Marr: Save the Newspapers? Why???
Having worked in, on, and around newspapers for over two decades, I can say with some authority that the vast majority of reporters, editors, and publishers are about as sharp as a pound of wet leather. The general consensus amongst their fraternity is, quite simply, that readers are too addle-brained to know what is good for them. The conventional wisdom within the hallowed swamps of journalism is that your garden variety reader doesn’t know what is important, that they are a wrong-thinking lot who put on their shoes and socks in that order.
Journalists, as a rule, feel that the unwashed masses should be force-fed “the truth,” that they require some sort of Kubrickian, Clockwork Orange procedure in order to get their minds right.
Of course, readers immediately recognize such hubris as a load of malarkey. Their response is to simply quit reading the newspaper. There might have been a time when readers believed that newspapers attempted at least a semblance of objectivity, roughly around the time when the Hula Hoop and those new-fangled television sets first came into vogue, but that era has gone the way of the dodo.
Thus, in the dark days of 2009, newspapers are faced with the reality of staff terminations, lay-offs, falling ad rates, and a massive Diaspora of readers. Other industries, confronting the same challenges, would strive to discover and solve the problem. They would make an attempt to discern what their customers wanted, re-tool, re-group, and seek to do a better job.
But, that’s just not how life works within the uber-arrogant mindset of journalism. You see, to them, plummeting profits are the fault of those pesky, idiot readers. Those members of the trailer-trash club simply won’t listen. They simply don’t care about the single-sided coverage they are provided. Those politically incorrect freaks and geek actually want objectivity, or at the very least, neutrality.
Such being the case, newspaper owners have but one recourse. They seek a government bailout.
According to a paper commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School, and Columbia professor Michael Schudson (co-authored by former Washington Post Executive Editor, Len Downie) the print media deserves federal assistance. They believe that the government, publicly funded universities, and private, philanthropic organizations should step in to save journalism.
I don’t quite get this. With a few notable exceptions, what is there to save? For most businesses (the car and banking industry notwithstanding, as they have already been nationalized) an enterprise which refuses to provide customers with the product they seek is allowed to die an appropriate death. If you decide to open a butcher shop in the middle of Calcutta, and advertise beef briskets from sacred cows, you pretty much deserve what you get.
However, the traditional journalism industry believes it is a cut above. They assume their customer base is nothing but a collection of one-toothed peons and web-footed miscreants who are barely able to get through the day without soiling themselves. In their minds, newspapers should receive a dispensation from failure because they are providing an invaluable public service.
In other words, journalists feel it is their sworn duty to save the tongue-chewers from themselves.
The grand Pooh-Bahs of journalism are asking for breaks in the tax codes that will allow local newspapers to function as non-profit groups. This is not to be confused as the sort of non-profit groups that lose money every quarter because they provide a crummy product, for newspapers have already gotten that one down pat. The status they prefer is non-profit in the sense that taxpayers bend over, smile, and fund the paper’s losses. They also hope to be given fees from telecom organizations and Internet providers in the form of grants, which would allow them to continue to function as little but the government hacks and public relations shills that they already are.
Really, should the dream of the newspaper owners come to fruition, things won’t be all that different from now. Their coverage will still parrot the every whim of the White House. They will still offer coverage that embellishes but one side of an issue, and either utterly ignores or totally denigrates the other. Their readership will continue to fall, and their coffers will be as empty as a pauper’s pocket.
There would be one difference. At present, you can simply refuse to by a newspaper that you detest.
If the power brokers of journalism get their way, you’ll be ponying up cash every week.
Ron Marr is the editor/publisher/and janitor of the weekly, online magazine, troutwrapper.com. He can be reached via his website at www.troutwrapper.com
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The people in for the biggest surprise once the Marxists take over will be the useful idiot groups who supported them all these years.
Hollywood? CBS? NBC? It will be a joy to watch them be FORCED to produce ridiculous propaganda. I hope many of them regret every moment of their past treason. They will be forced to lie and cover up every atrocity.
Art? Science? Education? Ditto for them. Their professions will be completely politicized for the benefit of the elite rulers. They will be slaves to the state. And scientists will be forced to be intellectual slaves of the state, working miracles in exchange for an extra loaf of bread.
