Comments for Pierce Presley http://piercepresley.com Journalist, Student, Raconteur, Misfit Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:39:08 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 Comment on Why the newspaper paywall discussion turns into a holy war by Pierce http://piercepresley.com/2012/12/05/why-the-newspaper-paywall-discussion-turns-into-a-holy-war/comment-page-1/#comment-7514 Pierce Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:39:08 +0000 http://piercepresley.com/?p=1743#comment-7514 Local ownership was on its way out when the Internet was but an egg; the precipitous decline in ad revenue just ensured the executives wouldn’t have any workable plan before the cliff was undeniable. And even afterward (see the Times-Picayune debacle for a great/terrible example).
And while Warren Buffet’s interest in buying papers gave some reason to believe, it’s clear that some of his purchases may be unworkable and he’s shown no disinclination to shut down a newspaper he’s bought. It’s clear he thinks there’s still money to be made over and above the debt load he would take on buying them, but is he willing to invest what is and will be necessary to keep them open and operating at the capacity journalists and readers think they ought to be at? Probably not.
I would love for one of these paywall schemes—even the New York Times’s, an effort which is likely not transferable to a half dozen papers in North America—to succeed, but as Buttry notes, that’s a stop-gap, much like raising per-issue and subscription costs were. If newspapers (and local TV) can’t stop the bleeding, they can reach subscription numbers on a level of their circulation (wildly unlikely) and it will just delay the tolling of the bell.

]]> Comment on Why the newspaper paywall discussion turns into a holy war by Bill Brody http://piercepresley.com/2012/12/05/why-the-newspaper-paywall-discussion-turns-into-a-holy-war/comment-page-1/#comment-7513 Bill Brody Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:32:01 +0000 http://piercepresley.com/?p=1743#comment-7513 Regretfully, I must concur in your conclusion. Whether web sites behind pay walls survive remains to be seen but I suspect the future of journalism will be in a few nationally-circulated newspapers of sufficient merit to earn reader support.

The New York Times probably will be atop the list. I can’t think of another that merits inclusion.

Let’s face it, journalism as we knew it in the era of local ownership is on its death bed. Corporate greed has supplanted public interest and community service. The informational content of most newspapers has deteriorated to a point at which they’ve become little more than circular distributors.

Local broadcast media have deteriorated in like fashion. Radio “news” is virtually non-existent and television “news” consists largely of crime and disaster reports. Why? Because they’re readily available and require no investment in professional reporting.

Perhaps most significantly, there appears no reason to believe that these circumstances will improve. Rather, greed will be the guiding light of the media world, as seemingly already has occurred in government, politics and much of the financial community.

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