the “public watchdog,” as if…

Book review:

-30- The Collapse

of the Great American Newspaper

Charles M. Madigan, ed.

Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2007

Madigan collected 15 commentaries on the continuing decline of the American newspaper industry and the woeful prospects for its improvement or survival.

The authors of Collapse do not offer predictions, but the adverse circumstances they describe as existing or possible seem all too real almost 15 years later.

Community newspapers have mostly disappeared or shriveled in vitality and importance.

Big city newspapers have been transformed into cash conduits by profit-seeking money managers, who as a group don’t care about doing or preserving the popular (and dubious) legacy concept of journalism as “a public watchdog.”

At every level of government, from township zoning hearing board to U.S. Congress, fewer and fewer reporters—or no reporters—are showing up to observe what’s going on and report it to a citizenry that historically has never wanted to pay the full cost of getting “the news.”

The basic business model of newspaper owners today is: soak the aging, shriveling group of home delivery subscribers for as much as they will pay, and soak the shriveling group of newspaper advertisers for as much as they will pay, for as long as they’re willing to pay. One by one, newspapers are disappearing.

For example, the seven-day home delivery price of The Boston Globe is about $25/week, or almost $1,300/year.

Do you remember how much a newspaper cost when you were a kid?

* * * * * *

We Were Soldiers Once…and Young

…too much death (book review)

Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (ret.)

and Joseph L. Galloway

click here

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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”