  Debts gone, taxes gone, live like a monastery with cranky attitude.  Note Gibbs's throwaway about the "$100 million" number that was mocked weeks back when POTUS tried to claim he was saving money by cutting the same sum from the 4 trillion dollar federal budget.  The characters in the White House media corps are hostage to the Obama administration for their jobs, futures, retirements -- mortgages.   "Obviously the president believes there has to be a strong free press..."  Save the New York Times is an Obama team mission.  Save the crinkling dead recycled dead tree.  NYT RIP.

Free the Hostage Media.

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What will work is when the New York Times is free of depending upon the resentment of the anti-Bush crowd and the excitement of the pro Obama crowd and can get on to living in the world of the unpredictable.  If you know what the story must be when you assign it, why do you write it?  I see the NYT every day and over the years I have booked its correspondents when I could.  It is not an easy establishment to work with, as its communications department is unresponsive, cloistered, snobby and mute.  The NYT writers do not much do radio to my ear, and when you see them on TV, it is fleeting.   The pc snobbery is funny.   This is a result of the correspondents'  leftover sense of superiority from the 1970s and 80s.  These years, Dow Jones and Bloomberg are hiring the deft young talent, and their correspondents are always eager and prompt to the media attention.  The Dow Jones reporters do not have political chips on their shoulders, they are fierce global observers, same for Bloomberg.  And the Financial Times correspondents are enthusiastic Europeans.  It is always a joy to speak to an Australian or New Zealand reporter, who make American journalism seem like a library task.  And the new Asian and especially Chinese writers for the global financial media are quick, still somewhat formal, devoted to their task.  In all, media folk are a joy to work with.  The failure of the newsprint business model from 1950, or even 1875, does not mean any falling away in talent.  What gathers at the White House to chat with Robert Gibbs is the old team, men and women trained on expectations before Craigslist and Google surged and the NYT became a burden to discard when  delivered to the driveway each morning.  Display ad on newsprint?  Why?  The WSJ shows new thinking this news cycle with Beta testing on reshaped Kindle like hardware for periodicals -- notepad-sized display screens on line.  It will work and journalism will prosper.  Information is security, pleasure.  Newsprint and the treasured totem of the cheaply made book on flimsy paper are 2oth century artifacts.  And what will the White House corps sound like when it doesn't depend upon Gibbs's hand outs and mockery?  What does liberty sound like? 

8 Comments

The White House is such a bunch of ingrates! If it weren't for the eight years of "aggressive" reporting on the bush white house, the leaking of military secrets, and the hysterical reporting of the Iraq war, Obama would not be President. Obama owes us something! You don't get years of pliant reporting without something in return!

To advance the cause of liberty, raze all journalism schools and then salt the earth they stand on. Those granite abominations represent a credentialist threat to America far greater than does some obsolete liquid-fueled ICBM cobbled together by rachitic Koreans.

Keep in mind that HL Menken landed his first newspaper gig while still in high school. Were he that age today, the Sage of Baltimore wouldn't be able to get a job proofreading want ads on the Thrifty Nickel--he'd need an additional ten years of schooling, then be saddled with enormous student loans, our era's answer to serfdom.

Donald Pittenger, blogger for the excellent and "2Blowhards" puts it well:

"I tire of journalists' superiority complex. The Army trained me and a lot of other guys in the nuts and bolts of the trade in eight weeks; journalists are nothing special, believe me."

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2009/04/ads_as_front_pa.html

Incidentally, the same might be said for a great many other occuaptions. Who needs to study Hotel Management in college for four years to learn how to run a Holiday Inn on I-40?



Agreed Sapi-

I can't help but reference Ms Saberi being held hostage in Iran. She was admitted to hospital recently and released. Now she is only taking water without any sugar.

While Saberi and her family suffer in their Fate, the President uses Cinca de Maya celebration to get some laughs from the press by saying "Parteee Onnn." No questions from the press carps(that's a trash fish, by the way.) Nothing of substance from the SoS (that's abbr for sack of...)
Yeh, that's right... an American held hostage and fasting for justice in a land that she knows is only using her as a means of political embarassment and as a test of American resolve . Alone? Apparently. Sadly. Party on?

