December 7, 2019

"7,700 people have lost their jobs so far this year in a media landslide."

Business Insider reports. Wow! If you're hearing a lot of desperation channeled at you through media, maybe it's the media's own pain.

At the link, there's a ton of specific detail about numerous media entities.

144 comments:

chickelit said...

Can they code?

zipity said...

They should take the advice they gave to us deplorables and bitter clingers.

Learn.

To.

Code.

Ken B said...

What do you call 7700 reporters at the bottom of the dadburned ocean?
A crackerjack start.

hombre said...

Obviously, they’re not canning the right people.

Lincolntf said...

I'm going to work in broadcast media beginning next summer (I'm going to finish an Associate's and do an internship at the local NBC station first). There are plenty of media companies hiring, at least here in North Carolina. I could start tomorrow if I didn't want to finish my Assoc.

rcocean said...

Media "Landslide"? What's a landslide mean in this context?

rcocean said...

7700 Democrats will have to look for another way to help the party. Maybe, become campaign workers or writing slogans.

whitney said...

Learn to code

Curious George said...

It's a good start.

Michael K said...

Bernie said we don't need all those brands of toothpaste.

Why do we need all those brands of Trump hating media?

Michael said...

Understood given the shit writing in this headline. Get a fucking Thesaurus jackass.

Howard said...

It just reinforces and strengthens the Buildeburger and Soros stranglehold on journalism in defense of the Deep State.

wild chicken said...

Well, jeez, our local daily (Lee Ent.) has the worst writing, the worst editing, the worst layout...all heds are TDS hysteria, every day, aping their heroes in NYC...why *wouldn't* they lose their jobs?

Wince said...

Meanwhile, the media already prepping the word "landslide" to have a negative connotation?

Media workers now hate the media, and will cling even more strongly to their anti-market beliefs.

I find market discipline reassuring when people who add actual value to the economy begin being paid and treated better than those who don't.

But don't expect the media companies to hire actual talent that will attract discerning customers.

And notice the level of unionization in those layoffs.

I believe it's time for media consumers to organize in to buying groups.

Bay Area Guy said...

Jobs Report - 266,000 new jobs
Media Report - 7,700 jobs lost

Heh. Will the winning never cease?

richlb said...

I'll just pile on - learn to code.

Unknown said...

Sorry, I was going to comment earlier but I couldn't find my really, really small violin.

Drago said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Bergall said...

I'd bet that a large percentage of that number comes from print media, not cable.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

To code, they must learn.

Drago said...

rcocean: "7700 Democrats will have to look for another way to help the party."

I hear there is an opening at Althouseblog for a "Lifelong republican" who hasn't blown his Fake Conservative cover and been exposed as a typical leftist yet.

I'll keep you updated.

AllenS said...

Learn how to fry hamburgers and french fries.

AllenS said...

All of the fast food chains are hiring. All shifts.

rehajm said...

The good economic news just keeps coming. With so much crap out there I'm surprised it isn't multiples more. I guess there's plenty of patrons out there with a point of view and money that's burning a hole in their pocket.

pacwest said...

"Learn how to fry hamburgers and french fries."

Due to the bad potato harvest this year the fast food chains may only be able to hire half the jounalists. The rest can just sell their stories to The Onion or Babylon Bee. No editing required.

Lucid-Ideas said...

Leaving on good terms
Enjoying the transition
Accepting things have changed
Realizing your own worth
Not worrying about tomorrow
Taking it one day at a time
Opting for the harder road
Creating a better place
Object to those bad feelings
Demonstrate your independence
Endeavpr to become great

pacwest said...

Speaking of journalists, how long until Solomon gets a metoo charge. 3,2,...

bagoh20 said...

Company accountants have noticed that an echo chamber really only needs and has one voice.

Matt Sablan said...

The worst part is most of these people are losing their jobs, not because of their incompetence, but because the market is contracting. Think: If the media just fired the incompetents, how many of the competent wouldn't have lost their jobs.

mockturtle said...

It's a good start.

mockturtle said...

Oops, Curious George beat me to it.

bagoh20 said...

I see it going all the way down, but top management's unprofessionalism is the standard killing the jobs at the bottom.

Nichevo said...


pacwest said...
"Learn how to fry hamburgers and french fries."

Due to the bad potato harvest this year the fast food chains may only be able to hire half the jounalists. The rest can just sell their stories to The Onion or Babylon Bee. No editing required.

