The demise of newspapers

I woke up at 4 in the morning today. Not that terrible of a thing, because I turned on the radio as I often due at night to BBC News on 90.1 KERA in Dallas. Depressingly though was a report about the financial struggles of today's newspapers. With people, particularly the younger crowd, turning increasingly to the internet for their free and wide-ranging news and also free want-ads and job postings, it's making it very hard for traditional newspapers to make a profit. A major part of newspapers' revenue has been the want-ads and job postings.

Given the long history of newspapers, those revenue sources are disappearing almost overnight with the existence today of web sites like craigslist and monster.com. With more people getting their news from the internet, there is also less viewership of newspapers' commercial advertisements which has subsequently caused their value to drop.

I say the news is depressing, because I love reading a newspaper, particularly The New York Times, in my hands. There is so much more that I will get out of the hardcopy than I'll get from a paper's website. I think generally people look only at the top stories at a news website. There is less likelihood that they will look at the back stories than they would if they had all the sections of a newspaper in their hands. So there's also less viewership of the advertisements laced throughout the newspaper.

The concern is not only from a commercial standpoint. Will readers get the same depth in stories online as they do with newspapers? I seriously doubt it. The internet is ideal for a quick read of the events of the day, but the quality of the reading experience I think is much better with a newspaper. I and I think most people reading a lengthy article would prefer it in hardcopy. There is not going to be the same patience by readers looking at a laptop or desktop computer screen.

I know that the Times is losing a lot of money these days. Many others are as well, and we're seeing newspapers going out of business or merging with each other all the time now. Is this medium going away?

Being of such a disruptive technology, it seems natural that the internet will take over as the prime medium for news. I greatly think the internet is a good thing because more information is available to more people. It's a very democratic phenomena. Yet, what happens to all the people in the newspaper industry? There are not going to be positions for all of them in the new news industry. Obviously, we won't need as much printing. It's another example of technology saving labor efforts but the replacement work for people not being readily apparent. It seems that there is going to be a lot of suffering to come among people in the newspaper business whether they are the writers, editors, or printers, because right now getting re-trained for some other occupation (which can be quite a mystery as to what that is) is going to take quite a bit of time.

Atheists in the news

The Times has an interesting article today about the rising visibility and numbers of atheists (or nonbelievers). It's nice to see atheists starting to come out of the closet so to speak, feeling more comfortable being openly atheist in public (as the article says much like gays!).

One poll shows that 15% of Americans are non-believers, and astonishing number to me considering how rare it seems to run into one. I guess it happens more often than one realizes. Then again, I live in the Bible Belt. The number of self-identified Christians has dropped from 86% in 1990 to 77% in 2008. Hopefully, this will give the Christian Right some pause before imposing its beliefs on the public.

The article also noted Barack Obama's mention of non-believers in his inaugural address. I don't think it's realized yet what a notable event that was. I haven't been happy with Obama lately, particularly regarding the torture debate, but I do appreciate his respectfulness. He's a smart guy. I just hope he doesn't bow to the political winds too much.

Regarding Torture. . . .

I like this video, right on! Saw it at Glenn Greenwald's site.

To The Point

I really like this radio show out of Santa Monica, CA. It comes on at 10pm weeknights at KERA 90.1 in Dallas. A good current events program with guests of sometimes opposing views. The host, Warren Olney, maintains a good pace to the program and poses some challenging questions to his guests.

Too Much Wall Street

josephstiglitz.com

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has a good op-ed in the New York Times today. It's a criticism of the Obama administration's latest bailout plan for banks for buying up their toxic assets. As Paul Krugman has already publicly proclaimed, Stiglitz is critical of the plan for being heavily favored towards banks and investors with great risk towards taxpayers.

In the plan, taxpayers take about 92% of the risk in the form of matching funds and guaranteed loans to investors. If buying some toxic assets somehow pays off, then investors and taxpayers get some profit, but if the purchases don't pay off, taxpayers are stuck with the vast amount of the losses. Privatized gains, socialized losses.

This is another example of Wall Street having too much of an influence in Washington. Goldman Sachs CEOs were the previous two Treasury secretaries, and Larry Summers and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are heavily influenced by Wall Street.

There is an article in the May issue of Atlantic Monthly that is getting some publicity. From what I hear and need to read myself, it discusses the US taking on some aspects of a banana republic, one of those aspects being "financial oligarchs" having too much influence in the country.

Anyway, I'm not too pleased with the Obama administration's economic plans. Obama is too afraid of temporarily nationalizing banks which may be the more effective way to go. Let's see some real leadership and less talk from the man.