A pair of recent articles in the WSJ illuminate rapid changes in the newspaper industry. On 12 January the Journal reported, “The New York Times company will cut about 125 positions through layoffs at the Boston Globe and the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester … Seventeen positions in the newsroom and two opinion-page positions are expected to be eliminated through buy-outs at the Globe.”
The Journal also reported from London that some British and U.S. newspapers, for example the Daily Telegraph, Washington Post and USA Today, are buying search terms on Google to steer news readers to their sites, and that others, like the Times of London, are training their reporters to write stories with key phrases and topic words in the top paragraph and headlines to make them more likely to be indexed by Google. (Sorry, no links).
Meanwhile, yesterday The New York Times reported that some of the best coverage of the Libby trial has come from the blog FireDogLake.com.
These anecdotes underline the critical importance of the blogosphere. In the future, most people will likely get their news from the web. Blogs will play an increasingly important role.
Here is a question for our incredibly astute and shockingly well-informed audience: does anyone know how the readership of Red blogs versus Blue blogs stacks up right now?
I wonder if fewer people on staff means reporters are more likely to rely on press releases, such as those generated by Bill Donohue, and have less time to fact check and contextualize work. While the corporations that own newspapers are cutting funds, I somehow doubt that millionaires like Dick Scaife who fund the Right Wing Noise Machine are cutting back.
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Really, the corporations, by their cutbacks of news orgs, are simply reinforcing our desire to get news from blogs.
…In large measure and for a long time, reporters–print or electronic–have relied on bitching and moaning from “sources” who have axes to grind for their stories. It isn’t new. People have axes to grind, and grind them via revelations to the media.
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What seems to be new is that reporters–print or electronic–don’t seem to be doing anything other than doing a “he-said/she-said” (getting quotations from various people, to try to develop some sort of controversy) without actually doing anything other than going to their Rolodexes.
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There is a reason for one of my tag lines:
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Common sense is the set of prejudices that one acquires before the age 18. –Albert Einstein
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And this is an exemplar of it.
It seems the left has the lead in blogs but the right still has a lead with talk radio.
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Any ideas as to why that is? I’ve been trying the come up with some reasoning but have failed so far.
…People who adhere to right wing talk radio (and television–Faux News all the time) do so because it gets their blood to boil. They have a pathological necessity of the adrenaline rush that comes from listening to right wing talk radio. It is akin to a drug addiction.
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If you believe that I’m kidding, I can assure you that I am not.
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Common sense is the set of prejudices that one acquires before the age 18. –Albert Einstein
Radio is generally a one way medium. You sit there and listen to some other guys opinions and then make them your own. The guy you listen to on the radio is the authority, and the right loves its authority figures. They pretty much operate in a world where they look for someone else to give them thier orders and tehn it is the job of everyone else to execute the order and spread the message. So radio works for them.
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Blogs are interactive, argumentative, and are based on the idea that even the little guy has a contribution to make. That’s the kind of medium that appeals to the left, where people are very quick to challenge their own “leaders” and throw them under the bus if they disagree with them.
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(This is all a giant generalization, so don’t take it personally Peter.)
Virtually every other call starts with – you bozo, this is why you’re wrong…
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Think about it. Throwing leaders under the bus, arguments for the sake of arguing, the little guy telling Mr. Smooth exactly where he is wrong – sure sounds like talk radio to me.
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You may be speaking of a show like G. Gordon or Laura Ingrahm – little or no feedback. I place them in the same category as Christopher Lydon and NPR – a verbal delivery of message, not talk radio.
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BTW – Finneran may work out – he’s doing pretty good on WRKO; I’ve been lsitening to him in lieu of the regular Cape Cod WXTK guys, Ed and Gino. Once he runs out of distinguised guests, we’ll see how he holds up (last week, Mitt, John Kerry, Terry McAuliffe, Christy Mihos, and on and on…)
…median age male 59, female 63.
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I’m not sure that that is the target demographic of most advertisers, though.
