But what are the options?

I'm about to cancel my major daily, one of those mentioned, because I would rather donate my money to local PBS, Common Cause, Alternet, The Nation or other news outlet.

My paper has largely become just like all the rest, printing recycled corporate poppycock. I will not support such crap.

The question becomes do we support papers that spew out masses of garbage to retain a few good reporters. My answer is No, let them die, No News may be better than propaganda and lies.

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While Hedges makes many good points in this article, the article still clearly illustrates his obvious corporate/centralized/consumerist mindset.

I'm GLAD the big newspapers are dying -- the sooner they all go bankrupt the better. Over 50% of any given newspaper has been for the longest time nothing more than pages upon pages of advertising that reinforces the disgusting consumerist culture that America has become, a mass-consumerism that is leading to the decline of Western culture on many levels.

Hedges states that "The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state..." -- but how is that the case when ALL of the major newspapers are, in fact, owned by corporations?

I do agree that newspapers should be a "public trust" as he states, but that idea has apparently become antiquated since many newspapers have been owned and operated by corporations for decades now. Local newspapers will continue to exist (thankfully) because they provide a true service to citizens, but again I'm very glad that all of these national and international-oriented papers are going bankrupt.

It is a shame though that news-gathering will indeed take a hit with the decline of newspapers as Hedges says because bloggers and many websites don't have the funds to send reporters out all over the world gathering news. But I am personally an anti-globalist and could care less what is happening in the streets of Bangladesh or Israel or wherever...I care about my LOCAL community, town, county, region, and state more than some far-away land.

In my opinion the decline of the corporate newspaper network is beginning to herald a new age of non-corporate/business, non-PC, and non-governmental interference in the public discussion.

The fact that Hedges used to work for the NYT and probably still has family/friends/associates who still work for other mass/mainstream coporate media publications shows this to be an article which seeks to justify the continued corporate domination of the news-media and is probably just a reflection of Hedges and other media elites who are very worried about getting a paycheck in the coming years once their corporate/consumerist rags go out of business.

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It may be no substitute for the new industry, but the Internet, considered, more or less, the last stand for an egalitarian society, is under attack by the Pentagon, the armed part of the ruling class, which I’ve read is interested in destroying net neutrality, to attain their political goals.

“… the citizens in these degraded societies, he warned, always end up ruled by a despot, a Nero or a George W. Bush.” Most of the world today is governed by Caesars; the effect of absolute, or great power, conferred on reckless individuals.

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Ninety percent of what is going on is self-inflicted. Most of the papers could have evolved and changed and moved with the times. But instead, they hung on to bloated, unionised workforces who arrogantly cocked a snook at the digital age. And now they are going up in flames as the dgitial inferno engulfs them.

I feel no pity. It is actually coming eight years too late: it should have happened many, many years ago. You have a choice: connect with the readers, the customers, or die. Make them happy and keep them informed, or die.

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The evils that Hedges rails against in this particular screed have all worked to help open the eyes of the reading public to the fact that they've been fed lies and half truths under the guise of news by their newspapers. Not just newspapers, but also the Big 3 television networks. With a new and instantly searchable media available to them, Americans are doing their own research and finding out that things aren't always quite the way they are portrayed in the newspaper. The old canard "don't believe everything you read in the newspaper" is now demonstrably true, and anyone who can read and has access to a public library can do the research and read everything from blogs to PhD dissertations on all manner of topics.

What Hedges and his ilk should be learning from this is not that they'd better start reporting the news straight, and stop filtering and coloring and interpreting the news for the "uneducated masses". The masses really aren't all that uneducated and now have the ability to cross check the newspapers.

We've lived in five cities over the last ten years, and have declined to subscribe to any of their newspapers. After reading them for one week, and then investigating the facts for myself, I determined that they were at best giving me only half of any given story - the half that supported their "progressive" agenda. I'm not paying even fifty cents a day to bring that tripe, surrounded by masses of advertising, into my home or my mind.

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.... just like the former professions of law and medicine.

Until the media,law and medicine can return to their professional roots of objective reporting,justice,and healing respectively they are trapped in the business model which is destroying them.

Yes the excesses of the corporate state are responsible but the leaders in these "former professions turned businesses" should have resisted this trend more than they did.How?