I believe it was attributed to the robber baron Jay Gould that he could hire half the working class to kill the other half. But with the development of automatic weapons and advances in high explosives, I should think they could get a much greater degree of efficiency these days. Still, it would be a start.

I'm Full of Soup said...

I'm 67. This morning at the 711, I bought a neighborhood paper and the 80 year old lady in front of me bought one too. Very few people younger than 55 pay for a newspaper. I don't buy the Philadelphia Inquirer anymore - their leftist slant become a turnoff to me. They did it to themselves.

Original Mike said...

"7,700 people have lost their jobs so far this year in a media landslide."

Judging from the media's behavior, it's not nearly enough.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Meh, looking at the specifics it’s just the usual churn and change of evolving businesses. Hardly a landslide and not in the least an indicator of death throes.
Shame about the Pacifica station. Out and proud rabid Lefty radio has been a favorite entertainment of mine since my 20’s, but Pacifica’s existence has always been on a knife edge. “Activists” make lousy business managers.

Yancey Ward said...

They could all learn to work in the burgeoning field of tiny violin production.

Bob Boyd said...

I just saw one of these guys.
He was on the corner with a card board sign that said, "Will trash Trump for food".

Lawrence Person said...

I'd never heard of "Highsnobiety," evidently some men's fashion thing that they mention in the very first paragraph that lost all of six jobs. What, did the writer's boyfriend work there? Based on the image they use to illustrate the piece, it looks like they all deserved to lose their jobs...

Big Mike said...

I’m going to pile on, but only by pointing out that the news media did it to themselves. Back during the pre-Obama era (in fact pre- Bush if I recall correctly) the grey eminences of the news media would intone that the main thing they had to offer the public was their credibility. And then they threw it away, pretty much for nothing. Reporting started to slip away from facts and towards conjecture and opinion during the Iraq War and then hit bottom during the Obama campaign, and then went downhill from there. When what you have to offer is your credibility, and you have no credibility, well what do you expect?

That’s one thought, and another is that the news media displayed no empathy for people losing their jobs during and after the 2008 economic downturn and all through the Obama years. Telling coal miners they should be retraining to be programmers was uncommonly cruel and heartless, given the numbers of Appalachia firms hiring software developers (pretty close to zero, I would imagine). Did I somehow miss the TV anchors emoting over people in the Midwest losing their jobs to NAFTA?

So no tears for the 7700 people who will now have to learn how to work for a living.

Bill Peschel said...

I lost my job back in 2013 when my newspaper decided they didn't need copy desks anymore.

This was part of a larger trend at newspapers across the country. In addition to getting rid of a second set of eyes on the copy, they consolidated page layout duties into "hubs", so a guy in one part of the country would lay out the local page for a newspaper in another part. This meant that the designer would have no local knowledge that could catch an error.

We've been seeing the fallout ever since.

ALP said...

Yep can concur. Seattle Times keeps running editorials warning us of the impending fascist era due to the decline of newspapers and journalism. A few clicks away in the same issue is an article about how WA state is #1 (?) per some magazine. But it isn't about WA state is it about those horrific states at the bottom of the list. Clueless.

Original Mike said...

Blogger I'm Full of Soup said..."I'm 67. This morning at the 711, I bought a neighborhood paper and the 80 year old lady in front of me bought one too. Very few people younger than 55 pay for a newspaper."

Yeah, I'm 64 and still get the dead tree version of the Wall Street Journal. I get it because a physical paper actually gets read. I wouldn't get around to reading it online. But I ignore any of the "political news" in it. That I do get online (and not from the WSJ).

mockturtle said...

ALP, I'm old enough to remember when the Seattle Times was a good, quite conservative paper. The old PI was more liberal. So after they merged, the bigger circulation Times became more like the smaller PI. Go figure. I also remember when the Arizona Republic was unabashedly conservative. It has now become starkly leftist and embarrassingly puerile. But I repeat myself.

Yancey Ward said...

It has been amusing watching the decline and death of the Knoxville News Sentinel the last 8 years. The paper's customer base is East Tennessee, which is as red as anywhere in the United States, and yet the paper is well left of center- prominently featuring, for example, climate change articles and everything anti-Trump. The paper is down to half its page count of just 8 years ago, with one disappearing feature after another. I doubt it lasts another 8 years.

Roger Sweeny said...

I subscribed to a local paper published by one of the companies mentioned in the article. There was hardly any local news, and the filler was often ideological crap. I let the subscription lapse.

Automatic_Wing said...

