

The Death of Newspapers
In the meantime, I keep reading my local newspaper and the major daily paper in the state, and I notice things. The local paper trumpets its awards, and it has won a great number. So why does scarcely a day go by without a misspelled headline? In fact, the lead headline last Saturday read: "
As for the major paper, it's scarcely much better. Almost never does the weather section appear without errors. On Sunday, the weather temperatures predicted for the next two days -- by town statewide -- were listed as Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, the next two days were Monday and Tuesday. The lead headline the other day began "An State Issue..." Oh?
In both papers, syntax and grammar errors appear regularly, yet I can remember when it was rare to find these kinds of errors in newspapers, as opposed to being so common that any issue offers plenty of examples. These problems don't even take into account the quality of reporting and the choice of stories. The lieutenant governor of the state -- soon to become governor -- appeared at a national meeting of governors and made comments that indicated that he knew nothing about the global warming issue -- right after listening to [or at least sitting through] a speech on the issue by Dr. Stephen Chu, the U.S. Secretary of Energy... and the only story that appeared was days later in a political commentary story. One
Might a certain lack of quality have something to do with the decline of newpapers... or is it that the decline of advertising revenue means that newspapers are both understaffed and with fewer and fewer true professionals? Either way, it's a sad situation.
In 1945, about 80% of America's newspapers were independently owned and published by local folks. Most of these independents were bought out, or driven out, of business by 1975. Now only about 10% of "local" newspapers are independent. Most of them are owned by Advance Publications or one of a few other large companies run by executives who live and work a thousand miles away.
Further, most local papers do not generate most of their own news. They don't send reporters abroad to get an independent assessment of what's going on. Instead, they rely on syndicated material from the Associated Press or from one of the major newspapers with a nation-wide circulation. These are the originators of the news, which the local guys merely copy.
So, in a sense, the big loss came 30 to 40 years ago, with the loss of original news-originators. What's happening now is merely a reduction in the number of echoes.
"They rested little and savagely rode their powerful horses to a virtual standstill."
That sentence is from Michael Moorcock's "Weird of the White Wolf," 1977 DAW Paperback, p. 86.
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