And "vox populi" should demand a return to professionalism. (The tide may be turning before it's too late?)

Thanks Chris Hedges.

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton,Pa
ralippin@aol.com

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When the traditional news organizations go belly up we will lose a vast well of expertise and information. Our democracy will suffer a body blow. Not that many will notice.

I think it is more accurate to say:

When the traditional news organizations became corporate monsters our democracy suffered a body blow. Not that many have noticed, but democracy is struggling to survive the blow.

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I was reminded as I was reading this a discussion that I recently had with a friend. She was telling me that the local library for her kids as far as getting information on a school report is concerned. As I explained to her at the time, there is much information to b obtained on the internet. The problem is that it is a lot of false information. Not every site out there has the standards of AlterNet (shameless plug).

The death of the newspaper will mean the death of an informed electorate...Oh, wait a minute, I forgot....They died years ago!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
Six Months To Go

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Good article, and basically I agree. But some of it may also be inevitable cultural change. McLuhan 40 years ago described how in the past we changed from a "spoken word" culture into a Literate culture (after the printing press) and how this changed our whole way of thinking and looking at reality; now we are again becoming a "spoken word" culture, with radio and TV, etc. It's hard to place the internet into this context...a bit of both. But it seems to me that being able to see the words leads us to ponder them a bit more, return to them again and do a bit more deeper thinking. Newspapers, if they're not just instruments of corporate and government propaganda, do have an important role to play. I hope they can survive in some way.

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I hate to say it (not really) but newspapers are as on top of it and desirable as the clunky shit boxes produced by the Detroit three auto makers. They all suffer from the same disease: unwieldy, mostly union workforces resistant to change, afraid of change, totally disconnected from their customer/reader, predatory management milking every last dime out of the place.

Here is a good case study: Thomson Reuters. The Canadian Thomson newspaper group just ditched all their rag bag local newspapers, and instead went and bought Reuters, the global news service. They saw that rural Canada was no-wheres-ville and decided to get where the action is: the world's megacities. Local newspapers are not the reservoir of democracy: in fact, they are a reservoir of local wind bags, two-bit politicians and Boss Hog-style police departments. Their death is proving very enjoyable to watch.

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Newspapers carry advertising - eek! (Newsflash - even AlterNet has advertising.)

Chris Hedges and his ilk are just looking for a paycheck. (As opposed to the kind of AlterNet readers who eat cardboard, shit rainbows and don't need money for working.)

International news is irrelevant; only local news is important. Or is it, local newspapers are shitrags & only national and international news is important.

Newspapers lost their individuality decades ago. Or is it, newspapers are all pushing the same agenda.

The proverb about the 6 blind men and the elephant comes to mind.

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I don't hear the old phony complaint about a liberal bias in the media any longer. It never was true. But the press serves its masters, the advertisers, so that its regressive bias is now clear.

The press gave us the invasion of Iraq. What evidence is there that the press reported on the fraudulent loans that everyone knew were being made? When was the last time you saw a story about racial and sexual bias in employment and jobs?

Our "corporate culture" has given us a society of mercenaries. Yes, we need a free press. I have not seen a free press since the NYT sold out to reactionary politics.

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I'm still trying to figure out how this story got on this site. Alternet members (one of which I worked for for over 20 years) spent three decades bashing the model of corporate media Hedges is playing his violin for here: corporate-owned, top-down, elitist, often monopoly daily newspapers that limited debate and tacked to its owners' rapacious agendas. This debate isn't about Internet vs. newsprint. It's about models of journalism. It's about funding bases. It's about approaches to reporting and the role of the grass roots. What's wrong with not-for-profit journalism, produced by professionals but giving much of the power over to the grassroots to help steer it and share in producing content? Or the NPR model? So what if big department stores and other corporations are holding back on supplying the dough to fuel the reporting? Their money was part of the problem. They're not the only sources of support out there; throughout history I would argue that the mid-to-late 20th century corporate media model was an aberration, and a destructive one at that. I agree with Hedges that good journalism is like a public utility. I don't support public utilities owned and run in the interest of wealthy monopolies adn oligopolies.