コーディングを学んでください.

narciso said...

our local paper, is brief but it's still full of ap blank pages,


https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/06/ana-navarro-biden-outburst-damn-liar-trump/

MBunge said...

You would think seeing such job carnage in the media would make them more sensitive to the economic peril facing their fellow Americans...but it hasn't.

My theory is that most of these media job losses are coming in major metro areas. That means the people who work together generally only see each other at work. They don't live in the same neighborhoods. They don't shop at the same stores. Their kids don't go to the same schools. They don't go to the same churches. So when the person in the cubicle next to you gets canned, all you have to do is stop following their social media and it's like they never even existed.

Mike

chickelit said...

Big Mike said...Telling coal miners they should be retraining to be programmers was uncommonly cruel and heartless, given the numbers of Appalachia firms hiring software developers (pretty close to zero, I would imagine).

I think the idea behind the "learn to code" admonishment was that not only was coal bad for Gaia but that coal miners should depopulate Appalachia and let it return to a more pristine state -- presumably so that it could be annexed as a national park with easy road access for coal-powered Priuses. As it happened, "writers" like Kevin D. Williamson actually wished for them to die out so that there was no need for relocation for coding jobs. Cruel indeed. But that's why I love to unload on hacks like Williamson.

Closer to home, our very own Ritmo loves to point out that Appalachia has a meth problem which he actively cheerleads.

chickelit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
AllenS said...

They used the word "landslide", but should have used the word "quicksand".

chickelit said...

How far we've fallen in 50 years: I have a Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbook from 1968 which has back-to-back in-depth reporting on American poverty, the first focussing on white Appalachians and the second on black urban poverty. Nowadays, the media only cares about and is sympathetic one half of that cohort. Why is that?

Howard said...

Don't forget oxy, obesity and diabetes as the main products of the Appalachian dumb belt.

chickelit said...

Howard's (and Ritmo's) problem as commenters at Althouse can be neatly summed up.

ALP said...

Half of the Seattle Times these days are articles about the housing market and rent. How many of these articles do we need? The last several years they cycle through the same stuff: The housing inventory is high (winter) buyer's market! Now its low (summer) seller's market! Rinse, repeat and be sure to write in such a way that you convey this is "new".

And another thing (I am on a roll here). They are obsessed with light rail. The much faster, simpler solution to traffic around here would be dedicated bus lanes on major highways. I have commuted from the south end of Puget Sound for a decade using the bus/train - I know what I am talking about! Way cheaper than the billions they want to spend on light rail joining the counties north and south of Seattle's King County. After the last election when $30 tabs won, MY GOD the weeping and wailing of the Seattle Times elite! One journalist went so far as to petulantly write: "Ok Pierce County you get a bus", to which I reply: "THAT is what I've been asking for - more buses and a clear path to Seattle that would take less time than this expensive rail you want to build - why do you have an issue with a faster, cheaper solution?"

Argh.

0_0 said...

Althouse, are you not aware that BI is clickbait crap?
It is worse than sfgate.com.

daskol said...

The Epoch Times seems to be doing well. Most of the stuff I enjoy reading these days is people writing for the love of it, not the money. I see two problems with paid news: most of the people I know who went into journalism went in to change the world, not report on it. There’s far more glamour in activism than in reporting, at least there was. Then you have, as I think you always did, the status-income disequilibrium of people covering the rich, famous and powerful, feelings eventually part of that club, but never really being able to join it’s ranks via professional journalism. Leads to bitterness and corruption. Journalism is about access to the powerful, and they will give you more access the more helpful you are to them. It’s a completely fucked model, and the gradual disintegration of the institutions which we once held aloft as credible and worthy is a societal good, even if what seems to be thriving amidst this destruction appears to many to be distasteful.

bagoh20 said...

They should be happy. They got the a targeted version of economic downturn they longed for under Trump. This is how it would feel for a lot of people if you got your way. Karma, man - just karma.

daskol said...

I’ll take narciso and his links to the mcintyres and appelbaums of the world over a society in which the NYT or WSJ owns the narrative. Let millions of competing narratives bloom.

Howard said...

Chickelit is the new minister of protocol

Robert Cook said...

This is terrible news. Those here expressing glee show their own short-sightedness. It is only a robust free press that provides any society with the facts it needs to fight back against the propaganda and depredations of powerful entities--corporations and governments--whose actions can only be reined it when put under the media spotlight and thereby halted by public outcry.

