Is there a thread for the rapid death of the newspaper industry?

Sorry, guys.

First they came for the groundwood etc.

yeah you know you can just put your kindle in a ziplock bag and it's just as good as a book for reading in the tub. I read it in a blog.

Looking forward to books being lasered into my brain... What's the eta on that??

It looks like we're selling our press (after printing our paper on-site for more than 75 years. There will now be only three other universities in the nation who do so.) So we have quite a bit of surplus newsprint if anyone would like it.

I know it ain't the dotcom boom, but the only jobs in media right now are Flash programmers. Nobody wants or needs print people.

now i feel bad for my devoted use of the library. clearly i should be buying printed things to support not having books lasered into my brain.

apparently journalists at the telegraph have a better chance of keeping their jobs if, along side writing their pieces, they can also edit video.

Amazon will be rly happy when you drop that $360 Kindle into the tub and the ziploc leaks and you have to buy another one to read the 56 "classics" you downloaded at the recommendation of ILB.

yeah this is getting off thread topic, but i don't think books are going away just yet. the kindle is cool, sure, but it's not a industry gamechanger like the Ipod.

I can't imagine using a kindle.

How many of you read papers via iPhone or another mobile device?

A book is pretty much perfectly designed for what you want to do with it though. In today's day and age, I'm not sure a newspaper is, especially given the speed at which things happen.

How many of you read papers via iPhone or another mobile device?
Me.

if a kindle fit in my back pocket i would buy one in like two seconds.

Does the Kindle do that looong pause and annoying flash every time you turn the page like the Sony Reader does? They need to fix that.

what the Reader and Kindle need is a feature where every time you finish a page, a loud bell goes off, then when you finish a chapter, it plays a short fanfare, and when you finish the book, it plays the end-title music from the Godfather. Now that would be both motivational and satisfying.

In newspapers' partial defense, their problems are hugely magnified by the recession/depression. The economic situation we're facing might have destroyed a few papers even in pre-internet times.

The kindle seems prohibitively expensive for most, considering the only thing you can do with it is read books on it.

As I heard it, the man who assembled the newspaper chain which owns my local daily, Si Newhouse, constantly preached that a newspaper is not a vehicle for delivering news, but a vehicle for delivering advertising. Oftentimes I have looked for some news in the product dropped at my doorstep and verified his observation.

He is right of course. But no news = no vehicle.

Nickel Ads, the Newspaper of The Future!!

RIP rocky mountain news

I am considering whether 'twould be nobler in the mind to subscribe to the NYT and read a newspaper whose reason for existance does not revolve around the comics page. But it seems disloyal somehow.

http://realproofonline.com/lj/finalrocky.jpg

:'-(

adapt or die, eh?

no wonder they folded, all the news on the sidebar is 150 years late

Seattle Post-Intelligencer and/or SF Chronicle are probably the next two to drop unless they figure something out

P-I is screwed, might go web-only but who cares if that's the case

http://www.printweek.com/news/881913/We-will-launch-paper/

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/KellyNewspapers.jpg

xpost -- I like how that URL is completely opposite from the headline.

How does delivering the paper equate to reading it?

"Rap Band"

http://moviecitynews.com/voices/2009/090302_critics.html

Grimly have you seen http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7855798.stm ?

(it's asking if newspapers have dumbed down in the last 30 years)

there will probably be a story about bears shitting in the woods accompanying it.

1989

The paper wears its Thatcherite heart on its sleeve with page leads on plans being considered by the Tory government for identity cards and the possibility of all immigrants being DNA tested.

and

George Walden pens a column about the dangers of the end of the Cold War, including the rise of Islam.

(it's asking if newspapers have dumbed down in the last 30 years)

Er. Is it? It just seems to be going "MY GOD, LOOK, WE'VE GOT AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF WEBSPACE TO FILL SO WE'RE GOING TO PUT THIS DRIVEL UP HERE." Really, the impression I get is that the only newspapers with which the author is properly familiar are the ones used to line the bottom of his cage.

Still. Yes, newspapers as we know them absolutely and totally fucked, large swathes of the broadcast media hot on their heels ... in what possible way is this news? :)

Also: if you ever wanted evidence of why newspapers as we know them should cease to exist, that "Teens: Yesterday and Today" thing might be pretty much perfect. Other than "I am a suppurating fucking bell-end", I fail to see what point the cartoonist is trying to make.

I think that is the point actually.

Ha. Fair enough.

There is nothing like reading a newspaper in its hard copy form. However, I have found from sniffing around that if your online paper looks like a newspaper, people might find your news more substantial. I have been reading the Pantagraph lately because it looks great. By the way, this paper is 172 years old!

the cartoon is an onion parody btw, just in case it's not clear who is being a suppurating fucking bell-end here.

Oh! I'd consider blushing, but ... er, actually, I'm not sure it works as a parody either.

<Looks again>

OK. Might not be as offensively shit, but it's still shit. Unless there's some fabulous piece of context in which it should be viewed?

Fabulous piece of context = most US political cartoonists.

Christ, really? *Boggles*. OK, in that case I'm going to step back ... there are some holes in my knowledge I'm happy to keep. Apologies to the Onion cartoonist, but to be honest: you might actually be better simply using your pen to go around stabbing some of your contemporaries in the neck.