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I'm grateful to Hedges for reminding me in one crisp article of the ideals and values that underlie our press and media. The plague of corporatism afflicting our democracy has one Root Cause generating a blizzard of symptoms that daze and dazzle us into stupidity: it is citizen neglect of the business of democracy.

Despite unprecedented participation in this election cycle, most of it is based on uninformed propaganda of the sort Hedges describes as propaganda wars. That, fellow citizens is NOT what our Founders intended when they built our Constitution. They endured the painful process of providing us the best opportunities for learning, critical thinking and informed national debate. It is painfully evident that we have let them down, trashed our planet and the future of coming generations.

Try a thought experiment: Imagine that by some miracle the majority of Americans woke up tomorrow with all the insight and gained wisdom required to reveal and resolve our true, Root Cause problems. Now, recall that in our Constitution and Declaration, We The People are equipped with the tools needed to correct every one of those problems, expeditiously. Given the tools and insight to use them wisely, not one single root cause problem could stand unresolved, no institutionalized crime immune to prosecution, no malfeasance or incompetence unaccountable, and we would be truly free to continue our "pursuit of happiness" into a long and prosperous future.

In concept, it is really that simple. In practice I'm confident that the rewards of each victory would provide electrifying motivation for continuing the ongoing task of maintaining a vital American democracy to the benefit of our citizens and the world at large. It is all about US, people.

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While I can agree with you on the importance of newspapers giving voice to the people, and standing as a watchdog on both society and government, the decline of the newspaper industry is for the most part caused by technology.

You posited that people that go to the web for their news are reading sites that reflect their views. Is that not what people who read physical papers do also? Does the web not provide access to many more points of view than any regions printed papers could hope to?

The newspaper industry is dying because of technology. It is dying because the corporations that run all the major papers are clinging to ridiculous profit margins and slashing their papers to keep those margins. They are not investing in the technology that would increase their circulation, readership and scope. They are stuck in the rut they have always been in. The difference now is that the road of life has meandered in a direction they are not willing or able to adjust to. My paper has in the last few months "reduced" staff by 153 people. Some from the Newsroom, Advertising, Operations, Circulation, and IT. We are running leaner and have more work to do than we did with more staff. Why? Because cost are high, revenue is low, and the corporation is feeling the bite in the wallet.

So, yes, the decline and death of the newpaper industry is caused by the rise of the corporate state. The corporate state of the newspaper industry itself. Economic downturns come and go, but the industry is more concerned with profit than reporting. When that happens, the newspaper is dead already, they just have not realized it yet.

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Investigative journalism is the key, all the rest is built around ad revenue. But it was when corporate news decided that investigative journalism was too expensive that the trouble started.

What is investigative journalism? It is feet on the ground, meeting with relevant parties, or hours spent on the phone setting up interviews, gleaning the facts. How do you replace that on the internet? Some of it, yes, but much is lost.

If we could create a web of "investigative citizen journalists" throughout the country with the credentials to get a foot in the door and the reputation for integrity to elicit anonymous testimonials, and tie that to a respected website such as Alternet, then maybe we would have something.

Such citizen journalists could be tough-nosed retired prosecutors and judges, or other professionals with standing in the community, but basically people who care enough about the plight of this country to act on their own.

The key would be to create a site where these investigators could be reached anywhere in the country, a site with national recognition and stature.

One way to get started would be to coordinate this through established investigative journalists such as Seymour Hersh - someone who could vouch for these people and even spin off cases to them in their particular region of the country, or simply request their assistance in eliciting a response from a party in their area.

Why do we have to rely on the media? Why can't we as Americans rise to the occasion, or is that something that only prior generations of heroes could manage?

peace,
Paul

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Two other tenants and I share a copy of the local newspaper. The retired guy reads at the crack of dawn, I take it to work and read what's interesting at lunch, and then I pass it off to my neighbor in the evening. It works out well, but I certainly wouldn't pay for my very own copy with so many other sources for news available. Bonus to those of the green communal religion: we save tree by sharing das paper.

Inevariably, it's the local/state stuff I read (along with the political cartoons submitted by locals), and my newspaper does an exceptional job covering its intended niche. The national news section is just a regurgitation of AP and Reuters, anyway, and that sort of canned propaganda is widely available from CNN, NYT, WAPO, WSJ (which was an excellent source for business news before they started testing the newsy waters), Fox, and agenda-drive_(n)(l) outlets like Rush Limplaugh, Airhead America, and the rest of the "look-at-me" entertainment/affirmation media circus.