These media jobs are not going away because of the quality (good or bad) of the reporting, not because the reporters are "too liberal" (as if). (The purpose of a free press is not to congratulate the government and the wealthy on all the great things they do; it is to try to keep them minimally honest, by never letting up on their misdeeds.) The jobs are going away because giant corporations are consolidating disparate existing media entities into fewer media entities. They will all be owned by two or three, (or one) mega corporation(s), and their points of view will be corporatized and homogenized, (to a greater extent than they already are).

Moreover, the shrinking of media (and media jobs) reflects the waning audience for print news media. Young people today are adapted to Twitter and texting and Instagram and all the other shit forms of communication that make us ever more a functionally illiterate world. Rather than lengthy, substantive reports on the ill-doing of corporate villains or corrupt politicians, rather than informative articles about complex issues of the day, we will get headline services, print versions of our daily local news programs. One or two minutes on this tragedy, then on to the next, with light human interest stories inserted to keep the mood of the viewers at an even keel. No context will be provided, no background, few chains of facts to help us understand the import of the "news" they're providing.

There's a reason the founders enshrined freedom of the press in the very first amendment. However, it is being rendered obsolete through the pandering of profit-seeking corporations who will feed the masses the sugared shit we want. It's our own fault, the fault of a childish, shallow, impatient population who cannot or will not pay attention to anything that cannot be said in a tweet or with an emoji.

Robert Cook said...

"Let millions of competing narratives bloom."

That's exactly what's not happening.

daskol said...

Cook, you’re insufficiently cynical. The “free press” has long been co-opted by those powerful entities you’d have them hold in check. The destruction in media or the press industry IS this corrupted industry being held accountable, or being found wanting anyway. NYT is owned by Carlos Slim, and Bezos owns the WaPo. The press as currently constituted, analog and digital, is the propagated of corrupt propaganda. That there are fewer jobs for know-nothing 27 year olds in this industry is good news.

Ken B said...

Give over Cookie. There are jobs in digital reporting. The decline of buggy whips did not mean the end of travel.

daskol said...

What the founders enshrined in our bill of rights was freedom of expression. They had no particular love for the press, quote the contrary.

daskol said...

There’s more information, of variable quality, available than ever before. Tomorrow there will be even more. There are people reporting, but the least reliable reports come from those getting paid to do it. This was probably always true. It’s just increasingly obvious to more and more people.

narciso said...

it's very proprietary attitude, McIntyre, is very strongly anti interventionist, Ukraine, yemen, you name it, but he's mined the documents gone through social media, they kyev post was a good source, now their editorial policy conforms to the new narrative, so the fact that the good colonel was being lobbied by the key client of burisma, naftogaz, puts a spanner in the narrative of his Dudley do right image, the first reaction to Pensacola was naturally gun control, even though weapons are already prohibited on base, that's what the hive mind understands, where did the billions of imf and tax payer cash go to, why are they not interested in finding out,

Robert Cook said...

"Most of the stuff I enjoy reading these days is people writing for the love of it, not the money."

Hmmm. How are people who not getting paid for journalism going to travel to where the news is, interview the principles, find witnesses and counter-witnesses, and spend the time necessary for doing research to learn about often abstruse political or economic subjects? How will they have the time and resources to get the information they need to understand the world around us so they can, in turn, report and explain it to the public, most of whom do not have the expertise to understand the topics of great import in their own time?

"I see (a problem) with paid news: most of the people I know who went into journalism went in to change the world, not report on it." This is the purpose of reporting. It is not simply to be a transcriber of the local school board meetings, or of "he said/she said" public debates, giving no information to help the public decide which of the conflicting statements are valid. It is to provide us the information we need to make decisions about how to self-govern. We change the world armed with information gained from in-depth reporting on current events that are affecting us.

daskol said...

Epstein didn’t kill himself, btw.

Robert Cook said...

"What the founders enshrined in our bill of rights was freedom of expression. They had no particular love for the press, quote the contrary."

Reread it. They specifically include freedom of the press as a protected entity. They had no love for a free press when it criticized or looked too closely at their actions, but, philosophically, they understand the crucial importance of a free press to a free society.

daskol said...

Cool, there are already people there where the news is happening. The notion that a journalist can parachute in and do the needful to get the story right cuts no ice with me: it’s malarkey and always has been.

daskol said...

We have an incredibly free press today. And you can get it for free, too. Paid content is not equivalent to a free press.

daskol said...

It’s a mistake to confuse the decline of an industry or business model with the decline of the “press” as a a civic institution.

Robert Cook said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Robert Cook said...