“Virtually every other call starts with – you bozo, this is why you’re wrong…”
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That wouldn’t be WXTK, 19 out of 20 calls are supportive, and it’s usually the same 20 people calling every day.
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Ed and Gino are pathological in their dishonesty and childishness. They often mis-quote or simply fabricate quotes from people, repeat urban legends as if they were news items, and act like a couple of 12 year old girls at a slumber party with the nicknames they call people that they don’t like.
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They’ve endorsed torture, wiping out entire Iraqi cities, nuking Iran, and using the Otis Air Base as an internment camp for illegal aliens. Ed’s former co-host Donny McKeag likened Katrina refugees to chimpanzees, and his current co-host Gino seems, impossibly, to be even dumber than Donny…for instance, Gino believes people in Guatemala speak “Guatemalen”.
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..which is why WBZ and WRKO are more interesting. Far less an Amen Chorus.
but most of the liberals who have tried talk radio are not entertaining to listen to. There are exceptions of course, like Jim Braudy on 96.9, he’s a very funny guy, entertaining, etc.
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I think for the most part, talk radio comes down the “have a beer with” attraction. A lot of the people who are successful are guys you would like to have a beer with. Jim Braudy, Scott Allen Miller, Peter Blute, Michael Graham, Jay Severin, etc. they all have that kind of appeal to their audience.
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I tried to listen to Air America, just like coming here I like to know what the “other side” thinks. But it was boring, Al Franken was boring. Here is a guy that had bona fide comedy credits but was not funny to listen to on the radio. I am sure some liberals liked the show but more because of the content of the show then the delivery. I will keep going back to Jim, but he can deliver the liberal side of the debate in an entertaining way.
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I will say that the authority aspect that potroast brought up is also a factor. That’s why guys like Rush and Bill O’Rielly have jobs. Right wingers like RRRM need to have someone give them the talking points.
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I think the last key piece of this is the local versus national aspect. I think the ratings for the national guys are starting to drop off. This may be evident by Bill O’Rielly being moved to later in the day so that the Egan and Braudy show could be extended and other like moves. Program directors appear to be moving away from national guys to local guys. This could have been part of the problem for Air America.
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As far as the blogs, I don’t know what is going on. I used to spend a lot of time on Hub Politics but since Deval won the election the quality of posts on that site have gone way down. There are some formatting things about that site particular that could be the problem, posts can only be started by the two brothers that started the site, there is a delay that can be as long as a day in the comments actually being posted (they review all before they are posted) and they have started this nonsense Deval Watch blog that they are putting their attention to, but that site is boring.
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Perhaps one of the big differences is age. A lot of conservatives are in that 35 plus age group that can barley check their email. Blogging is beyond them. Obviously there are exceptions. My grandfather is 81 years old and blogs.
The most entertaining talk radio show I’ve come across is Stephanie Miller’s, and she’s a member of the lefty talk radio brigade. Of course, you would have to have Sirius radio or internet streaming to get her in Boston, since Clear Channel shifted from being talk stations to yet two more salsa music stations a few months ago.
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Rush Lamebrain used to be moderately entertaining–a long time ago. But virtually all right-wing talk radio has gotten down to bitching and moaning about this, that and the other, and, after a while, that wears thin. Quite frankly, so has much of left-wing talk radio. And maybe that’s why talk radio demographics aren’t the best (WRKO’s demographics are median age male 59, female 63, not exactly the most sought after for advertisers.)
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I agree with you about Al Franken and virtually all of the ranters on Air America. (Stephanie Miller is not an Air America person–the show is separately syndicated.) Franken’s only benefit was some of the guests that he had on were interesting, including the former Glob columnist Tom Oliphant (too bad the Glob got rid of him instead of the airhead Jacoby). Franken was a writer, not a performer, and they are two different skills. And Air America’s business model never seemed to make much sense to me.
This weekend brought the roll-out of Red Mass Group – and BMG is first on the blogroll! (Of course, it’s alphabetical, but still…)