As far as world news, I've been turning more and more to the beeb.

So, I enjoy the paper for what it does best: tell me what's going on around me, and letting me know when I can change things I have the power to affect, in a format and in detail that will never fit into the 5:00 news.

Having said that, I would also point out with regard to the loss of journalism jobs that you've got to feed yourself and your kids when you eventually grow up. That's something for young people interested in journalism to consider.

Oh, a final thought from Samuel Clemens, speaking on the topic of journalistic integrity today (k, not exactly):

"That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ingornant, self-complacent simpletons who, having failed at ditching and shoemaking, fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse."

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The quality of reporting has always been mixed, but over the past, oh . . . seven years, things have REALLY begun to slide.

News services, like health care, should have nothing to do with corporate ownership or huge profits - they should exclusively serve the Public Interest, period. That's the Democratic vs Corporate battle we face.

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Among the reasons for the decline:

1) High cost to advertise there
2) High production costs.
Paper, Ink, Labor, Delivery ( fuel ) etc.
not counting the reporting.
3) Poor news reporting in many. Bias.

Some Alternatives:

1) Electronic Delivery to portable readers.
2) Lower ad costs to attract more advertisers.
3) Better, unbiased and factual reporting.
4) Do more to educate public on issues rather than assuming everyone understands them.
5) "Readers Digest" versions at higher subscription rates but without the ads.

#5 coupled with electronic subscriptions with or without ads based on price. People could pay more and skip ads both electronic and paper versions. Paper versions cost would be offset by using less paper to print and less bulk to deliver and wind up in trash. Eventually the cost of printing will be the end of most papers which need to move ahead in electronic delivery to portable readers via radio broadcast. They could contract with local TV stations to buy some of the new digital signal to stream news to subscribers.

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Reason #1)
The 5 corporations mentioned in the article are not giving the public what they are yearning for, because those 5 are promoting their own agenda.

Reason #2)
The public is rejecting the agenda and ideologies promoted by the MSM.


Reason #2 is what is giving me hope for a better future. Perhaps a grassroots solution will evolve, if it is not crushed first by corporations. It is time we rise up and develop the next "news" alternative, and let the MSM wither and die.

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Most television and newspapers want you to log on so that you can get more details of this or that. The last thing I'd do is to give any of these media hogs my email or web site.

To begin with, most of the media are whores to our government. And, since the government is full of liars, the stuff they print is full of lies.

Secondly, the media then creates a database and feeds your information to the government.

Thirdly, their new power comes from you adding your web or email to their list of suckers.

We have given newspapers our attention and if we continue to give them our attention, it will be to our disgrace.

Best not to let them know you are out there.

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In the 1950's the CIA initiated project mockingbird to influence domestic and foreign media. What the American public got was papers that propagated misinformation and disinformation daily. The effect snowballed as the media conglomerates consolidated.

Junes recent Bilderberg meeting got ZERO coverage in any print media. Ironically Donald E. Chairman of the Washington post was in attendance. Yet no mention in his paper. Goodbye, print journalism. Hello great blogs like Whatreallyhappened.com

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Push for transparent and accountable government and all news reporting will improve (as well as *everything* else...). The big outlets only corner the market because they get preferential treatment as long as they toe the line. 'Free Press', my arse.

If you hold public office and you abuse it, you go to jail. It's a privilege and a responsibility, not a license to print money. A system that enforces transparency is perfectly possible and the costs are negligible compared to the cost of letting the scumbags run riot.

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Perhaps we're being cut off from international news for a reason. Anyone think of that? If our entire focus is the local scene, we are dumbed down entirely and have lost. I keep a fire of hope, however, I fear that we are near the end when the Dem's sell us out as readily as the Repub's. I agree that we need the news, however, it's been quite a long time since we had the whole truth. Start w/ 9/11, Wellstone, the list goes on. It's going to end with the Military Commissions Act and the Patriot Act. All power is already in Bush's hands. Why would Pelosi or Conyers untie them? I'm rambling.