"Cook, you’re insufficiently cynical. The 'free press' has long been co-opted by those powerful entities you’d have them hold in check."

I'm very aware of this. The shrinking of media jobs is an illustration of the ongoing murder of the free press by the powerful entities who are buying up and consolidating the media. Those here cheering the loss of media jobs are cheering the usurpation of the free press by the very entities who would rob us of the means to prevent them from usurping our freedom and well-being from us. This is the result of the removal by government of regulatory barricades on these kinds of monopolies.

12/7/19, 1:38 PM Delete

hstad said...

Alongside this, the polling company Gallup reported that Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history." That's what they get when the use their historical 'Brand' solely for reporting "the Orange Man Bad". "Turn out the lights..."

Automatic_Wing said...

Reread it. They specifically include freedom of the press as a protected entity.

What's referenced in the Constitution is the actual printing press, that is, the physical object that printed words on paper. They meant that if you owned a printing press, no one could stop you from printing pamphlets.

At the time of the Constitution, there was no concept of a credentialed media, guys with "Press" cards stuck in their hat bands or whatever.

daskol said...

I think it’s always been so when it comes to the media industry—the corruption is built into the business model. The decline of jobs in the media industry or at least in segments of it does not mean the destruction of the free press. It means the decline of certain brands. We’re better off without them—more free. That feeling that we’re less free today is actually the realization that we never have been free or self-governing in the way we are in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. It’s the result of more and, amongst it, better information getting out that the “free press” of yore helped to suppress. Epstein, for example, did not kill himself is an important meme that never would have have had a chance to spread. Memes in general have been democratized, and he who controls the meme controls the mind. Better not to have an industry with such memetic power.

narciso said...

so the ones who have figured out the Russian story are some on the samizdat right, and some dissident elements, like taibbi, mates tracey, blackburn, the leading expert on mifsud, is a confirmed liberal democrat, who is to the left of labor, he followed this path about the link campus, which was involved everywhere from morocco to Bangladesh, not your usual Russian catspaw,

Original Mike said...

Blogger Robert Cook said..."This is terrible news. Those here expressing glee show their own short-sightedness. It is only a robust free press that provides any society with the facts it needs to fight back against the propaganda and depredations of powerful entities"

Today's press is in cahoots with the powerful entities. The sooner they fail, the better.

Limited blogger said...

Good to see free market rules still exist in some markets.

The output of these individuals is not in demand.

daskol said...

Yes, enshrined is the protection of the freedom to publish, not the preservation of incumbent pubslishers.

narciso said...

it's little wonder that the daily mail, in it's garish stylings is so popular, they sometimes overreach, like when they republish nina Burleigh or Julia ioffe,


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7766473/Saudi-Air-Force-trainee-condemned-nation-evil-hate-fueled-Twitter-manifesto.html

daskol said...

Taibbi and Greenwald, among other dissident writers, and their experience with Omidyar is instructive as to the inherent corruption of the press industry. It’s no place for an honest and uncorrupted soul to thrive.

daskol said...

Between the news and the undernews, I’ll take the under any day. And I’m enjoying Drudge’s decline too, or at least his rough patch. When was the last time he posted triumphantly about record page views? He’s not getting them anymore.

Jim at said...

Cookie brings up a good point. Too bad it has nothing to do with the facts at hand.

Robert Cook said...

"What's referenced in the Constitution is the actual printing press, that is, the physical object that printed words on paper."

Oh, please. Don't be an idiot.

At the time of the Constitution, there was no concept of a credentialed media, guys with 'Press' cards stuck in their hat bands or whatever."

Who said anything about a "credentialed media" with guys wearing "press" cards? There were certainly news media of various kinds extant in the colonies. The first amendment included "freedom of the press" to protect such news media from being shut down by peeved government officials unhappy at being criticized by them.

Anyone today, as then, can take upon themselves the role of journalist, and can form a news organ. There are many independent jouralists and news organs today, typically found online, and these are often worthy. However, they are too many and too small to attract the attention of any but the few who care to seek them out.

The big business mass media are often shoddy and dishonest, but this has to do with the profit-seeking of their corporate owners as much as (or more than) any faults of individual journalists. I blame the fate of our current media organs on their own management, as much as on the shrinking attention-spans of the ever-more-distracted public.

The advantage, however, of profit-seeking media organizations is that they can pay journalists living wages and can pay expenses so the reporters can devote themselves to doing the research and traveling often necessary to adequately report on complex stories.

