E&P: 2005 State-Of-Media Report (Idealists have lost to the accountants)

[Hissyspit]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002157352

Annual State-of-Media Report: 2005 'Three Times Worse' Than 2004

By E&P Staff
Published: March 12, 2006 5:40 PM ET

NEW YORK The annual “The State of the American News Media” report, to be released Monday, declares that while 2004 was a bad year for the newspaper industry, with circulation and advertising declines, “2005 was about three times worse.”

It also asserts that at many old media companies “the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over. The idealists have lost. The troubles of 2005, especially in print, dealt a further blow to this fight for journalism in the public interest.” The report quotes an editor a major paper: “If you argue about public trust today, you will be dismissed as an obstructionist and a romantic.”

In a surprising finding, the report states that the audience for online news appears to have leveled off. The growth now is not in how many people get news online, “but how often they do so.”

- snip -

Among other findings, as described by PEJ:

• The new paradox of journalism is more outlets are covering fewer stories. As the number of news outlets grows, generally the audiences of each one shrinks, and news organizations cut back on resources. Yet they still all have to cover the big stories. Thus on most major events, we have more reporters, but fewer stories are being covered generally. A close look at the big news websites even demonstrates it. Google News offers access within two clicks to 14,000 stories, but really they are accounts of just 24 news events.

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[ixion]

1. The irony here

is that the reason circulation is down is precisely because they chose finances over the truth.

"The troubles of 2005, especially in print, dealt a further blow to this fight for journalism in the public interest.”


Indeed, and by this sentence 'they' prove their entire lack of understanding about why this is occuring.

[zalinda]

2. Right Wingers don't buy newspapers because they get their

news from Rush. Lefties don't buy newspapers because it's just RW spew. Put out a paper that prints the truth, and they might be surprised that people actually buy and read it.

zalinda