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In the first paragraph of this article with "The intellectual poverty of the post-literare era". Former newspaper readers have been replaced with zeros like the ones you see and hear on Jay Leno's Jaywalking segment. Newspapers have been dumbed down in a desperate attempt to retain readership to the point that the best part of them is the funnies. I say let's let nature take its course and PROTECT THE INTERNET. If the newspapers make a comeback, fine. If they don't, something probably better will take their place.

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I am sure the government is quite happy about the dying and ultimate death of the daily newspaper. Their control over corporate news leaders is not quite total. When there is no separate entity reporting at all, the government will have won because they DO HAVE complete control over the satellites through which the internet flows and they can sure shut that down a lot faster than they can shut down the prinitng presses throughout the country. Even Alternet and Common Dreams and other left of center views will no longer be available and I am convinced this is true when I see how rapidly my computer shuts down when I try to read some of the more critical articles and how often our television industry puts on the required monthly tests just when some particularly interesting bit of news or a a contrary interview occurs on CCN or MSNBC or PBS and then reappears hours later during the replay. Democracy is doomed. This is the time when we all SHOULD be prescribing to newspapers and include notes telling them to report investigate and report the real stories.

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Death of Free Internet is Imminent

Canada Will Become Test Case

By Kevin Parkinson

21/07/08 "Global Research" -- - In the last 15 years or so, as a society we have had access to more information than ever before in modern history because of the Internet. There are approximately 1 billion Internet users in the world B and any one of these users can theoretically communicate in real time with any other on the planet. The Internet has been the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century by far, and has been recognized as such by the global community.

The free transfer of information, uncensored, unlimited and untainted, still seems to be a dream when you think about it. Whatever field that is mentioned- education, commerce, government, news, entertainment, politics and countless other areas- have been radically affected by the introduction of the Internet. And mostly, it's good news, except when poor judgements are made and people are taken advantage of. Scrutiny and oversight are needed, especially where children are involved.

However, when there are potential profits open to a corporation, the needs of society don't count. Take the recent case in Canada with the behemoths, Telus and Rogers rolling out a charge for text messaging without any warning to the public. It was an arrogant and risky move for the telecommunications giants because it backfired. People actually used Internet technology to deliver a loud and clear message to these companies and that was to scrap the extra charge. The people used the power of the Internet against the big boys and the little guys won.


However, the issue of text messaging is just a tiny blip on the radar screens of Telus and another company, Bell Canada, the two largest Internet Service Providers (ISP'S) in Canada. Our country is being used as a test case to drastically change the delivery of Internet service forever. The change will be so radical that it has the potential to send us back to the horse and buggy days of information sharing and access.

In the upcoming weeks watch for a report in Time Magazine that will attempt to smooth over the rough edges of a diabolical plot by Bell Canada and Telus, to begin charging per site fees on most Internet sites. The plan is to convert the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and then pay to visit sites beyond a cutoff point.

Author's website: http://realitycheck.typepad.com/

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I used to buy the two daily broadsheets in the Capital City of New Zealand, one Sunday broadsheet and a weekly "intellectual magazine. The two broadsheets were merged by its corporation owners into one and the new broadsheet was based on the common bottom line denominator of both i.e. it is a purveyor of garbage. On March 18 2003 it headlined that we were invading Iraq to get rid of Saddam. It was such a vicious and dangerous lie I canned my subscription - not an easy act after four decades of investing in a daily broadsheet. The same company reduced the magazine to similar pap and so last year I ceased investing in that too. I continue with the Sunday broadsheet and don’t know why. I invest the money in broadband so I can read the NYT (7 min daily) and other broadsheets. However I find the most insightful information is provided by voluntary agencies with a passion for the truth. The broadsheets are only fundamentally concerned with pushing the private car/housing speculations/stock market ethos i.e. are in the forefront of promoting a catastrophic war. And that is their history.

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I haven't bought a "news" paper in years, simply because it's not real news. I don't appreciate someone disconnected from my concerns dictating what I may read. On the net I can better find the truth rather than only the what the Corporate Media or Government decide what they want me to know.