I will say this: any reporter worthy of the name would never become friends with the powerful people in private and public institutions of power. The more reporters identify themselves with the rich and powerful people they report on, the more worthless they become as journalists.

narciso said...

and yet we've seen it's so easy to take handouts from fusion gps, or levick group, or splc and call it news, and media matters blasts it a thousand fold,

hawkeyedjb said...

There are various reasons for the financial decline of what we call The Press. But in the midst of that decline, the decision to throw away half their readership just to be part of the Cool Kids gang is monumentally stupid. Most press outlets are simple-minded propaganda sheets for a particular party and a particular point of view. As someone pointed out above, The Arizona Republic is a good example of this stupidity. Their target audience is like-minded teenagers. Do they truly, honestly not understand that there are 10,000 places to get the day's Party talking points?

They are not pandering to an underserved market.

narciso said...

that's the point of the journolist, the rizzotto tray echo chamber,

Big Mike said...

Hmmm. How are people who not getting paid for journalism going to travel to where the news is, interview the principles, find witnesses and counter-witnesses, and spend the time necessary for doing research to learn about often abstruse political or economic subjects?

Leave it to Cookie to pretend that this is, in fact, what is happening today with the news media.

Lincolntf said...

Someone should introduce Robert Cook to Michael Yon.

Marcus Carman said...

Learn to code.

Paco Wové said...

Cook; by your own definition, the modern day "press" is already garbage, so I don't get what you're wailing about.

"You can't throw away that piece of spoiled food! Don't you know you'll be hungry later?"

Big Mike said...

Something I should have added to my comment at 11:51 but it was already running a bit long, at the same time that coal miners were being urged to learn to program, numerous corporations were laying off their American IT staffs. The news media might find it convenient to forget about an iconic American corporation like Disney explicitly telling its IT staff “All you Americans are fired.” But you can be sure that most of the UMW rank and file knew about it.

ALP said...

It is to provide us the information we need to make decisions about how to self-govern.
*********
I keep looking for this information in our Seattle Times, NYT, and WSJ, but I often find it **outside** major media: books, reports, origial sources. What has changed is that we need to be more self directed and discriminating in the sources we read. However, this necessity has come about during a time reading and critical thinking on are the decline.

I interact with so-called 'educated' people and those with fancy executive/managment titles/big salaries all day long at my job. I noticed years ago many can't even read an email with information/directions that is longer than 4 sentences. Just trying to get my job done working with people that won't read is frustrating and has been for some time.

pacwest said...

Cook, we do have a free press, so no problem there. We also have a free citizenry that is able to deride them thank goodness. By the principles you are setting forth you should commending everyone here who is ridiculing them.

Maybe what you are wishing for is a fair press? One able to present facts, analysis, opinion and be able to distinguish the difference.

What people here are ridiculing is a Democratic controlled legacy press. Just a step away from Pravda. I for one am happy they are being bashed. As long as our educational system pumps out activists instead of journalists the problem will still exist, and I will continue to wish them ill. You should too.

Your comments about news being replaced by social platforms does have merit.

exhelodrvr1 said...

The "press" is more free now than ever, because of the incredible ability the internet provides for individuals/small groups to put out information and reach large numbers of people in real-time at low cost.

exhelodrvr1 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
exhelodrvr1 said...

Big Mike,
"the main thing they had to offer the public was their credibility. And then they threw it away"

It was never there - it just wasn't obvious, because there weren't so many other options/sources available.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Here is a graphic representation of why, perhaps, people are less willing to pay for the local newspaper today. And the situation has only gotten worse since the comparison was made in 2012.

chickelit said...

Foreign journalist now do the work that Americans no longer do. I understand that they work on a quid per quote basis.

daskol said...

The Kyev Post had a very interesting editor during the Orange Revolution days, its founding editor I believe—Andrey Slivka. He’d cut his teeth at the NYPress in its early and excellent days as a writer and editor there. He would occasionally still write something for the NYPress from Kiev, and I got the sense that he was in some peril from some of the interests he’d upset in Ukraine. Always wondered what happened to him. Talented writer.

Automatic_Wing said...

Cook: There were certainly news media of various kinds extant in the colonies...blah blah blah...

Yeah there certainly were, and no one said there weren't, so your bringing it up is beside the point.

The question was what was meant by words "the press" in the US Constitution, and it certainly did not mean "news media", as that usage of the word press didn't occur until the early 20th century.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/412319/since-when-has-the-press-meant-the-news-media

daskol said...