Environmentalism? Name one Marxist country that practices environmentalism with the intensity that the United States practices it. The Warsaw Pact nations were raped. Ever hear of the Aral Sea?
Energy conservation? Yeah right. We’ll be drilling like mad and chopping down forests for all sorts of stupid reasons. Like to grow oranges in the rocky mountains, according to the command of some idiot aparatchnik.
Gay rights? I don’t think so. In most Marxist countries, gays are repressed and homosexuality is still regarded as a mental illness. Gays are excluded from most leadership positions.
Feminism? Females will do as they are told by the all male dominated ruling party. One child. Mandatory abortions. Females have just as much opportunity to work in coal mines, highway construction or farming as any man. No special prisons. Just the right to be just as oppressed and poor as any man. Maybe they can bathe once a week but their teeth will fall out.
Blacks? Hispanics? They are in for a rude awakening. They will most likely find themselves worse off than the days of Jim Crow. Will it be a small consolation to them to give up their electricity, their water, their nice heated homes as long as whites are moving into the same tiny high rise slums with them? Read about Cuba. The average poor black person in the USA lives BETTER than any citizen of North Korea. Most East Germans would have gladly traded places with them any day of the week.
Illegal immigrants? Well, think about the Berlin Wall or Panmunjom. Marxists are very security conscious.
Privacy? Get used to passports to move inside your own country. Get used to your children being your enemy. Get used to the government reading your mail and monitoriing your phones. Blacks – get used to a REAL police state. Get used to summary executions too. There won’t be any more of this nonsense about cruel and unusual punishment. Cruel punishment won’t be unusual at all!
Legal Drugs? Name one Marxist country that has a drug problem. Just one. Guess why? Rehab is a bullet to the brain. Drugs are for export to bourgeois countries like the US. Pornography? Nope. People, they SHOOT people for simple marijuana possession.
So many people in this country THINK that the Marxists are trying to liberalize America for good. Nonsense. The liberalization is only temporary, to divide and conquer the country. On day one, when the US flag comes down from the flagpole and the hammer and sickle goes up… there will be no more liberal bleeding hearts, no more soft kid glove government treatment.
You will be told what you will do for a living, you will be told how high you can aspire. And you will watch only the political elite have enough to eat, and warm beds to sleep in. And you will remember what life used to be like before the utopia began in America.
If every thinking adult in this country understood as Jonathan and some of the rest of us do; the powers that would be would be hanging from the light poles. Read the “Gulag” for more on “Real Marxism.” Wake up America, before we all end up in a “Gulag!”
Ron Marr says “I don’t quite get this. With a few notable exceptions, what is there to save?”
You don’t get this? You’re not the only one. Lots of people haven’t been getting it for a long, long time – for about 60 years. That’s why we are losing our country to the Marxists. Because we just don’t get it.
The government is going to take over the newspapers with a bailout. They aren’t interested in profits. They want to control the press. The cost-benefit ratio is solved by manipulating reality to make the numbers fit. The economic crisis is just a crisis to be exploited for revolution. They want journalists to be government employees. Marxist press never makes a profit. It’s viewed as a necessary expenditure everywhere, like roads and fighter planes.
Do you think the Marxists are taking over health care for a profit? They aren’t. The profit/loss is balanced by RATIONING CARE. The objective is control and dependence; not profit. Government employed doctors.
Education? Government takeover of student loans. The profit./loss is irrelevant. This is the government we’re talking about. They want to control education. Controlling cost is done by diminishing customers. They tell you what you will do for a living and where you will work.
The auto industry? The aviation industry? Arts? Entertainment?
Socialism works as much by eliminating demand artificially as it does by manipulating production artificially. Hence, Stalin didn’t worry about making farms productive. Things balanced out when enough people starved to death. That’s how it works.
Did you hit the nail on the head!! Well said. Now, our govt. wants to subsidize the newspapers & guess what, then they become the mouth of the politicians & also become govt., contract employees.
If you want a great book to read, then I suggest A Time To Stand by Oliver, cause it’s about a small town in America that finally takes a stand against federal tyranny & ends up starting the 2nd American Revolution. It’s powerful & shows us what we can do if we really want to save America. Just read it & prepare for the nxt 3 yrs.
http://www.booksbyoliver.com