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Relax people. If you really want to counter the giants who are tearing democracy to shreds, the first thing that must happen is that you unsubscribe from your giant operator(s) in telephone, tv, and internet. Next, GO LOCAL. Yes, I mean it. Why you ask? Let's face it. Remember back in the 1980s and 1990s when the economic "libertarian" forces aka neo-libs went out of their ways to lie about "competition" resulting from "deregulation" when in fact those "deregulation" bills did the exact opposite of merely rewriting the rules and adding more rules and double standards to favor the giants over the smaller businesses to keep the market further RIGGED? Now guess what would have happened if smaller local competitors were still in force? You, my friend, would have the opportunity to tear, oh say, Verizon apart policy after policy and force them to match up to your local competitors or threaten to switch rather than be forced into feeling that you have no other choice to turn to so it's "heads they win tails you win". Now like food and energy, it's indeed possible to go local. No, I'm not saying that you can set up a local ISP in your own home unlike setting up a local garden or even a small scale energy generator using diesel plant oil, solar, wind, etc ... However, go find people in your area who are dedicated towards working on a career in their lifetime on working with telecommunications and go from there and try setting up local ISPs. If more people and communities do it, the giants will face hell. Of course, this also means counter lobbying the Big Telco/Cable giants on local, regional, and federal levels so that the market can be truly freed up once again. Yes, it looks long and tough but you're not getting a choice these days anyway.

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My local paper (at the western end of the big middle of the country) is crap.

I really tried to support it, but just couldn't. Local coverage ignores the biggest local issues in favor of wet dogs, fluffy kittys and cute kids. International coverage is limited to 2 stories per day.

News that presents counterpoints to whichever party is in power doesn't make the cut. Unfortunately, we don't get same-day delivery of any major daily here, and the other major state papers (Montana) all have their own iteration of "all the local brain-dead news you can consume" going on. TV journalism is worse. The ONLY source of up to date, factual and sometimes contextual information available in this part of the country is online (or a week later).

The reasons for this are myriad, but not so complex. Our local paper lives and dies based on advertising sales from local businesses. The national chains are conservative in their views, and most of our local businesses are very conservative in their views, ("Babbit" is the rule rather than the exception here). The 'net, visitors, and our local library are our sole windows to the world beyond the fields and mountains that surround our small town. Our local newspaper is most useful as tinder.

I'm guessing Mr. Hedges does not live anywhere in the "big middle" of the country. If he did, he would certainly not have authored this piece.

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Do 'journalists' have a code of ethics?? No. The public will be better off when they go to hell !!!

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The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world

I appreciate what Hedges is attempting to say, but I don't think that this issue is as simple as he's making it. Humans are information-processing machines, and with new technologies there are new ways and forms of communication that simply did not exist before. Some things are best expressed on paper, others are not. This concept of "post-literate" seems to carry with it negative connotations. The truth is that paper is not necessarily always the best method for data transmission and storage. I love books, but they are heavy, vulnerable to fire, and require either an index, or a manual linear search to retrieve data.

Hedges calls this "post-literate"...well that's just not correct in my opinion. Students may be more interested in writing Java code (a language) than reading Jane Austen. That's not 'post literate', that's moving towards new forms of literacy. In addition to reading/writing books, we now have new expressions of ideas through human/computer interaction, artificial intelligence, and robotics. And consider our new understanding of how DNA stores data for future generations and then expresses that data by coding for various proteins. As we turn that system into a read/write device rather than just read-only, we gain yet another form of literacy. So traditional literacy is not going away (that would be the definition of post-literate), traditional literacy just has new competition that did not exist before. I see this as a separate phenomenon from the political and business drivers, which are important as well. The output of 'big media' certainly is not what it used to be, but the drivers of that could be flaws in the medium itself, not just flaws in the ownership structure.

This movement away from hard-copy text to electronic forms could be a sign of the Singularity (I'm sure a few people reading this saw that statement coming). We have reached a stage that hard-copy books just CANNOT cope with the volume of data that humans are creating. New discoveries can have the effect of speeding up the rate of discoveries, creating an exponential trend. I believe we are at a point in time where that 'speeding up' begins to be felt, and some of the results of that exponential rate of change are that old technologies are no longer able to keep up with that change. Traditional information storage is vulnerable technology in a world of exponential change. I just bought a 1 Terabyte hard-drive a few weeks ago..$150!. That is a historical moment in computing! (all you OLD-geeks know what I'm talking about). And it's likely that the NEXT doubling of storage space will occur much faster than from 500GB to 1TB did.