He was a first gen Ukrainian-American with roots in the Ukrainian lower east side and Hudson Valley who moved back when it seemed like there was a promise of better days there, and besides a sense of fear for his person his dispatches left the impression that Kiev hadn’t been kind to his moral worldview either.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

"Landslide"

we prefer 'D-5 Avalanche'

AllenS said...

Learn how to live more comfortably in your parents basement.

Robert Cook said...

"The question was what was meant by words "the press" in the US Constitution, and it certainly did not mean "news media", as that usage of the word press didn't occur until the early 20th century."

No, the question is whether the word "press" in the first amendments refers only to the physical printing press, which is a nonsensical reading.

Your own source supports the interpretation of "freedom of the press" to include news organs:

"Specific sense 'machine for printing' is from 1530s; this was extended to publishing houses by 1570s and to publishing generally (in phrases like freedom of the press) from c. 1680.

The first amendment guarantees the right of free expression, including expression of ideas published by any publishers. The newspapers of that time were publishers. That your source says the "the press" refers to "news media," as of around 1921 means only that, by then, it came to be used to refer specifically to the news media, rather than to publishers at large, (although, "freedom of the press" still guarantees that freedom to all publishers).

Original Mike said...

If the press self-immolates, that's hardly a first amendment issue.

daskol said...

Cook, I think where there may be some common ground is on this notion of freedom of expression being intricately linked to the publishing infrastructure. Yes, today any old asshole can put up a web page and annoy some people by informing others. But the biggest threat to the press freedoms and the beneficent aims behind protecting such freedoms are Google, Amazon and Facebook. It is their monopoly of the means of spreading information, the concentration of memetic power in these few hands, that threatens our press freedoms.

Robert Cook said...

'"The 'press' is more free now than ever, because of the incredible ability the internet provides for individuals/small groups to put out information and reach large numbers of people in real-time at low cost."

Who vets the sources of this information and its accuracy? How able are these independent publishers--as valuable as many of them are--to financially support the costs of expansive, first-hand reporting, (rather than simply provide opinions on the news reported by the major media)? How do these online publishers reach enough of the public to have any impact on public opinion? How do we protect these independent publishers from the dire fate that publisher Julian Assange is facing now when they do manage to publish documents and information the government(s) do not want us to see?

daskol said...

Larry Page and Sergey Brin just stepped away from GOOG, leaving it in the hands of Sundar Pichai. I like to think it's too emotionally difficult for them to oversee the (hopefully) inevitable dissolution of the amazing thing they built.

daskol said...

What the hell does vetting for accuracy even mean? If we're in an epistemological crisis or it feels so, it's because we're realizing that "accuracy" and "facts" no longer mean, have likely never meant, what we comfortably assumed they did. I don't mean to sound postmodern because I hate that shit, but come on: writing is persuasion, and persuasion is manipulation. That it's more difficult for corporate media to sway public opinion sounds to me a positive development, given how easy it is to move minds on a mass scale. Most people are not of above average intelligence, and that rather than the demise of centralized, corporate media like accounts for the persistence of bullshit and people who thrive on it.

daskol said...

Julian Assange and all true whistleblowers will always suffer at the hands of the powerful, because there are always power centers that need to be threatened and they will always react to protect themselves. It takes courage and some kind of crazy to threaten such power. If it doesn't, you're not a threat but a tool. I don't see how a thriving corporate media changes that.

Original Mike said...

Today's mainstream media can't be trusted to vet a restaurant menu. If CNN tells me something is true, I am LESS likely to believe it (not exaggerating). This is why they're circling the drain.

daskol said...

Layers, Mike. Layers and layers of fact checkers and editors.

narciso said...

indeed:

https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/the-raise-of-the-real-fake-data-brokers/#comments

Original Mike said...

"Layers, Mike. Layers and layers of fact checkers and editors."

There are fewer layers every day. Fewer people to lie to us.

Automatic_Wing said...

The point is, Cookie, your precious media companies and their J-School trained lackeys, who now need to #LeanToCode, never merited any special consideration in the constitution.

MountainMan said...

Some of those 7,700 could move to where I live in TN. We have fast-food restaurants closing because they can’t find enough workers and managers (at least, ones that show up on time and are sober). We lost our lone Which Wich and 2 of our 4 Wendy’s that way and recently a nice little pizza place closed, too.

MountainMan said...

“No, the question is whether the word "press" in the first amendments refers only to the physical printing press, which is a nonsensical reading.”