Reference Reagan and the fact he need not say anything for the IranRevos to release the captives they had held since they had come to power... while the good Southerner and Prez J Carter stood still in futility and hopelessness.

In this case, Ms Saberi may very well be willing to die for her cause while our wonderful representatives cringe at taking a stand.

Next are the women in N Korea... heard a word about them?

Agreed Sapi-

I can't help but reference Ms Saberi being held hostage in Iran. She was admitted to hospital recently and released. Now she is only taking water without any sugar.

While Saberi and her family suffer in their Fate, the President uses Cinca de Maya celebration to get some laughs from the press by saying "Parteee Onnn." No questions from the press carps(that's a trash fish, by the way.) Nothing of substance from the SoS (that's abbr for ...)
Yeh, that's right... an American held hostage and fasting for justice in a land that she knows is only using her as a means of political embarassment and as a test of American resolve . Alone? Apparently. Sadly. Party on?

Reference Reagan and the fact he need not say anything for the IranRevos to release the captives they had held since they had come to power... while the good Southerner and Prez J Carter stood still in futility and hopelessness.

In this case, Ms Saberi may very well be willing to die for her cause while our wonderful representatives cringe at taking a stand.

Next are the women in N Korea... heard a word about them?

Darn- we had A-Mini-Jihad in the States last year and we could have nabbed him for war crimes investigations and crimes against humanity and torture. That would certainly have stirred the news carps into a frenzy.

"What does liberty sound like,” indeed! It is the straightjacket of ideology that killed the old media. It's a model that still works reflexively (like a twitching corpse) on an emotional level but frays as it consistently clashes with reality. Obama’s election win was 100% emotion.

The readers of Dickens participated in his serialized newspaper fictions to the extent that they were able to influence the action in the following week's installment. It was all based on emotion, of course. The people needed a satisfying fiction to lift them out of their funk. Dickens was only too happy to oblige. With ten children, he needed to stay out of the poorhouse. Similarly, ‘The New York Times’ and others have been promulgated a fiction - a fiction that has worn thin over time (as evidenced by their now dismal circulation numbers). They created Obama. Sapientia is right; he owes them something. JB is right; they will get it. If Obama fails, they fail. They are failing.

Does it work the other way around? Will a failure of the MSM signal a failure of our current administration? Probably not. The political players are in place; the political opposition has been de-clawed and de-fanged. Mid-term elections are two years away. There’s a lot one can do in two years – unopposed.

There’s no reason to expect that young, energetic, community organizing Obama will not go for the prize – like Putin, Pot, Chavez, Castro, Mugabe, etc., he is set to "seize the day (and place no trust in tomorrow)". He wants to be the leader of whom it will be said, he has changed America to follow a new course from which it can never return. In his circle of like-minded individuals this represents the ultimate accomplishment of which any one man is capable: to turn this beacon of free trade capitalism into a wholly government owned socialist ruin. It is not unlike Ahmadinejad’s vision of personally ushering in the 12th imam.

Alfred North Whitehead once defined religion as “what the individual does with his own solitude”. By it he sought to explain the depth to which religion defines a man’s sense of mission. It speaks to the active part of religion, the part that animates charitable giving, proselytizing and jihad.

The mistake people make when they say that Marxists are not religious is that Marxism itself has become what’s most important – hence, a religion – for them. The history of fanaticism runs deep when it comes to religion. If we don’t already know it, we will find out soon enough that Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th and current President of the United States and the first African American to hold the office, is first and foremost a fanatic.

UmmHummm, alright there Pete

Phone home, phone home... Home? Com hom

"...unresponsive, cloistered, snobby and mute" pretty much says it all, John.

All the news that fits (our agenda), we print.

I couldn't have less respect for what is left of the mainstream media. A gov't bail out of the major papers would be tantamount to financing the 5th branch of the government. No money for the Ministry Of Truth.

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