These are fascinating times to be living in. EVERYTHING seems to be going on right now, good and bad. Robotics, Biotech, and Nanotech..those are the things to watch. If you are about to go to college, you should HIGHLY consider one of those three areas. And of course there are medical applications in each of those 3 technologies, and that is something to consider as well.

My point is that 'post-literate' is not really a good or complete expression of what is really going on here.

dboy

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At this point the so called news in all its forms becomes more meaningless every day. In its current state? Be better off without it at all.

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When MBAs rule the newsroom: how the marketers and managers are reshaping today's media
Doug Underwood.-1993
ISBN 0-231-08048-4
Dewey # 070.4/U56

Yesterday's News: Why Canada's Newspapers are Failing Us
John Miller -1998
ISBN 1-55266-000-1
Dewey # 071.1 M648

When Information Counts: Grading the Media
Ed: Bernard Rubin -1985
ISBN 0-669-10162-1
Dewey # 001.51 W567

The News Twisters
Edith Efron -1971
ISBN N/A
Dewey #070.43 E27

The Corporate Culture Survival Guide
Edgar H Schein -1999
ISBN 0-7879-4699-0
Dewey # 658.406 S319

The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen:
Democracy Under the Rule of Big Business
Murray Dobbin -1998
ISBN 0-7737-3087-7
Dewey # 306.2 D999

Politics and the English Language
George Orwell
ISBN N/A
A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200151.txt

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Edward S. Herman &
Noam Chomsky -1988
ISBN 0-679-72034-0
Dewey # 302.234 H551

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All it takes is a look at the op-ed pages of the major American newspapers to see why the collapse of the newspaper industry in America may not be such a bad thing. Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, have all kept in step with Fox News and ABC when it comes to the corporatization of their output.

You are as unlikely to see a serious discussion of the failures of the Bush Administration or the disease of partisanship that has infected the Justice Department, in the pages of those papers as you are on Fox News or the Situation Room.

Just as with television, the newspapers are now simply part of the great mechanism of corporate media, whose main job is to protect those in power and to advance the agenda of the corporate elite.

I honestly can hardly believe I'm writing the above paragraphs. I've had to learn these things in a very hard way over the past decade. In '95, I would have thought such talk was simply nutty, but now I realize that it's absolutely an understatement to say that all corporate-owned media in the United States is very specifically the enemy of our freedom and out to destroy any advances made by the middle-class, a middle-class which will be replaced by a consumerist serfdom where we all owe our souls to the company stores via Visa, Mastercard, AMEX.

So excuse me if I don't shed a tear for the troubles in the newspaper industry. Whatever importance they once had to the operation of our democracy is gone forever. It's up to their replacement, whatever it might be, to get it done now. They are no longer to be trusted. Oh, and if there aren't Net Neutrality laws passed and soon, we won't be able to trust the 'net, either.

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Yes, it's true. Chris Hedges spilled out exactly what befalls newspapers, and because I work at one, has seen the damage corporations have done to lay off and fire hundreds of good reporters and editors and replace them with puppets who waltz in and gut the editorial department. Just look at papers like the NY Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Minneapolis Star- and Chicago Tribune, L.A. Daily News, et al. hemorrhage jobs like ballast on ships.
The results have been catastrophic. I have seen us lose talented and experienced staff who have job knowledge and for those who weren't laid off, we had to double up on duties and try to get the news out to a ever-increasing and skeptical public. Since this is happening, we can't do our job informing the public. That is what the Fourth Estate is supposed to do.
Newspapers now are turning into a USA Today-type format where the news is presented in brief. Pages are trimmed, making it harder for advertising employees to sell ad space.
Graphics and photos are larger, which takes away copy space. This is what readers seem to want, a series of montages without words.
Pretty soon you'll see a modern newsroom with fewer reporters, copy editors, editorial assistants and photographers, more internet-based journalists (being trained in colleges), more art and design people, working together to produce a "product", NOT a newspaper.
Newspapers should have seen these changes coming years ago, but habits die hard. What was the response? Cut jobs and launch head-on into net journalism. Publishers and editors still haven't figured the Internet out yet, or how they could use it to make a better newspaper, but so far, the results are incomplete.
Editors at my paper are more interested in how many "hits" (or visits) a story gets on its online version; never mind that circulation figures have dropped significantly.
Many people still do not have a computer at home or bother trudging to a library and use a computer to "read" the "news." They're probably aging baby boomers or senior citizens stuck in another era when newspapers provided them with the information needed to suit them.
Readers get upset when we cut a cartoon strip, tinker with the format, discontinue a column (or columnist), or something they like, but the biggest blunder newspapers have made is bad management decisions.
Corporations have taken over most newspapers and instilled an ideology which shifts away from traditional news gathering principles.
Reporters don't give a damn about the number of hits or the format. What concerns most reporters is the shrinking newspaper and job security. A smaller paper means more competition for space.
Lastly, the public should try to save their hometown paper of choice. Stage rallies in your city or town and let the owners or publishers know you care. That's the message from the front lines.

