The demise of Newspapers

[lesliepear]

luscious_purple found this important but long article in The New Republic.

I'm fond of our local newspaper, The Bergen Record. It covers our corner of NJ, which is not always served by NYC media (such a wide area to cover) or The Star Ledger, which actually concentrates more on Central/Southern NJ. (I used to get it when I lived in Roselle Park in Union County - 45 minutes south of me).

We get it 7x days a week, but only pay for the Thursday-Sunday subscription we orginally had. (Despite the comment in the TNR article, offering a weekend only subscription isn't a weakness, just that some people don't have time to read during the week, especially something like the NY Times). I think they added the 3 free days to boost circulation numbers.

In the past 18 months, the parent started a free weekly local newspaper for our town, called "The Little Ferry Local". Not sure why they call it that, except that our town's quarterly government published newsletter is called "The Little Ferry Express". No, it's not online (a drawback, as last year Alan's picture was in the paper several times - they liked to cover his pre-k class, I would have shared the photos). The content is shared and duplicated between 3 local adjacent towns as well as borrowed from the main paper. I don't mind that there is news about the adjacent towns (our town goes to the high school of one of them) - but they do get somewhat lax in cross-editing - they forget to put the towns with the elementary schools which have generic names like Grant, Washington, Memorial etc and may be duplicated, so if you don't know which school goes with which town it may be confusing.

Anyway, the TNR article fears that without the watchdog function of the newspaper and it's own indepedent reporting (as well as the rivarly in a 2 newspaper town) - things may slip between the cracks. A very good point indeed.

Comments

[catyak]

I gave up buying newspapers long ago. Much of the British press ended up being owned by either the late Robert Maxwell or Rupert Murdoch and I have no desire to contribute to the income of either. I also think it's all far too biased one way or the other and, based on personal experience of some coverage, full of inaccuracies. Our local newspaper isn't much better, happy to jump on bandwagons without fully considering the implications, also going for the sensational at the expense of proper reporting.

Readership has declined, but in many cases so has the standard of the journalism.

D

[lacey]

I agree fully with your last paragraph. That's why I generally don't watch any local news anymore, because they go for sensationalism at the expense of actual reporting. The paper is somewhat better, you usually have to work a little to spot the sensationalism, but out local news gives it to you right up front.