No, it isn’t nonsense. The 1st Amendment recognizes the right of everyone to have access to the printing press for producing any printed product, such as a newspaper, book, pamphlet, broadsheet, etc., and distributing it without interference. In the Spanish colonies in the New World only the royal governor could own and control the printing press, thus had control of what could be printed, something of which the founders were very aware. Another intent of the 1st Amendment was that anything could be printed and distributed without having a tax stamp from the government, i.e., no Stamp Act. Glenn Reynolds has discussed this from time-to-time. The “press” today - the news media - thinks the 1st Amendment applies specifically to them but it applies to everyone.

GingerBeer said...

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when the media loses theirs.”

narciso said...



Interesting:

https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2019/12/was-manafort-plant-willing-or-otherwise.html?fbclid=IwAR08eCW_2Mu0vtHgZAsThKwG2bm6ax0qIKvHah73XXFX2v8k8WE7wTlsmrE&m=1#more

AllenS said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
AllenS said...

Learn how to crochet, and, if that doesn't turn out, learn how to tan animal hides.

Typo on 1st attempt.

AllenS said...

I would have caught the typo sooner, but I was laughing too hard.

daskol said...

whoa, that Manafort story is some heady stuff.

narciso said...

My theory was a revenge play by deripasha that got out of hand.

Dude1394 said...

Faster please. They are actively trying to destroy the country.

narciso said...


Play favorites, nah


https://mobile.twitter.com/dkahanerules/status/1203455773298302978

MayBee said...

I really hate to see people lose their jobs. I do wish the media was doing better reporting right now.

exhelodrvr1 said...

"Who vets the sources of this information and its accuracy? "

WHo vetted the sources of the papers in the olden days, or more importantly, decided which stories to print and which stories not to print? The inaccuracy/lack of context/bias has ALWAYS been there - we just didn't realize it because the options were so limited. Look at the mighty New York Times and how it wrote about Hitler in the mid-30's for example.

Anonymous said...

Learn to write.

Birkel said...

It's fun to watch a communist like Robert Cook complain about a loss of freedom.

5

RK said...

I hope most of the people who lost their jobs were the ones who said, "to change the world" when originally asked why they wanted to get into journalism. We don't need those people.

TJM said...

I have zero sympathy for these left-wing clowns, they only have themselves to blame. When you piss off half of your potential audience with non-stop cheerleading for the Democratic Party, you get what you deserve. The media, with very few exceptions, serves as a SuperPac for the Democratic Party and actively suppresses any positive news on the Trump administration's myriad of achievements in the past 3 years, i.e. no new hot wars, best economy in 50 years, etc. I laughed out loud at a news article posted on the internet from the Chicago Tribune blaming President Trump for Kamala Harris' demise. Is there anything he can't do? It was pure racist, moronic crap from the late Colonel McCormick's once great newspaper. Something that crazy should not be published unless your goal is to hemorrhage more subscribers

The Gipper Lives said...

Because liars are a dime a dozen.

Greg the class traitor said...

Well, market discipline is getting rid of jobs held by old bitter clingers.

Guess they shoudl all learn to code.

Ryan said...

I don't see 7,700 unemployed journalists learning c++, java, c#, fortran and cobol.

FleetUSA said...

Our local rag (Daily Progress) uses the AP for 99% of their news. UGH TDS 100% of the time.

stlcdr said...

The loss of media jobs is nothing new. It’s been that way for decades. Th people started seeing through the bias and bullshit, culminating in people calling it out, leading to an increase in losses. However, read ‘news media’ for media.

mockturtle said...

Our local rag (Daily Progress) uses the AP for 99% of their news.

Yep, therein lies the problem. Well, not the entire problem, as our local writers are all leftists, too.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Oversaturated market, low quality product.

"Media" includes print and electronic publishing, as well as entertainment. Over half the "7,700" were at one employer. Article details dozens of data points (employer, nr of people, date). Most are single digit or low double-digit number of employee cuts. Disney is 4,000.

Computers, cell phone cameras, and internet have made it easy to produce and publish. The market is saturated. Many of the "jobs" listed are failed start-ups. "Maidment said the decision came down to the struggle to find an audience for the site."

With surfeit of quantity comes suffering of quality. Actors in cable and streaming productions mumble the words, failing to speak clearly. Associated Press article read like transcript of TV talking head babble: incoherent stream-of-consciousness sentences sprinkled with contractions and inanities.

We will let our WSJ internet subscription lapse this December. The writing is too political, the elevator interviews are vapid, fast-talking kid doing the tech videos leaves out too many syllables.