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The mass/public media have already been replaced by facades and facsimiles. The story should have been entirely written as a eulogy for a way that is dead and gone. People need to learn the way things are now without the idealism of the founding fathers, particularly Jefferson, being brought up. That only serves as a smokescreen, a mirage. The reality of the plebes needs to be spelled out. There are only superficial differences between the world of Orwell's 1984 and the United States of 2008. Insignificant minor superficial differences.

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After the demise of the more liberal Dallas Times Herald years ago, I subscribed to my only local, the ultra-conservative Dallas Morning News, for most of my adult life. That was until the election of President Clinton and the almost total black-out of using his name in the paper, including various times when he was actually in town. I finally decided to cancel my subscription entirely. Now I only use the "News" to clean windows and mirrors around the house. I wouldn't dream of reading it, much less spending a penny of my money to buy a copy. That goes for the NY Times as well. I agree that the corporate media, including most of the "day-lies" are as useless as the broadcast media to the future of democracy. I do read various European papers and journals for a more realistic take on what is newsworthy.

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Do read, in conjunction with Hedges' article, "Is Google Making Us Stoopid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholar Carr in the Jul/Aug Atlantic. Fascinating!

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Thanks, Chris, for this passionately argued essay. We need more experienced "mainstream" journalists coming forward and giving honest appraisals of their experiences within corporate media organizations in order to understand the structural pressures brought to bear on how citizens understand their government and society -- and the forces that threaten to destroy the good along with the ill.

I am working in San Francisco with a group of idealistic journalists, nonprofit professionals and civics enthusiasts to start a new web/print daily newspaper founded on the noncommercial model, similar to public broadcasters.

The Public Press would need seed grants to start up, but would sustain itself in the long term independently through reader subscriptions and pledge-style support. The paper would aggressively scrutinize not just government, but also the private sector. It would be a pioneer in consumer advocacy. We characterize the tone to be a "pro-public" or democratic (small d) bias, as opposed to advocating any political, economic or social agenda.

It be a nonprofit organization and operate much in the same way as NPR news stations around the country cover their own communities with serious local news accounts unmatched on the radio dial. Likewise the Public Press would commit to operating outside the commercial sphere, eschewing advertising altogether. This would create a newspaper with the same "news hole" but less than half the paper. Suffice it to say, such an arrangement would also allow for more efficient distribution, a radical redesign and rethink of the paper's content, from arts reviews to local politics to the "business" section.

We've started organizing on the ground in San Francisco and we're developing a three-year plan that would be a Web-only, largely volunteer operation the first year; add a weekly print paper the second year; and become a small neighborhood daily the third. All this depends on grants, donations, subscription revenue and the passion of professional journalists to escape the restrictions that have derailed so many of our careers and idealistic aspirations.

Please visit our Web site, www.public-press.org, and let us know what you think. Comment on our blog, and if you agree with our aims, it would be great if some of you could pitch in a few (IRS tax deductible, c/o Independent Arts & Media, our 501c3 nonprofit sponsor) dollars to our startup fund by clicking the "Donate" button. And if you're in San Francisco, drop in on the next organizing meeting.

Thanks,

Michael Stoll
Project Director
The Public Press
San Francisco

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