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Basil

Basil

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I just got a notification that my local newspaper subscription price is increasing at the next renewal in May. I've always enjoyed having a local paper, even if I do feel they are not always objective. We've bee subscribers to the Albuquerque Journal for decades. Sadly. what used to be a very robust, thick paper, has become a shadow of its former self. It's like a pamphlet these days - very sparse and thin.
On top of the price increasing from $138 to $166 per six month period, they have also stopped home delivery to our house. Instead, our paper is now delivered to our mailbox and is always at least a day late.

Anyone else seeing similar "progress"? I suppose the internet has a lot fo do with the dwindling paper locally.
 
Because of cost, print size, delivery issues and not a lot of local content. I stopped ours. It was only go for the bottom of the bird cages. Don’t like the online version of it.
 
I have to expand this to news websites as well as newspapers. For years I've had two paper newspapers delivered daily, one local, one national. I can now no longer afford $600/year for each.

The news websites I've followed for many years are now covered with ads, followed by a paywall to get past the front page. I've always used several news sources to "compare" the various takes on events. I'm gradually ending my website connections, due to the frustrations and headaches the ads, paywalls, subscription requirements, etc. cause.

yeesh - really sad that now it's so hard to follow local, regional, national, and world events - especially recent issues.

(Not to mention the 30 minute news on local TV, which is 30% ads. Does the TV station really need seven weather people?)

yeesh yeesh
 
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I still get the Roanoke Times.Not as big as when we first moved here
seven years ago,but they do have some interesting local & historical stories.
I also am thankful that someone is willing to get up very early in the
morning,& deliver it every day.It must be hard to make any money delivering
it by car.
 
Our paper had a slow decline over a number of years before finally shutting the doors about ten years ago. I check a couple of different news sites these days, the one real downside is that I live in a small enough place that there isn't local coverage.
 
When I was a kid, centuries ago, Chicago had 4 papers, two in the morning, and two in the afternoon. There are only two now, and they are more like opinions rags than newspapers.
 
As a J degree holder who reported for three Ohio newspapers beginning in the 1960s, I, too, lament their decline. There is no way electronic media can replace the day-to-day coverage of our communities that newspapers once provided. I don't claim expertise in understanding all of the reasons for the decline, but diminution of the major departments stores along with their important advertising dollars and the advent of Craig's List are clearly significant factors. The success of the free Craig's List service greatly diminished the important classified advertising dollars that newspapers valued. We now have all kinds of ways of advertising our wares, many of them free, along with alternatives like Bring A Trailer, etc.
 
I grew up reading the local paper, my dad had it delivered and from about age 10 or so on I just went through it when I got home from school. Now I only get the Sunday edition, mostly to get the tv listings for the week. Used to get the daily as a headed to work each morning but $3 for the daily and $5 for the Sunday along with the near disappearance of any real national/international news means I'm not going to spend that much each week to read stories about the local zoo, sports and the desire of the city for more and more money to make the pro team owners happy with their venues. I do the best I can with tv, online and whatever else I can find across multiple sources and use my knowledge of the world and past to try to paste it all together.
 
I'm getting the feeling that we miss our print news. Probably a major understatement!

The internet brings the good, and brings the bad, all subjective of course. But seems to me that sorting the good from the bad is growing more difficult, resulting in many folks not bothering to sort at all.

sad indeed.
 
NutmegCT said:
I'm getting the feeling that we miss our print news. Probably a major understatement!

The internet brings the good, and brings the bad, all subjective of course. But seems to me that sorting the good from the bad is growing more difficult, resulting in many folks not bothering to sort at all.

sad indeed.
Click to expand...
With AI coming of age, it’s only going to get worse.
 
"With AI coming of age, it’s only going to get worse."

And I'd give my left ... big toe to learn how to find the good among the bad, when that happens. We'll be swamped even more, and the world continues to be glued to its screens.
 
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NutmegCT said:
"With AI coming of age, it’s only going to get worse."

And I'd give my left ... big toe to learn how to find the good among the bad, when that happens. We'll be swamped even more, and the world continues to be glued to its screens.
Click to expand...
One major change that has been happening, whether we like it or not, is that traditional media viewership (both print and televised) has been shrinking dramatically over the past few years and "influencers" (YouTube, Facebook, X, Rumble, etc) have been gaining a LOT of traction. There are several former "mainstream" personalities who have started their own podcasts and are doing remarkably well without the usual corporate backing they had when they were with a major "network."

