Imagine that -- a Republican politician who doesn't complain about the "mainstream media":
Mitt Romney lamented the absence of editors for “quality control” from new media on Wednesday, and noted that Twitter now provides "instantaneous reaction" to the presidential campaign.
The GOP presidential front-runner, speaking to reporters and editors at the Newspaper Association of America conference on Wednesday, described what he called “striking” changes in the journalism industry since his last White House bid in 2008.
“Then, I looked to Drudge or Fox or CNN online to see what stories were developing,” he said. “Now it’s Twitter, and instantaneous reaction. In 2008, the coverage was about what I said in my speech. These days, it’s about what brand of jeans I am wearing and what I ate for lunch.”
[. . .]
“Some people thus welcome the tumult in your industry, heralding the new voices and the unfiltered or supposedly unbiased sources," he said. "Frankly, in some of the new media, I find myself missing the presence of editors to exercise quality control.”
Yeah, I find myself missing them, too, but you know, things change. I especially like his point about how Twitter can trivalize the news (although the story does point out that even Romney has tweeted about his breakfast choices). The "news" faster than ever with Twitter, but there's a ton of crap surrounding the one or two truly interesting or important facts.
SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo Inc.'s decision to slash 2,000 employees, or 14% of its workforce — the deepest cuts in its 18-year history — marks new Chief Executive Scott Thompson's seriousness about a sweeping restructuring of the troubled online company.
"It may be the only way CEO Thompson can effectively focus on the next generation of Yahoo," Think Equity analyst Ronald Josey said in a research note.
Though Yahoo still has one of the largest audiences on the Web, it has been steadily losing ground to rivals Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. in the battle for advertising dollars.
Guess I should feel a little schadenfreudey here given the turmoil in the online world that has caused so much turmoil for newspapers. But this just another example of how fast things are changing. It's more important to hang on for the ride.
