Scanning through the list of companies which are laying, closing stores, or going bankrupt (www.dailyjobcuts.com - a fascinating sight if you want to keep up with such things) was the announcement that the McClatchy Company had declared bankruptcy. To most folks, they may be a nodding acquaintance for the purchase of Knight-Ridder in 2006. For me they are much more familiar, as they were the publisher of the Big City Newspaper all of my life (and for a century before that).
The official statement was that the legacy costs of pensions - 2800 employees support the pensions of more than 24,000 future and current retirees (Read that again. And do the math). And buried at the bottom of the article was a comment that between 2006 and 2018, daily print circulation fell by 58.6%.
Is it a bad thing if they simply fade away (They state they are shifting to the digital space but the news market there, I suspect, is light years ahead of where they are)? No. Newspapers are just like any other entity and if they cannot support themselves, should quietly die - if anything, the sale should have resulted in lump sum payments to the retirees, who are the real victims here. And certainly the paper had come to represent none of my views, so I am exactly not the market that it would be speaking to. The market that they would be speaking to, by and large, no longer reads newspapers.
The local news will be picked up and reported by someone, most likely on-line for those that care - or by television news, which to date seems largely immune to the plunge in popularity that newspapers and print media in general have been suffering from. As I noted here - almost a year ago - my local hometown paper had the same experience. I look at it when I go back home. It is thin, but really does cover only the local things now.
To be frank, I do not know how anyone in the print media business is not completely freaked out about their ability to end their time in their career, let alone trying to start a career. It is like going into buggy whip manufacture in 1920, seeing the future but still somehow believing the past will support you along.
They were finished the day they went from reporting the news to 'shaping public opinion'. I'll be polite when I merely say I have no sympathy, and would like to invite them all to 'learn to code'.
ReplyDeleteGlen - Odd, one never hears the offer of the coding industry to these individuals. Apparently it is only the "wrong" people that should take up coding.
DeleteI wonder at what point the newspaper as we know it finally disappears.
One of the dissident pundits is pushing a linking service that evades the main stream media site by posting their content elsewhere and linking to that. I deprives them of any revenue whatsoever from clicks and views... and I don't know what to make of it. Yes, it's technically theft and immoral... but the mainstream media slobs are no angels themselves. That somebody would go to that extent to rob them tells me that the public frustration with them is growing.
DeleteI pretty much ignore the mass media outlets myself, and regard its value to be only that it tells me what my enemies are thinking.
Glen, I have to say that one of the rather lamer aspects of the alternate media is as follows: "The powers that be (ever undefined) are trying to stifle my voice - but you can help! Send me X at www.fundmyhobby.com". It would be amazing if the right thinking side could think of a functional business model, but that seems to elude us so often.
DeleteI do not overly suffer from the fact I have ad blockers. If they deny me the read, I just move on. If they are on the page, I just ignore them.
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