Newspapers

I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating, because it still isn't getting acknowledged in the right places. People keep harping on "the death of print" and missing the real point, which is that advertising is going away. News has always ridden on the back of advertising, and our advertisiers have discovered they no longer need to pay to reach a mass market. It's not just print journalism but the journalism itself that is in peril:

The vatican is disputing some quotes atributed to the pope by Eugenio Scalfari, founder of the "left-leaning" newspaper La Republica. I found this litt;e tidbit fascinating:

How depressing might your average newspaper journalist find this piece? Here's a clue: It's titled "When Losers Write History," which is adapted from a chapter in the book, "Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done To Fix It."

Here is the most depressing chart I've seen in some time:

Basically we now take in the same amount we did in 1950, about $20 billion a year, which is still a nice piece of change. But:

Well, good luck with that:

So, Dummy, how'd you like the State of the Union speech? You can read all the political reactions in plenty of places and probably had already decided it was a good or bad speech before you even heard it. So, let's try a different angle:

President Obama's 2012 State of the Union address again rated at an 8th grade comprehension level, on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test — the third lowest score of any State of the Union address since 1934.

For the first time in its 71-year history, the Chicago Sun-Times says it will not make endorsements in the upcoming elections.

In an editorial published Monday, the Sun-Times essentially said as a newspaper endorsements are passé at a time when there are so many other sources of information that “allow even a casual voter to be better informed than ever before.”