Chuck Asay died for your sins: batshit rightwing cartoonists 2009

interesting post, SV. And your point about packaging 'digital access' with books is otm - when someone told me how they were doing this my response was 'what, like a CD-ROM?!' and they smiled ruefully and basically said 'those were the days' where they made a load of additional cash out of digital.

I don't know much about textbooks in K12 so I won't comment on that.

In France HE textbooks are much less of a thing than they are in the usa (don't know uk). Profs generally write their own lecture notes, and those are made available either (old fashioned) as copies in the library or online (I do the latter). This is obviously the best solution for serious universities, where the teaching faculty are also active researchers. I'm an editor of an "open" textbook in my speciality, managed through GitHub so that teachers can assemble their text à la carte from the components we've collectively written. Obviously this is free as in beer. You can also have the books printed on command so students who don't have good access to the net/machine can use the book (you then just pay for the printing). This is, I hope, the future of textbooks.

also an interesting post, Euler.

as you say, probably harder to do with K12 and state curriculums, but v interesting as a possible future model.

to get this thread back on track this joyous news cross-posted from the rolling UK politics thread:


https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/23/the-sun-records-huge-loss-amid-falling-print-sales-phone-hacking-damages

the end point of this terminal stage of big money liberalism is the heartbreaking plea, "why aren't donors stepping up to rescue [thing they don't actually care about]" https://t.co/QZfjOajpxV

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) April 19, 2020

Someone stick a fork in the Herald

What do you think of David Icke's conspiracy theories? https://t.co/FFkbrunR2n

— HeraldScotland (@heraldscotland) May 1, 2020

We asked Nicola Sturgeon if she had the brainpower to recognise that the coronavirus has been cooked up to help usher in a tyrannical fascist world government.

She declined to comment. 

Seriously get this to fuck.

a mix between shite and bollocks with the swagger of a cunt?

(i tried)

Print newspaper sales figures are supposed to be out today. But following industry representations, they no longer have to be made public. The monthly ABC sales charts have also been stopped permanently as they give "stimulus to write a negative narrative of circulation decline".

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) May 21, 2020

lol

If you keep the decline a secret maybe it will stop.

wow

Note: Tribune Publishing has cut salaries & instituted furloughs citing the pandemic/the economy but the savings to the company is ~less than~ what it is paying in severance to one (1) executive. These decisions are made deliberately to enrich the few on the backs of the many. pic.twitter.com/43KToeEZNf

— Nina Metz (@Nina_Metz) May 21, 2020

probably of no interest to non-pittsburghers but shit is *going down*with the post-gazette. western pa’s biggest supermarket chain just said they’d stop stocking it!

(owner/publisher are right wing racists, see google for most recent details, which are Fucked Up)

hmmm

Scoop from @kdoctor:

"Leaders in the field of nonprofit journalism are deciding over the next 48 hours whether or not to make a bid for all of @mcclatchy, sources tell me."

The idea: create the country's first major nonprofit newspaper chain.https://t.co/UoF082BnjG

— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) June 29, 2020

^ if this can be made to work, it will show the way out of the current hellscape

I believe we slept on 'TEACH BOYS TO DUST'

Came across this montage I made for a presentation when working at EC London office. Wonder if future historians will look at who took decisions to bombard UK public with this drivel day after day, why they did it and did it bring them or anyone any gains in the end? pic.twitter.com/FQHRIUOQma

— Mark English (@EULondonMark) August 5, 2020

disappointing there are only two NOW... headlines there

Oh wait, three

this is amazing https://www.ft.com/content/745e34a1-0ca7-432c-b062-950c20e41f03

sorry that's paywalled. it's about how Wirecard tried to discredit the FT by setting up fake news operations with spies bribing market manipulators and other evil-billionaire nonsense.

I totally thought, for a second, that you were posting about the FT's baroque payment structure.

Such a great read. Like a spy thriller or something.

I mean Jesus Christ lads pic.twitter.com/oDOW6EBh3W

— The Author, Séamas O'Reilly (@shockproofbeats) April 8, 2021

LOL Englishes

Mind you, maybe the editor of the Metro is an Orangeman.

well they did previously get a load of DUP cash for a Brexit ad.

Some questioned if it was a deliberate attempt at humour, or if the positioning of the stories was an unfortunate oversight.

lol yeah sure

Orangeman bad

A whole lot of responses to the question: why did you cancel your NYT/Guardian/Idaho Mountain Express subscription

https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/10/expensive-boring-and-wrong-here-are-all-the-news-publications-people-canceled-and-why/

Interesting piece

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/society-and-culture/the-inside-story-of-backstabbing-feuds-and-intrigue-at-the-daily-mail

Superfluous announcement gets canned

📢 '...put unwanted newspapers in the bin...'

This is one example of the announcements that we're getting rid of, making the passenger experience better and delivering on the Williams-Shapps #PlanForRail. 

Read more on announcements we’re removing: https://t.co/ZZQGqW58Jn pic.twitter.com/l2ITutFsci

— Department for Transport (@transportgovuk) January 21, 2022

Captured on video: the last willing reader of the Telegraph