| 1/10/2008 9:27:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Bad news for the news
Guest Opinion
by William A. Collins
Extra! Extra!
Read it here;
Mindless pap,
The whole darn year.
You've probably read that newspapers have about as much future as the M.S. Arctic Explorer.
The Internet is supposed to be killing them. Then why, one might ask, are their owners able to sell for such soaring prices? Rupert Murdoch just paid $5 billion for the Wall Street Journal.
Well, mostly it's the cash flow. Advertising income remains OK (if dwindling), the physical plant is already paid for, and more money can be made even now by further cutting staff, outsourcing and merging functions with sister papers the mogul buyers have managed to accumulate.
In our area the latest mergers mean that an article by, say, a reporter in one town may also turn up in three neighboring papers. Plus more and more events at the state Capitol and such other exotic places are left to coverage by Associated Press.
On the financial news front, Thomson has now acquired Reuters for $18 billion and Murdoch (Fox News) has, of course, gobbled up the Journal. This loss of competition is great for profits, but dismal for seekers of financial information. That's why most governments set up regulatory agencies to guard against hazards of monopoly.
Unfortunately, under our present national administration, these regulatory guardians are designed to be snoozers. Worse, the Federal Communications Commission is actively promoting merger of various corporate giants and is building even higher hurdles for small media companies.
And as we know, big communications companies are sometimes nudged to help the White House spread its propaganda and to spy on unsuspecting citizens. There was a bygone era when such an unholy alliance was known as fascism.
And now that the corporation-dominated FCC has gotten its way, the long-time prohibition that kept newspapers from owning local TV stations and vice versa has been weakened for all the major media markets in the country. This will further reduce competition while enhancing megacorp profits. So if you think today's news from various sources all sounds about the same, just wait.
Further, not only do all articles on grave topics sound pretty similar, but they're largely uninformative. Dispatches from Iraq and Afghanistan give the impression of having been written in the Pentagon public relations office, which in painfully large measure, is true.
Alternative views tend to land on the cutting room floor. Not surprisingly, investors and advertisers are not thrilled to see or hear contrasting points of view flowing out from media where their money is flowing in. This tacit support for the American corporate empire suits owners' goals just fine, and those rare dissenters still on staff might best find themselves another line of work.
Luckily for dissenting readers, the internet came along. Alternative and comprehensive news and views fill hundreds of Web sites and masses of e-mails every day. It's not hard to see why so many folks have given up on newspapers and TV news altogether - unless of course they thrive on crime, celebrity, disaster, and tragedy - otherwise known as entertainment.
But newspapers will remain major media players because they are designed to report on popular local topics that just don't fit well into electronic outlets. Chief among these are obituaries, letters-to-the-editor, town happenings and high school and college sports.
But as long as readers buy the local rag for such attractions, they're also captive to its choice of news about our republic.
Unfortunately, a groundswell of reader demand for better journalism is probably not in the cards. We tend instead to vote with our feet if we're dissatisfied. Thus newspaper sales are down, internet sales are up, and personal knowledge about town, state, and national matters has grown shamefully thin.
Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Conn. Column distributed by MinutemanMedia.org.
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