I see both positive and negative aspects to the fact that this is happening. On the plus side, these "influencers" are able to present news and opinion without the influence of a handful of corporate overlords. Another plus is there are many more sources of information and choice can be a good thing (or not, if you're not discriminating). On the down side, one must vet new sources and influencers to discover who you find trustworthy and who is just spewing nonsense. I definitely believe in competition though and feel that the cream will eventually rise to the top and the others will struggle.

In some ways I welcome having more than just the usual handful of corporate-run venues to choose from. I could give you a long long list of narratives the usual suspects have pushed that have turned out to be demonstrably wrong and where they were pushing a specific narrative rather than reporting objectively.

At any rate, like it or not, the world of information and news is changing and it is up to us to objectively decide where and how we consume information. Information overload is bound to be a real problem going forward no matter what.
 
And as AI matures there will be many things that look and feel so real that you'll have trouble believing any side of a viewpoint if you weren't actually there. Did he/she really say that, did they really do that, make that gesture and on and on.
 
mikephillips said:
And as AI matures there will be many things that look and feel so real that you'll have trouble believing any side of a viewpoint if you weren't actually there. Did he/she really say that, did they really do that, make that gesture and on and on.
Click to expand...
As much as I hate more regulation - I think it is needed here. People should not be able to manufacture content out of whole cloth that makes it look like someone is saying something they never said without some meaningful consequences. It is tantamount to committing fraud as far as I'm concerned. (content clearly marked as satire excluded)
 
I am a staunch subscriber, and yes, it costs me almost as much as my left big toe.

But I want to pay for content, vs the internet (influencers, Facebook, etc.) where the content only needs to attract advertising dollars.

And I’m getting my daughters into reading the paper. They both peruse headlines at the breakfast table and we chat about world events.
 
Our local paper is $200 for four weeks, delivered to our driveway. It has gotten thinner and thinner, and usually contains the same news I saw the night before on the local news. I also subscribe to three other major papers (NYT, WSJ, SF Chronicle) online for $4 a month each. I would go all online but SWMBO doesn't like reading online.
 
Popeye said:
I am a staunch subscriber, and yes, it costs me almost as much as my left big toe.

But I want to pay for content, vs the internet (influencers, Facebook, etc.) where the content only needs to attract advertising dollars.

And I’m getting my daughters into reading the paper. They both peruse headlines at the breakfast table and we chat about world events.
Click to expand...
This is just my personal opinion from personal observations over the years - subscribing to established corporate-run newspapers doesn't guarantee that you are getting objective, unbiased news. That's my very strong opinion. I'm not saying don't subscribe (I do) but don't assume everything you read is objective. What worries me is when I see every paper and most of the mainstream networks using nearly identical language to propagate stories; almost as if they were all singing from a coordinated script. PS: Most papers and major networks also rely on advertising dollars.
 
Basil said:
This is just my personal opinion from personal observations over the years - subscribing to established corporate-run newspapers doesn't guarantee that you are getting objective, unbiased news. That's my very strong opinion. I'm not saying don't subscribe (I do) but don't assume everything you read is objective. What worries me is when I see every paper and most of the mainstream networks using nearly identical language to propagate stories; almost as if they were all singing from a coordinated script. PS: Most papers and major networks also rely on advertising dollars.
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I agree with you, absolutely. Every person has a bias, be they a journalist, an influencer, or just me on a forum.

The net result of less people subscribing to papers is less “feet on the street”, ie reporters. With less reporters, papers rely more on common purchased content, like Reuters, AP, and probably sources like BBC, etc.

I subscribe not because I believe what I read, but rather I believe that humans at the site provide more value than parroting hearsay. “Go to Gemba”, as we say in the factory. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal in hopes of keeping its 2000 reporters on the street, feeding me information.

Whether I believe said information is a second question that I take very seriously! (I don’t endorse the WSJ or think it’s the best/worst; it works for me. And on a dollar per reporter basis, it’s a good deal. The Chicago Tribune, mentioned by Maynard above has between 75 and 80, a lot for a regional paper in todays news market.)
 
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